André Maginot was a French politician from Lorraine. A member of the Chamber of Deputies, he had been seriously wounded early in the First World War, and thereafter worked tirelessly in his position as Minister of Pensions to provide adequate rehabilitations for injured servicemen.
Maginot's home Province of Lorraine had been reunited with France as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, and consequently he was a keen advocat for the construction of adequate defences for his home region. In the Chamber he fought for the necessary finance to construct the defensive system that has for ever since borne his name.
Technally however, he was not actually resonsible for the construction of the Maginot Line. This was built mainly after his death, and went officially by the title of Fronts C.O.R.F. (Commissiom d'Organisation des Régions Fortifées).
It seems a great injustice to the man that his name should be associated with a man-made structure that has been so maligned and misconstrued since the fall of France in 1940. Even the label 'Maginot Line' seems to have been an invention of the French Press, and should really have been called the Belhague line-After the Inspector-General of Engineers who was the President of the Commission responsible for the design of the border fortifications.
