"The shells are loaded! The firing parameters have been confirmed! Fire is ready at any time!" a French artillery officer reported loudly to his commander: "The two guns are aimed at the large pillboxes on the main peak of the opposite German position, and the other three guns have chosen their respective targets." ”

"How is the field artillery group prepared?" asked the commander of the French railway artillery unit, glancing into the distance.

The officer immediately handed over a note: "A few minutes ago, they had reached the designated position, and 60 guns would fire along with our artillery, which would definitely destroy the German bullshit Siegfried Line." ”

Nodding, the commander of the railway artillery ordered: "Start the timer, according to the mission instructions, 7 minutes later is the time for action, fire the artillery on time, and cooperate with our army to break through the Siegfried line." ”

"Yes!" said the junior officer.

At this moment, on the hill closest to the German border, in the temporarily excavated field headquarters, de Gaulle was holding a telescope looking at the Siegfried Line in Germany opposite.

Faintly in the bushes, you can see the exposed concrete walls of the German pillbox, and in some dangerous positions, there are machine gun firing holes, although these firing holes are overgrown with weeds, you can still see the black holes in the barrels of machine guns.

But somehow, he always had a bad feeling in his heart, and this premonition of being deceived lingered like a shadow, haunting his heart. He put down his binoculars and looked at his adjutant and staff officer: "Although the German defense line is cleverly constructed, it has many flaws. ”

He pointed to the hill opposite: "They prefer to deploy machine-gun bunkers and artillery bunkers rather than to bury anti-tank barriers and barbed wire fences in front of them, which in itself is a very strange thing." ”

"General de Gaulle, the Germans have always been short of steel and other resources, so they don't want to waste precious steel to build barbed wire and tank barriers. This is the result of the analysis of the intelligence services, which is very convincing. The staff officer replied with a smile.

"We also lack steel. De Gaulle glanced at his staff officer, apparently dismissive of this statement: "In the non-critical sections of the Maginot Line, the anti-tank barrier was made of wood, and it also worked well. Why didn't the Germans lay improvised anti-tank barriers in such an area suitable for tank attacks?"

"General, it's possible that they are leaving a position for their tanks to attack. De Gaulle's adjutant thought for a moment and said: "There is intelligence that the Germans have laid a large number of mines in other areas, maybe the Germans prefer to use mines to defend against tanks, right?"

"Has anyone seen the German army laying a large number of mines?" De Gaulle raised an eyebrow, he seemed to have guessed something, but when he thought about it, he could not think of anything.

"No...... However, the Scout had seen a lot of minefield warning signs. The adjutant frowned and replied: "Maybe the Germans planted ...... at night"

"It's too late to say anything. I can only fight and then watch to change the battle plan. De Gaulle sighed and said: "Victory has made us forget the scars of war." The Germans on the other side were in full swing, while our officers were worried about taking a vacation. I formed an armored unit on the second front, and I didn't come to the front line for most of the year, and you didn't even reconnoiter the opponent's defense line. ”

......

On the opposite German position, two fat wild rats were mating under a German cannon. Several black-painted telephone poles were buried in the earth, revealing a round shape that served as a battery for an important German defensive line.

Not far away, the exposed reinforced concrete fortifications were in fact little exposed cement bumps, and the machine-gun holes were simply dug holes - most of them were inhabited by rats.

And those barrels are just broken mop rods, scrapped bike keels, or just broken flutes. The so-called minefields were all just a sign with a warning sign - there were only a few mines in them.

The entire Siegfried Line is a shocking deception, and when this deception is carefully arranged, all the voices that question this flawed scam lose their effectiveness. If a national power is used to mobilize a scam, then the deception, no matter how false, will have a certain real effect.

The French had received a warning from the Comintern that the Siegfried Line had not been requisitioned to build the Siegfried Line. This huge loophole was justified by the French themselves, who believed that the Germans had secretly recruited prisoners from concentration camps and persecuted their political opponents for labor.

A French businessman once saw the Germans set up false positions and reported to his home country what he saw, but was arrested by the French as spies for trying to help the Germans spread false news.

Even the Führer's own adjective "vulnerable" when talking about the Siegfried Line in public was taken as a genuine word of modesty. After assessing its Maginot Line, the French government explained the Führer's adjective "vulnerable" to the Siegfried Line: it could stop the French offensive for at least half a year.

However, anyone who thinks that the Germans are unprepared for war on the Western Front is a big mistake: after the Polish campaign, about half of the Eastern Air Force has been transferred to the airfields of the Western Front, so the Luftwaffe has an absolute advantage in both quantity and quality.

At dawn on 30 September, the Luftwaffe's western frontline airfield had 1,970 fighters, more than three times as many as all the fighters used by France in the operation. Ninety percent of these fighters are advanced FW-190D fighters, much more advanced than those fighters that the French can take to the sky.

Similarly, the Luftwaffe had a large force of bombers that played an important role in the top-secret defense plan for the Western Front: these bombers were to disable the French ground forces, attack their supply lines and assembly areas, and buy time for the ground forces to counterattack.

At the same time, the ground forces of the German army on the Western Front are enough to be described as the peak of the lineup. General Rundstedt commanded a total of 800,000 troops, with the fifth and sixth non-main armored corps, which were equipped with weapons and equipment such as the No. 3 assault gun and the No. 2 tank, which were old but not outdated, and had a large number of anti-tank guns and iron fist rocket launchers. It can be said that they are ready to fight in the face of the French attack alone, not to mention the fact that hundreds of kilometers behind them, several already world-famous tank units are arriving by train as reserves.

These forces can now be said to be famous, including Rommel's Seventh Panzer Corps, and the Second Panzer Corps under the command of General Bockenf, Guderian's First Panzer Corps, which is resting in Poland and will be assembled westward in half a month. These forces are now synonymous with victory, and it took them just 16 days to establish a victory in Poland.

Moreover, Germany was now mobilizing its own reservists, and the Führer had already ordered the civil and military authorities to complete the expansion of the army by 3 million in 1938 and to 4.5 million by 1939.

......

"Fire!" was fired on 30 September, and with a command, the French artillery let out a deafening roar, and the shells flew towards their pre-selected targets, knocking the so-called defensive lines on the German border into a sieve.

The heavy railroad guns fired lethal shells, and then began the long process of cleaning the barrels, but the field guns of all calibers could roar incessantly, and the shells exploded on the German Siegfried Line as if they didn't want money, and the earth trembled as if they were not paying for money.

"This is Observation Post No. 2! The Germans are not returning fire!" a French artillery observer reported loudly into the walkie-talkie.

On the other end, a soldier at another observation post was saying the same thing: "Report, the Germans did not return fire. ”

Hundreds of French fighters appeared below the clouds, they were there to control the air supremacy of the battlefield, and below them, dozens of French bombers with bombs, they were going to drop these bombs on the German positions, helping the French artillery to completely destroy the Siegfried Line.

Before the artillery fire was over, the French infantry began to charge with their rifles, and they cautiously groped their way forward where the minefield warning was written, and from time to time someone was killed by the mines, but most of the soldiers came to the front of the German position unharmed. They shouted slogans and waited for the German troops to fire at them, only to find that the entire position could not find the Germans who were returning fire except for the bombing of their own people.

"Ceasefire! Our soldiers have attacked! Ceasefire!" shouted an officer at the observation post over a walkie-talkie. After more than ten minutes, the French artillery fire finally stopped, and the entire German Siegfried Line returned to its pre-battle tranquility, except for the black smoke craters, there was little change here.

"This ...... No, it's not an exercise, is it?" a French battalion commander lifted the steel helmet on top of his head, looked at the enemy machine-gun firing holes not far away, and pointed to the pillboxes that were supposed to be spewing tongues of fire to harvest their lives: "Go up and see! Are the Germans scared to death?"

The Germans, of course, were not scared to death in their positions, and a group of infantry climbed behind the pillboxes only to find that these pillboxes and batteries were not designed with one of the most important places: the gates. When the soldiers brought back a few mop rods and rusty iron pipes, the French infantry, who had been ordered to attack, realized that they had been fooled.

"Let the tanks come up quickly! We've been tricked by those damn Germans!" De Gaulle pinched the phone angrily and shouted through gritted teeth: "Cross the German border and search and attack ten kilometers forward!"