BETWEEN PASSEISME AND MODERNISATION? THE CASE OF THE BELGIAN FORTIFICATION SYSTEM 1926-1940

摘要

"An old knight mounted on a vast and ponderous war horse, encased in the thickest of armour against a young upstart, less heavily armoured, mounted on a lighter, more manoeuvrable charger, and relying for victory upon a lance sharpened and hardened by a new process."1 This was the widespread post war image of the situation of the Allied and German armed forces at the beginning of the Second World War and it is still very much alive in Belgium today. The issue of the preparation of the Belgian army was already subject to debate in the inter war period itself, certainly when international tensions rose again in the 1930s. Some authors used the French word passéisme in order to describe the situation of the Belgian armed forces. The term refers to the supposed past-oriented thinking of (political and military) policy makers, who (allegedly) took only their experience during the First World War into account. Though more recently scholars have nuanced both the excessive emphasis on the new processes on German side2 and the supposed lack of innovation and/or preparation on Allied side,~3 Belgian military historians have only to a limited extent picked up the innovations in military historiography abroad.~4