During the night of 17–18 December 1941, the German troops guarding the line were simply withdrawn, as the military commander of France Otto von Stülpnagel decided that diverting increasingly limited German manpower to guard a line that he deemed as being merely illusionary (since virtually the whole population had returned) could no longer be justified.[1] Nevertheless, in theory the line continued to exist for the rest of the German occupation.[4]