soc.history.war.world-war-ii

Concerning the Atlantic Wall fortifications:

By 1942, fearing an Allied invasion in the west while embroiled in war
with the Soviet Union in the east, Hitler endeavoured to create the
"Atlantic Wall", or "Fortress Europe", by encrusting the Atlantic
seacoast with concrete and steel defences.

The foundations for some of the largest German coastal artillery
emplacements along the French coast were laid as early as 1940 in the
Pas de Calais region, a mere 40 kilometres across the English Channel
from Dover. These gun positions originally were intended to support a
German invasion of Britain. Subsequently, they fired on Allied
shipping in the Channel and regularly shelled Dover, Folkestone and
elsewhere along the British coast.

The Germans could not fortify the whole of the western European
seaboard with such large and heavily-armed installations. The main
portion of the Atlantic Wall stretched some 2000 kilometres from
Denmark to the Spanish-French border. German military engineers built
observation bunkers at wide intervals all along the coast. Lookouts in
these bunkers could give warning of an Allied attack and direct naval,
air and mobile land forces to the scene. Some 15,000 bunkers and other
installations protected harbours and points along the shore where
there were important facilities or likely landing spots. Barbed wire,
minefields and other obstacles provided the first line of defence
against Allied infantry and tanks. Small bunkers containing machine
guns or light artillery covered these positions and protected the long-
range artillery batteries. These batteries received a two-metre thick
protection of steel-reinforced concrete to protect them against Allied
naval and air bombardment. Hitler personally sketched many of the
bunker designs, down to the smallest detail. From 1942, the Todt
Organization, a labour mobilization system notorious for its use of
forced and slave labour, built most of the bunkers but thousands of
German troops also toiled to prepare the Atlantic Wall defences.

Canadian and British troops first confronted the Atlantic Wall during
the disastrous Dieppe Raid in August 1942. The 5000 Canadians, drawn
from the 2nd Infantry Division, suffered appalling casualties in a
futile attempt to storm ashore in the face of withering fire from
expertly-sited German positions. The failure of this operation
underlined the need for lavish fire support - from the air, from the
sea, and from special armoured vehicles put ashore with the infantry -
if an invasion was to succeed. On the German side, the raid spurred
greater construction efforts. By 1943, 250,000 workers poured up to
800,000 tons of concrete monthly into sophisticated fortifications,
some of immense proportions. In the period 1942-1944, the Germans used
over 17 million cubic metres of concrete and 1.2 million metric tons
of steel for the Atlantic Wall. "I am the greatest fortress builder of
all time", boasted Adolf Hitler, who never once visited the Channel
fortifications.

Fortunately for the Allies, the sheer scale of the project exceeded
German resources. Berlin's other priorities, especially the Eastern
Front and air defence of the homeland against bombers, siphoned off
enormous quantities of material and labour which might otherwise have
been used on the Atlantic Wall. In 1943, the German commander in the
Pas de Calais admitted that the Wall was, at best, a "thin, in many
places fragile, length of cord with a few small knots at isolated
points." The most likely area for an Allied invasion attempt, a 500-
kilometre stretch of coast from Calais to Cherbourg, contained the
heaviest concentration of fortifications, including huge coastal
artillery emplacements at Boulogne, Cap Gris Nez, Calais, and Dunkirk.
The calibre of these guns was as large as 406 mm (16-inch), among the
most powerful in the world.

For this reason, Allied strategists selected the less heavily defended
Normandy beaches for their invasion of France in June 1944, even
though Normandy was further from Britain than the Pas de Calais and
less convenient for the eventual thrust towards Germany. Thousands of
aircraft and hundreds of warships covered the initial Allied assault
by attacking German coastal defences. Tanks fitted with amphibious
equipment 'swam' ashore with the infantry. This massive effort caught
the Germans by surprise (thanks in part to elaborate deception
operations) and overwhelmed the coastal crust of defences. Although
the weight of fire completely demoralized the garrisons, it actually
destroyed very few fortifications, even by direct hits. Not far
inland, the German mobile reserves stopped the Allied advance, and a
brutal two-month battle of attrition began. Finally, at the end of
July, while the Canadians and British pinned the Germans in the
eastern sector of the bridgehead, United States forces ended the
stalemate by launching a successful offensive in the west. The
breakout from Normandy had begun. By September, the task of First
Canadian Army, operating on the left flank of the Allied advance, was
to drive the Germans from their largest Atlantic Wall bastions.

Rob