“Although one of the most impressive engineering feats of modern times, British, American and Canadian troops breached the seemingly impregnable Nazi defences along a 80-mile stretch of French coastline at Normandy in a single day: June 6, 1944.”
AS EARLY AS 1942, Adolf Hitler knew that at some point the Allied armies massing in Britain would try to cross the English Channel and blast their way into his Fortress Europe. The Nazi dictator was convinced that if his Thousand-Year Reich were to survive this day of reckoning, it would be up to his troops to hurl the invaders back into the sea faster than they could wade ashore.
In preparation for this seemingly inevitable showdown, the Führer ordered his generals to fortify Europe’s northern shore. He dubbed the resulting 2,000-mile long chain of fortresses, gun emplacements, tank traps and obstacles the “Atlantic Wall.”
Although one of the most impressive engineering feats of modern times, British, American and Canadian troops breached the seemingly impregnable Nazi defences along a 80-mile stretch of French coastline at Normandy in a single day: June 6, 1944. With the 70th anniversary of Operation Overlord happening this week, MilitaryHistoryNow.com asked Scott Addington, founder of the company Military Research UK and author of the recently released book D-Day: A Layman’s Guide, to compile a list of some remarkable facts about this formidable (yet failed) piece of wartime engineering. Enjoy!
It took more than two years to build
Hitler issued the order to build the Atlantic Wall on March 23, 1942 in his now famous ‘Directive 40.’ The plan called for the construction of 15,000 separate concrete emplacements to be manned by 300,000 soldiers (both German troops and foreign conscripts). Since no one in the Axis high command knew where the invasion would occur, the whole of occupied Europe’s Atlantic coastline was to be fortified. Astoundingly, Hitler wanted the work completed by May 1, 1943.
It was several walls
The “wall” was really a three-tier system of fortifications running almost 2,000 miles from the Franco-Spanish border all the way to the northern tip of Norway. Strategic port cities like Cherbourg, Brest and Antwerp were to become festungen or “fortresses” — the most heavily defended installations. Sites of secondary importance (lesser ports, military installations, radar stations) were protected by stützpuntkte or “strong points”, which would be guarded by batteries and gun positions under independent command. The third level of defences consisted of widerstandnesten or “resistance nests”. These less hardened installations featured interconnected bunkers and medium caliber guns.
It was a mind-bogglingly huge engineering project
Approximately 1.2 million tons of steel went into the Atlantic Wall. That’s enough to build more than 20,000 Tiger tanks. The Nazis also poured 17 million cubic metres of concrete into the defences – the equivalent of 1,100 Yankee Stadiums. The cost to lay down just the French portion of the Atlantic Wall was 3.7 billion Reichsmarks — an estimated $206 billion in today’s currency.
It took an army of workers to build
More than 260,000 workers helped to build the Atlantic Wall. Only 10 percent of these men were German. Albert Speer’s Organisation Todt directed the construction effort using thousands of forced labourers as well as many poorly paid local men. The department’s previous projects included the Autobahn highway system in Germany as well as the Siegfried Line along the Franco-German border.
It bristled with weaponry
The guns that grew out of the Atlantic Wall were a confusing mixture of sizes and calibres rushed in from all over Europe. They ranged from naval guns that were cut away from decommissioned French and German warships to captured artillery pieces of Czech and French origin. Servicing and supplying ammunition to this dizzying array of weaponry would become a logistical nightmare for the Axis.
(Infographic courtesy Scott Addington)
It was supposed to be impossible to assault
By the summer of 1944, the Nazis had laid more than 5 million mines along the Atlantic Wall. German gun crews spent months pre-sighting anticipated landing areas and constantly rehearsed pouring artillery, mortar and machine-gun fire onto these designated killing zones.
Hitler’s best general was not impressed
The commander to first oversee the defences was Field Marshall Karl Gerd von Rundstedt, a 69-year-old career soldier who won fame in 1940 for outflanking the Maginot Line. The maneuver ultimately led to the collapse of France. Ironically, he would now preside over the building of an even more massive series of fixed fortifications. In late 1943, when Field Marshal Erwin Rommel inspected the Atlantic Wall for the first time, he thought the enterprise a giant farce. The famous Desert Fox described Hitler’s strategy for defence as something out of wolkenkuckucksheim or “cloud cuckoo land.”
It was defeated in a matter of hours on D-Day
Events proved Rommel right. The wall was famously breached along the Normandy coastline in mere hours on June 6, 1944. Thanks in part to a remarkable Allied campaign of deception, Hitler was adamant that the massive operation on D-Day was only a feint and that the real blow would land elsewhere, namely at the Pas de Calais. Within days, the British, French, Americans and Canadians had secured their beachheads through which millions of fresh troops would soon pour into Europe. Within 11 months Berlin was in Allied hands.
It became an unofficial monument of the war
After 1945, the people of France felt that the abandoned defences were an unpleasant symbol of the occupation and couldn’t break them apart fast enough. Efforts to reclaim the coastline would still take years. It wasn’t until decades later that the public began to preserve sections of the Atlantic Wall for posterity. Many of the fortifications still stand and draw thousands of tourists annually.
“Within days, the British, French and Canadians had secured their beachheads”
The most common nationality to omit in talking about D-Day landings are the Canadians. This is the first time I think I’ve seen the Americans omitted…
Not sure how “American” dropped off the page. It’s been re-added. Thanks.
The series of stories leading up to the anniversary of D-Day have been outstanding. Keep up the excellent work. I had no idea of the amount of material that was effectively wasted by Hitler in the building of the Atlantic Wall. The comparison between the concrete that went into the coastal defenses and the number of Yankee Stadiums that could have been built is staggering in and of itself.
In a little detail, I understand a portion of the “concrete” poured towards the end was substandard due to the inferior composition of the cement?
And it was sabotaged by adding magnesium,copper and sodium salts during the preparations.
why were u reading this at 1:42AM
“The commander to first oversee the defences was Field Marshall Karl Gerd von Rundstedt, a 69-year-old career soldier who won fame in 1940 for outflanking the Maginot Line. The maneuver ultimately led to the collapse of France. Ironically, he would now preside over the building of an even more massive series of fixed fortifications.”
What’s ironic about this?
It would seem to me to be perfectly logical to have the guy who out-witted the largest previous defense in charge of the next one.
The irony is fixed fortifications on a massive scale were believed to be able to repel any invader. With the advent of maneuver warfare (first demonstrated via blitzkrieg) this belief was shattered and made invalid. In Normandy, Rundstedt became the Maginot Line, knowing full well the deficiencies in such a defense.
Except that massive fortifications WERE easily capable of defeating most assaults, when well-supplied and manned. Germany defeated France by going AROUND the Maginot Line, not THROUGH it. And contrary to myth, this wasn’t because France was “too stupid to think of this”, it was because it allowed them to concentrate their armed forces in the unprotected area, confident that a relatively small garrison would be able to withstand any attempts to breach the wall…which they were. Or at least to be able to slow and injure them enough to allow reinforcements to arrive. The Allies had a lot of trouble and grief penetrating the Siegfried Line in Germany, and only succeeded through massive firepower, attrition, and the fact that the German units defending it were of poor moral and badly equipped, and the line was not complete…like the Atlantic Wall. If it had been more complete in 1944, it would have given the Allies a much harder time. It’s amazing what they built in only a few years, and you can’t outflank an unbroken fortification. As it is, landing in Normandy was as close as they could get to “outflanking” it, since it was relatively weakly defended, since it was considered a poor choice to invade…as it was, in terms of geography. If they had realized how poor it was, with the bocage, etc, they never would have dared to try it.
7. By the summer of 1944, the Nazis had laid more than 5 million mines along the Atlantic Wall. German gun crews spent months pre-sighting anticipated landing areas and constantly rehearsed pouring artillery, mortar and machine-gun fire onto these designated killing zones.
Is there a map of all the fortifications and “pre-sighted landing areas?” It would be interesting to see what choices/assumptions they made.
This article claims 17M cubic meters of concrete. The one that has the Danish pictures (https://militaryhistorynow.com/2015/04/27/all-along-the-watchtower-danish-photographer-captures-hitlers-atlantic-wall/) claims 17M cubic feet. That’s a pretty big difference. So which is correct?
It’s meters. Thanks for flagging that for us.
Lets hope that humanity learned its leasons: All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing and that war is the worst solution to any problem, including post ww1 German econmy problem which led to the rise of mad men into power and druged the world into a nightmare.
The success Germany had initially invading Russia was because Russia was preparing their own invasion, meaning their borders had less focus. Likely it was inevitable and definitely more complex than good vs bad.
Today is D-Day (anniversary) +1 in 2022, and every year I make more and more of an effort to talk about it with people younger than me (I am 42, both my grandfathers saw serious action – my mothers dad, incredibly, was actually one of the men in the group that made the FIRST landing at Hiroshima after the detonation. THE VERY FIRST LANDING CRAFT. *) Because we must never forget, is the shortest and most concise way I can express it, but I was very moved, very impressed, to the point of staring at The screen in a sort of stunned silence for a few minutes, wracking my brain attempting to recall any other instance, to remember if somewhere amongst the vast numbers of WWII era books I ever recalled reading, if I think I’ve ever seen a passage comparable to what you wrote there. Truly, TRULY, masterful short paragraph that conveys basically all of the Incredibly important information, along with the conclusions We must draw from all of the history, in such an incredibly concise and effective manner, it’s just wonderful. The fact that I have struggled so hard to convey my feelings and immense appreciation, Resulting in a much lengthier comment probably Represents what I’m trying to say better than any words I have or could have chosen, lol. Thank you, because I am going to paraphrase what you said many many times in the future now, as it will be a terribly effective way for me to make the powerful points to Younger people without boring and overloading them. My nieces and nephews Will be getting emails with a link to your comment. Thank you for your invaluable words!!!!
“Speer’s previous projects included the Autobahn highway system in Germany as well as the Siegfried Line along the Franco-German border.”
This is incorrect – Albert Speer had nothing to do with either of these engineering projects. The man actually responsible for this work was Fritz Todt. It is of course he that the “Organization Todt”, so involved in building the Atlantic Wall, is named after.
Albert Speer did not take over responsibility for the Organization Todt until after the death of Fritz Todt, in 1942. Obviously, both the Autobahn system and the West Wall had been constructed long before Albert Speer took over the organization.
“Speer’s previous projects included the Autobahn highway system in Germany as well as the Siegfried Line along the Franco-German border.”
Both of these projects were completed prior to the beginning of the 2nd WW by the Organization Todt – while Speer was still a little known Architect with NO involvement with the OT. Rather, he was employed as the General Building Inspector of the Reich Capital.
Speer didn’t become the head of the OT until after Fritz Todt died in 1942!
Such an error should not have gotten past the editor/s.