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Posted on 12/28/2003 5:40:52 AM PST by snippy_about_it
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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 "'Hitler built a fortress around Europe - but he forgot to put a roof on it'. " ~ Franklin D Roosevelt The attack on the Soviet Union on June 22nd 1941 and the unexpectedly strong resistance put up by the Red Army forced the German High Command to transfer increasing numbers of troops away from the Western front, considerably weakening it in the process. When the United States entered the war in December 1941, fears of an Anglo-American landing intensified, and in the same month, Hitler reinforced his system of defence by ordering the construction of the Atlantic Wall. This gigantic project, entrusted to the Todt Organization, was begun in 1942 but had still not been completed by 1944, despite the efforts of Field-Marshal Rommel, who had been made responsible for the entire sector between the Netherlands and the Loire at the end of 1943.  The project involved building 15,000 structures along the entire coast of the North Sea, the English Channel and the Atlantic. This required the labour of 450,000 workers (both voluntary and impressed) and the use of 11 million tonnes of concrete and 1 million tonnes of steel for the reinforcing rods. Despite the image that German propaganda sought to project, the “Wall” was not a continuous obstacle. It could basically be said to be composed of four types of structure: the fortresses, the coastal batteries, the close beach defences and the obstacles erected either on the beaches themselves or inland. Many remains of the Atlantic Wall – more or less well-preserved – can still be seen today along the coast of Normandy.  More than 700,000 men were massed behind the “Wall”. In Lower Normandy, the German Army had the equivalent of between seven and eight divisions. The fortresses Ever since the Anglo-Canadian raid on Dieppe in August 1942, the Germans had been convinced that the Allies would try to capture a port during their next landing attempt, in order to ensure the swift arrival of the men, equipment and supplies they would need. Accordingly, all the major ports along Europe’s western coastline were turned into veritable fortresses (Festungen), bristling with large-calibre guns intended to repulse any invasion fleet. The Seine bay sector was thus framed by the two fortresses of Cherbourg and Le Havre.  The Cherbourg Fortress, commanded by General Karl von Schlieben, extended along a 30-kilometre stretch of sea front on either side of the city, from Jardeheu in the west to Cape Levi in the east. There were no fewer than a dozen heavy batteries here, with a total of more than forty guns of a calibre ranging from 105 to 240 mm. The city and port were dotted with numerous blockhouses, antitank walls and anti-aircraft artillery positions.  Coastal artillery batteries Between the fortresses, the Germans constructed coastal artillery batteries, under the control of either the army or the navy. Spaced several kilometres apart, they were designed to fire out to sea and ward off any invasion fleet. They were equipped with guns (usually with a calibre of betweetn 100 and 155 mm) which were generally grouped in fours or, more rarely, in sixes.  In all, there were more than twenty main batteries along the coasts of the Seine Bay between Le Havre and Cherbourg. Each of these was protected by a defensive perimeter ringed with minefields and a network of barbed wire, with machine-gun, mortar and anti-aircraft gun positions, connected by trenches.  Originally placed in open concrete pits, the guns proved vulnerable to Allied aerial bombardments, which had considerably increased in frequency since 1943. In order to protect them, Rommel ordered them to be placed in thick concrete casemates. This operation was far from complete by the spring of 1944, and as a precaution, some guns were discreetly removed from their emplacements and hidden inland.  On D-Day, the German coastal batteries offered only feeble resistance to the Allied ships, which overcame them without too much difficulty. Close Beach Defences The Widerstandnesten (“nests of resistance”) located within the immediate vicinity of the shore, on cliffs, dunes or sea walls, were lighter structures than the coastal batteries. They were intended to provide close defence of the beaches against assault troops.  They generally comprised one or two casemates housing medium-calibre guns (50, 75 or 88mm), positioned so as to rake the shore, Tobruks (concrete pits embedded in the ground and fitted with a circular lid where an infantryman could be posted) and mortar, machine-gun and anti-aircraft-gun positions, all connected by a network of trenches.  By the spring of 1944, there were no fewer than 200 Widerstandnesten along the coasts of the Seine Bay. There were, for example around fifteen along the six-kilometre stretch of beach between Vierville and Colleville (future Omaha Beach sector).  These close defences caused far more losses among Allied troops on June 6th 1944 than the coastal batteries. Beach and inland defences In December 1943, Field-Marshal Erwin Rommel was ordered by Hitler to inspect the Atlantic Wall. In January 1944, he was placed in command of Army Group B, responsible for defending the northeastern coasts of Europe, from the Loire to the Netherlands, i.e. the sector most directly under threat from an Allied invasion. In Rommel’s opinion, the decisive battle would take place on the beaches, so with his customary zeal, he made every effort to plug the gaps he had identified in the Atlantic Wall and gave a fresh impetus to its construction. He ordered the artillery batteries to be protected by casemates, increased the number of close coastal defences and spiked the beaches with obstacles designed to stop any advancing assault barges and blow them up. The dunes were crammed with mines, while defences were also established inland, to counter any attack from the rear by airborne troops.  Minefields A fervent believer in the massive use of mines as part of his defensive system, Rommel had the shores along the Channel and the North Sea crammed with them. By June 1944, between five and six million of them had been buried in the dunes, as well as inland, out of a planned twenty million.  The most common variety, the Teller mine, weighed 9 kilos and contained 5 kilos of TNT. It was triggered when a pressure of approximately 150 kilos was exerted on the detonator, which was located in the centre of the lid. The resulting explosion could destroy a wheeled vehicle or smash the tracks of a tank and immobilize it.  Teller mines, like the one we can see here, fixed to the top of a stake, were also used on beach obstacles, to destroy incoming Allied landing barges. After the war, it took years of work, carried out in particularly hazardous conditions by french volunteers and German prisoners of war, to rid the coast of these deadly weapons. Beach obstacles Field-Marshal Rommel’s strategy consisted in blocking the Allied landing forces on the beaches. In order to achieve this, he decided to cram the coast with vast numbers of obstacles designed to hamper the approach of the assault barges. His fertile imagination dreamed up a whole assortment of devilish traps against which the barges would crash, become impaled, be torn apart or explode, including “Czech hedgehogs”, “nutcrackers”, “Belgian gates” and "tetrahedra”.  The beach exits were also blocked by trenches and antitank walls or “dragon’s teeth”. These obstacles proved more or less effective in the different sectors. As they had been positioned by the Germans to stave off an attack at high tide, the Allies chose to attack at half tide, and this enabled them to escape some of the dangers. However, on certain beaches, such as Omaha and Juno, they were unable to avoid them and consequently sustained heavy losses.  Defence against airborne troops Imagining - not without reason - that the Allied landings would be accompanied by the dropping of airborne troops, Rommel took a series of measures to try and counter this possibility. In order to prevent gliders from landing, he had large stakes planted in the fields - the famous Rommel’s asparagus.These stakes were sometimes linked together by strands of barbed wire nailed to their tops.  In the early months of 1944, large numbers of villagers were requisitioned to help the German troops fell trees, strip them of their branches and plant the famous “Rommel’s Asparagus” – jobs they often performed as slowly as possible, never hesitating to sabotage their work by planting the posts too shallowly in the ground.  He also gave orders for several low-lying inland areas to be flooded, such as the Aure valley and above all the Dives marshes, east of the Orne, and the Douve and Merderet marshes in the Cotentin Peninsula. In the night of June 5th-6th, a number of British and American parachutists did indeed drown in these traps, tangled up in their harnesses and weighed down by their equipment. The German army in Normandy In November 1943, as the prospect of an Allied landing became increasingly likely, Hitler decided to strengthen the German forces stationed in the West. Accordingly, the number of divisions in France, Belgium and the Netherlands was increased from around thirty in 1942 to nearly sixty by the spring of 1944. Most of them were massed behind the coastline extending from Brittany to the Pas-de-Calais and were placed under the orders of Field-Marshal Rommel, who commanded Army Group B.  The 21st Panzer Division was the only armoured unit to be stationed near the coast. Unlike most of the general officers, Rommel certainly did not exclude the possibility of an assault on the coast of Lower Normandy, where he stationed the 91st, 243rd, 352nd, 709th, 711th and 716th infantry divisions, together with the 6th Parachute Regiment, the 30th Mobile Brigade and the Buniatchenko Russian Brigade. More or less confident about the worth of these troops, and realizing that he was almost totally lacking in aviation, Rommel wanted to be sure that he could rapidly call on armoured divisions to repulse the invasion, as he was convinced that the ultimate outcome of the battle would be decided in the first few hours.   The Atlantic Wall was a system of fortifications built by Nazi Germany which extended along the Atlantic coast of Western Europe, from Norway to the Spanish border. Not a wall in the true sense of the word, the Atlantic Wall was rather a series of German batteries built at strategic locations which were intended to thwart any potential amphibious invasions by destroying them while still at sea and to allow Germany to defend the coast of Europe with as few men as possible. The German fortifications at Longues-sur-Mer are a classic example of the pattern that was used for the Atlantic Wall. Longues-sur-Mer In general, the batteries which made up the Atlantic Wall followed a particular pattern. Along the shoreline a large command post or control bunker was built for the purposes of observation along the beach. At Longues-sur-Mer, the control bunker had two levels -- an upper observation deck and a lower level which housed the map room, radio room, officers' room, and range-finder room. The range finder was used to calculate the distances from the guns to the enemy targets and messages from the officers in the control bunker were relayed to the soldiers in the casemates by field telephone.  Four casemates were built inland, behind the control bunker; in the case of Longues-sur-Mer, the casemates were placed 300 meters behind the control bunker. Each casemate was 15m long, 10m wide, and 6m high; the walls were 6'6" thick and incorporated 600 cubic meters of concrete and four tons of steel reinforcement. Each casement also housed a large gun. The types and sizes of these guns varied from location to location, but at Longues, the guns were 152-mm German naval guns with a barrel 8m long, a firing range of approximately 13 miles, a firing rate of six 45kg. shells per minute, and a weight of 20 tons each.  The Atlantic Wall was considered to be nearly impenetrable by Hitler, since his fortifications were located on the tops of cliffs in practically impregnable locations. However, many factors contributed to their inability to successfully defend the European coastline. The Wall was never actually completed and construction at some of the bunkers was rather hasty. Often the personnel assigned to the the bunkers was second-rate, as Germany was fighting in the east as well as the west. It was not unusual to find gunners who were over the age of 40.  The battery at Longues-sur-Mer was defeated in June 1944 through a combined effort of both the British and the french. It has been preserved to this day as a Memorial of the war and the men who fought. The craters from the shelling, which at the time of the attack were 7m deep and 20m across, have never been filled and also serve as a testament to the violence and the magnitude of the conflict.  The batteries at Ouistreham, known as "Le Grand Bunker," and at Merville, are also examples of Atlantic Wall Fortifications which can found in Normandy today, though they are a little off of the typical tourist path.  Le Grande Bunker  Merville      |
The decision was Rundstedt's, and the Field Marshal remained torn between his two-year commitment to destroying the invasion on the coast and the new opportunity to attempt something more decisive. Once again a parallel might be drawn with Gettysburg, this time from the German perspective. Western Europe was no longer a secondary theater. Rommel, Geyr, Rundstedt, all by now agreed that events on the French coast would determine the fate of the German people. Rommel sought Hitler's intervention. The Fuhrer was reluctant to decide, particularly since a decision in Rommel's favor meant the corresponding necessity of relieving Rundstedt. Geyr did not have Rommel's access to the supreme commander but his patron, Heinz Guderian, was still in good odor at the Fuhrerhauptquartier. As the jockeying intensified, Rundstedt found himself in the position of a poker player who antes in every hand but fails to bet any: his stack of military/political chips was steadily diminishing.
The initial result was something the German army had rejected in principle since the days of Frederick the Great, but regularly employed in practice: a compromise. In February Rommel's Army Group B had been given the right to command any formations of Panzer Group West in its operational area as part of its preparation for the invasion. Rommel also received the right to recommend sector assignments and command appointments for the mobile formations directly to Rundstedt. This structure was flexible, and arguably as sensible a solution as was, possible given the limited strength of the panzer reserves. To work, however, it required levels of harmony significantly absent at the upper levels of High Command West.
The continued and growing differences of opinion among the senior officers on the spot led Hitler to clarify the command structure. He began in April by stating his decision to determine the precise time when all or part of the mobile formations should be assigned to Army Group B. Until that point High Command West retained full control of those divisions. A month later the Fuhrer became even more specific. He created a new Army Group headquarters under Rundstedt to control southern France, and assigned it three panzer divisions: 9th, 11th, and 2nd SS. Rommel's Army Group B also received three panzer divisions: the 2nd, 21st, and 116th. The mobile units were the cream of the crop: 1st and 12th SS Panzer, 17th SS Panzer Grenadier, and the army's Panzer Lehr. They remained under control of Panzer Group West - but not exactly under Rundstedt's command. Instead the group was designated part of the Wehrmacht High Command reserve, which in practice placed it under Hitler's direct control.
This reorganization invites dismissal as no more than another example of Hitler's high-test meddling in matters outside his competence. The new command structure, however, also closely reflected Rundstedt's long-held conception of a two-tiered mobile reserve, one to be employed tactically and the other operationally. The Field Marshal's well known sarcastic comment that Hitler's decision left him only the authority to move the sentries in his headquarters is also at best a half-truth. Rundstedt had forgotten a fundamental military axiom: the first duty of a commander was to command. War abhors vacuums, and Adolf Hitler filled that created by Gerd von Rundstedt.
Hitler's concept was in good part vitiated by the limited forces available to implement it. Assigning three mechanized divisions to what could only be the secondary theater of southern France left seven available for the decisive sector. As a central reserve or posted on the beaches they represented a force strong enough to shape, if not decide, the coming battle - not a queen, but perhaps a pair of knights. Hitler's distribution, resembling an arithmetic lesson rather than a strategic calculation, not only created the obvious possibility of being too weak everywhere, but it generated also a subtler risk of making everyone just strong enough to generate a false sense of security. It also encouraged continued focussing on acquiring control of one or two divisions more instead or working and maximizing resources in hand.
Initially and inadvertently, Rundstedt's refusal to decide what to do with his tanks had had just the latter result. Rommel did not spend all of his time playing headquarters politics. Instead he applied the energy that had made him famous into strengthening and vitalizing the Atlantic Wall. He estimated that no fewer than fifty million mines would be needed to establish a viable belt around the coast! Such an astronomical number was of course unattainable. Nevertheless between October 1943 and May 1944 the number of antitank and antipersonnel mines had risen from two million to six and a half million. These included shells converted to mines and similar improvisations: the total was no less impressive. Rommel also oversaw the introduction of underwater obstacles off the most likely landing sites. These ranged from angled wooden stakes to steel Belgian antitank barriers transplanted from their original sites on the German border. By mid-May over 500,000 of these passive defenses had been laid, many of them with mines attached. Behind the coast the Field Marshal planted "Rommel asparagus," pointed stakes driven into the ground on terrain deemed suitable for paratroops or glider landings.
Rommel also brought new vigor to the construction and renovation of manned defenses. He was shocked to find that many of the gun positions and machine-gun emplacements were open, offering no significant protection from air strikes or naval gunfire. Engineers and workers from the Organization Todt began the laborious task of bringing as many heavy weapons as possible under bomb-proof protection. Camouflage and camouflage discipline improved sharply. Local commanders assisted by assigning their troops to the construction efforts which included establishing dummy positions in hopes of deceiving the by-now ubiquitous Allied reconnaissance aircraft.
On paper and in reality the results were impressive. In 1944 the Germans laid over 4 million land mines - well over double the number that had been put in place since 1940. Between January and May, 1944, over 5,000 new permanent fortifications were erected - no small number even though the figures included the Mediterranean coast as well. In the Pas de Calais sector, 93 of 132 heavy guns had been put under concrete, as were 27 of the 47 heavy guns in Normandy.
That last figure suggested Rommel's ultimate quandary. Fixed defenses depended for their effectiveness on an enemy obliging enough to attack them. German focus on Normandy, Brittany, and the Pas de Calais hardly required General Staff training. A schoolboy with a Mercator map and a compass could expect to reach a similar conclusion. Until 1944, however, the exact invasion sites mattered relatively less. Both static and mobile defenses were so thin everywhere that believing in victory was like a second marriage: the triumph of hope over common sense. Now deciding where to pour the concrete, lay the mines, and emplace the guns was perceived as being of decisive importance no matter where one stood on the question of deploying the panzers. The respective programs were by now not competitive. The material required for static defenses was of no use in mobile operations. Rommel had been unable to squeeze enough trucks and bicycles from the army's drained supply system to give most of the coastal formations anything but token mobile capacities. The training time sacrificed by field troops to working on the defenses seemed a correspondingly reasonable exchange. Rundstedt, Geyr, Rommel and their staffs, moreover, were in agreement that the more damage that could be done to the Allied landing in its initial stages, the better would be the subsequent prospects of High Command West.
Submitted for your approval, an epic venture into the dark recesses of megalomania, millions of tons of concrete and steal prove inadequate in walling off. . . .The Twilight Zone. . . .
Defense against Hitler's subconscious futile
Entrance to the Atlantic Wall Museum, in the rear
of the Casemate 1. The Coca-Cola vending
machine next to the entrance (bottom right) gives
an idea of scale.
The opening - or embrasure - at the front of the
casemate, where a 380mm (15") gun was situated.
The metal stepped frontage to the roof (a modern
replacement, the original having been scrapped)
was designed to deflect outwards blast and
shrapnel from incoming shells. On casemates at
other batteries it was part of the concrete
structure, and became name as the "Todt Front."
German radar systems of the Atlantic Wall
Mammut
Wassermann
Freya
Jagdschlosz
Würzburg Riese
Map of K5 Batteries position
Front view of the domed bunker for the K5 gun
A domed bunker of Battery E712, with soil banked against it. The Arched form of the bunker's roof was meant to deflect striking shells of the side.
A gun of battery E712 is rolling out of the domed bunker. The loaded gun is immediately turned to its firing position.
Forty, George. Fortress Europe: Hitler's Atlantic Wall.
Hersham, UK: Ian Allan Publishing, 2002
Howard Dean expressed his clear intent to preserve Hitler's right to an impartial jury trial.
Thereupon executing his whimsical salute, a melange of Seig Heil and Strangelove much adored by the Howardjungen:
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