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History written in concrete

Today, 63 years after the end of World War II, the remains of the Nazis' Atlantic Wall are there for all to see, although few observers realise the extent of what they are seeing. No complete inventory has ever been done, but specialists estimate that some 6,000 pillboxes and blockhouses still dot Europe's coastline.

Constructed between 1942 and 1944, the Wall stretches from Finland and Norway, southwest through Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, the Channel Islands, down into France and Spain. Its purpose was to halt any Allied invasion by stopping it at beach level. The Allies suffered heavy losses in the Normandy landing partly because of these defenses. They serve no purpose today other than as impromptu pit stops for beachcombers.

The man who organised this colossal system, Fritz Todt, would not be pleased. Todt was a member of Adolf Hitler's inner circle, having risen from Storm Trooper to super-contractor in the early 1930s. He built the German autobahn highway network and drew up plans to extend it through France into Spain following the war.

The Todt Organization, as his semi-autonomous group was named, had a grand plan for 15,000 coastal bunkers with 600 shapes and sizes to be dug into the coastline at the most vulnerable invasion points. But the Allied landing in 1944 interrupted construction. Public opinion is divided over whether to raze or preserve these remnants of Europe's worst nightmare. A few hundred have been destroyed by various municipalities, mainly to make room for parking lots or shopping malls.

The current debate over what to do with the bunkers revolves around the need to deal with unsettling memories.

The European Commission in Brussels was moved a couple of years ago to support conservation, putting up 100,000 to finance an Atlantic Wall virtual museum that has been travelling around Europe. The lead organisers, based at the architecture department of Milan's Politecnico University, are looking for future destinations.

The main designer of the museum, Gennaro Postiglione, a professor at the architecture school, believes the bunkers have been left abandoned until now because they were "too terrifying. People opted for virtual deletion from their memory." But he feels strongly that it is healthier to face the past. Others have joined the effort to conserve the structures. Sébastien Devière, of Binche, Belgium, works in the construction field and devotes most of his free time to defending the Atlantic Wall. "It is regrettable that these bunkers are considered by some to be undesirable, as if they were blots on the landscape," he said. "In fact they are part of 20th century military heritage. Others have learned to live with them, citing the prohibitive cost of dismantling. The largest structures, remants of six German submarine-repair bases in France, have reinforced concrete walls up to 15 feet thick stretching as long as two football fields. In Bordeaux, a blackened concrete U-boat base stands incongruously in view of a Toys "R" Us store and a popular supermarket. One Bordeaux artist proposed that the structure be concealed behind climbing vines. "Blowing it up would be impractical — it would take half of Bordeaux with it," he said. The city fathers rejected his proposal on the grounds that his plan was insufficiently ambitious.

Postiglione's associate in the Wall project, the Paris-based architect Giulio Podavani, supports the conservation of the bunkers for professional reasons, but worries that we talk too much about how memories will teach us to avoid repeating history. "In fact," he says, "humanity has never learned from its past." Perhaps with that in mind, the French Navy has an option to reactivate Bordeaux's submarine base in case of need.

© IHT