Military History
Dispatches: Backgrounders in Canadian Military
History
FORTRESS EUROPE
German Coastal Defences and the Canadian Role in Liberating the
Channel Ports
Dr. Serge Durflinger and Bill McAndrew
The Atlantic Wall
In the summer of 1940 Britain faced a hostile coast from the Arctic
Circle to the Spanish border. It appeared inevitable that Germany would
use its control of the French Channel ports of Boulogne, Calais,
and Dunkirk to invade Britain. That autumn, however, the Royal Air Force
defeated the German air force in the crucial battle for air supremacy
over the British Isles. Consequently, Adolf Hitler delayed and then
shelved plans for the invasion.
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.
![Map of Fortress of Eurpoe](/web/20061029111025im_/http://www.warmuseum.ca/cwm/disp/images/PDF_Map.jpg)
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.
First Canadian Army captures the Channel Ports
The Allies raced rapidly through France and Belgium. With the Germans
demoralized and apparently beaten, the end of the war seemed at hand.
But Allied commanders argued over their options: should they move to
open the approaches to the great port of Antwerp or advance on the Ruhr
valley, Germany's industrial heartland? Serious resupply problems
aggravated the situation and further slowed the advance. The German
defenders recovered their balance, maintained their grip on Holland,
and reinforced their Atlantic Wall garrisons in the Pas de Calais.
General H.D.G. Crerar, First Canadian Army commander, had two army
corps under his command: I British and II Canadian. Crerar ordered the
British to open the port of Le Havre, and the Canadians to clear the
Channel coast as far as Holland. The Germans withdrew most of their
nearly surrounded forces and formed a new defensive line north of
Antwerp. Some Atlantic Wall garrisons stayed behind, however, obeying
Hitler's order that Dunkirk, Boulogne, and Le Havre be defended to the
last man. (Hitler later added Calais to the list.) All lay directly in
the path of First Canadian Army.
Allied planners believed these Channel ports to be important for
resupplying the Allied armies in their drive towards Germany. On
September 9, General Crerar sent the following message to his corps
commanders: "A speedy and victorious conclusion of the war now depends,
fundamentally, upon the capture by First Cdn Army of the Channel ports
which have now become so essential."
The heavy gun positions in the Channel ports were carefully sited
for mutual support and encased in steel and concrete bunkers. Built on
high cliffs and pointed to seaward (few could fire inland), they were
virtually impregnable to a frontal assault. But they also suffered from
some important weaknesses. Because German commanders did not seriously
fortify the land approaches to their positions until the Normandy front
collapsed, the usual array of anti-tank ditches, minefields, and barbed
wire, while formidable, was incomplete. The garrisons, moreover,
included few battle-hardened troops. One of their own commanders
described them as "fortress troops, sailors, home guards, harbour
technicians and stragglers" of dubious fighting quality. Cut off behind
enemy lines, their morale was poor; faced with death or capture, most
opted unhesitatingly for the latter.
Because such weaknesses were not immediately evident, British and
Canadian troops approached the fortresses warily. British troops under
Canadian command first captured Le Havre on September 12 after
devastating air, naval, and artillery attacks. On the 17th, it was
Boulogne's turn. The objective of Major-General Daniel Spry's 3rd
Canadian Infantry Division was to "capture Boulogne and destroy its
garrison", which numbered nearly 10,000 men. Prior to the assault,
Canadian commanders concluded Boulogne would be a tough nut to crack and
that the objective would have to be 'softened up' first. After waves of
heavy and medium bombers saturated the defences, massive artillery
barrages from 328 British and Canadian guns rained thousands of shells
on the target. Flail tanks (tanks mounting a drum on the front fitted
with coils of chain) then pounded paths through minefields for armoured
infantry carriers and other tanks carrying flame throwers and
bunker-busting explosive charges. This enabled the infantry to attack
the defensive positions. Nevertheless, the German bunkers were so well
constructed that one Canadian officer remarked the armour-piercing
shells of the Canadians' Sherman tanks "used to bounce off the
installations like peas on a tin roof."
![Private F.J. Coakley of the North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment sits on one of the guns near Boulogne that made up Hitler's Atlantic Wall. - NAC_PA 131243](/web/20061029111025im_/http://www.warmuseum.ca/cwm/disp/images/PDF_NAC_PA_131243.jpg)
Though Spry's division lacked naval gunfire support, he did have an
unusual substitute. Two 14-inch and two 15-inch British guns firing
from Dover shelled German coastal positions in the Calais-Cap Gris Nez
area up the coast from Boulogne to prevent the massive 16-inch guns
there from disrupting the Canadian attack. Boulogne's German commander
later remarked that he knew "when the attack did come it would be
thoroughly prepared to the last weapon, and that the Canadians would
attempt to take the port with as few casualties as possible." He was
correct in more ways than one, for as the attack neared, the Canadians
and Germans, concerned about civilian casualties, negotiated an
agreement to evacuate 8000 residents from the city. Despite massive
artillery and bomber support (nearly 800 aircraft dropping 3200 tons of
bombs on September 17), few of the German defensive installations were
seriously damaged. It still took infantry and tanks six days to secure
the fortress-port. The Canadians lost 634 killed, wounded and missing;
they captured over 9500 Germans.
Boulogne's port facilities had been severely damaged and, in any
event, could not be used effectively until the Allies reduced the nearby
batteries at Cap Gris Nez and Calais. These were equally formidable. A
combination of natural and constructed defences surrounded Calais, the
location of no less than seven heavy coastal batteries. A somewhat
lacklustre garrison of over 7500 men defended the flooded landscape
dotted with concrete bunkers linked by barbed wire and minefields and
covered by artillery and anti-tank guns. The 3rd Division watched as
hundreds of bombers dropped their loads for three successive days prior
to the assault, which began on September 25. Artillery fire drenched
each German bastion in turn to allow flame-throwing tanks to get close
enough to perform their grisly tasks. This kind of pressure ground down
the morale of the defenders, causing some to surrender after only token
resistance. On October 1 the fight for Calais and its great guns ended.
The Canadians suffered about 300 casualties and took 7500 prisoners. As
at Boulogne, the port installations in Calais, so needed to resupply the
Allied armies, were badly damaged.
The other major German Atlantic Wall positions in the Pas de Calais
were the colossal gun positions at Cap Gris Nez. These consisted of
three main batteries, including one, Battery Todt, whose four 380 mm
(15-inch) guns had intermittently shelled Dover since 1940. The
Canadians followed the same successful plan of attack as used at
Boulogne and Calais: massive aerial bombardment and supporting artillery
fire. The 3rd Division's 9 Brigade made the assault at dawn on September
29. Flail and bunker-busting "Petard" tanks provided support. "When our
troops moved up to engage the batteries on the coast", an officer of the
1st Hussars (6th Canadian Armoured Regiment) recalled, "they found that
the Hun was prepared to snipe at our tanks with anything up to 360 mm
calibre guns. The shells from those became known as 'freight trains'
mainly because they whooshed by with a terrifying noise. It sort of
shook us to see what they could do..."
The War Diary of the Ontario-based Highland Light Infantry (HLI)
of Canada for September 29 states: "The artillery opened up and laid
down a terrific barrage... which was very effective in keeping the
enemy's heads down. As soon as our troops got into the enemy positions
the white flags started popping up... By 1030 all four big guns had been
taken by the HLI, and
the North Nova Scotia Highlanders reported they had cleared up the four
on their front... The battalion tonight is in high spirits after its
successful effort today. Now the people of Dover can relax... knowing
that the cross-channel guns are silenced." The costs were relatively
light: eight killed and 34 wounded. Over 1600 Germans surrendered.
First Canadian Army demonstrated a high degree of skill and
professionalism in capturing some of the most sophisticated defensive
positions in Europe and in overcoming the impressive military
engineering feat that was the Atlantic Wall.
Blockhaus: Fortress Europe in Photographs
Dr. Laura Brandon
Peter Mackertich is at heart an architectural photographer. What he
responds to is the built environment, a world of buildings in which he
sees a beauty in structures that once represented, and harboured, the
ugly. This interest has perhaps manifested itself in the fact that he
converted a former abattoir into his current family home and studio.
Like his renovated slaughterhouse dwelling, the derelict war-time
buildings on view in his photographs also once represented the
ultimately terrifying. The buildings reveal themselves now as structures
of beauty, becoming one with a land they once held in subjugation.
Mackertich's large-format black and white photographs are the result
of several recent years of exploring many of the abandoned German
bunkers in France. These massive concrete structures are the legacy of
an attempt to hold Europe captive. For the most part pale shadows of
their former selves, these imposing grey buildings survive as shells.
Their time has passed. Instead, their crumbling edifices are
approachable, and can be examined in something of a detached manner.
Like the regime that built them, they are defeated, and, as discarded
buildings have lost much, but not all, of their potent fear-inspiring
power.
With one meaning gone, Mackertich reveals another. We can see the
links these buildings have to the history of western architecture, and
to the modern movement that spawned much of the architecture we live in
and work in today. Mackertich's images serve to remind us that the
powerfully expressive, monumental and imperious architecture of the
Third Reich had not only a Nazi past, but a past that spanned two
centuries, was widely influential, and endured far longer than that of
the regime Mackertich's subjects represent. In this time-line, defeat,
as represented in his photographs of abandoned and decaying structures,
is only one kind of defeat. The modern architectural style was not
defeated, but survived, released from the meaning it once had, to
survive in large part as the acceptable institutional architecture of
today. Mackertich's conversion of an abattoir into his own home, and
his photographs of war-time structures, stand as symbols for an ongoing
historical and cultural process that allows the meaning of all buildings
to change over time.
Mackertich, who was born shortly after the end of the war, has taught
photography, and practised as a commercial photographer in England. In
1976 he published a book on industrial decorative architecture entitled
Facade. Six years later the British Architectural Journal nominated him
'Photographer of the Year'. His collaboration with artists on a number
of projects has perhaps contributed to the almost painterly quality of
the photography in this exhibition. His work shows an interest not only
in the architectural subject matter, but in its presentation. The
surrounding vegetation, the spaces that are not architecture, are as
important in the image as the buildings themselves.
Further reading:
Very little has been written about First Canadian Army's
liberation of the Channel ports. Some of the most useful sources
are:
- C.P. Stacey, The Victory Campaign, Queen's Printer, Ottawa,
1966.
- Terry Copp and Robert Vogel, Maple Leaf Route: Antwerp,
Alma, Ontario, 1984.
- Battlefield Interviews: The Channel Ports, September 1944,
,Canadian Military History, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1994.
On the Atlantic Wall, consult:
- Keith Mallory and Arvid Ottar, The Architecture of War,
Pantheon Books, New York, 1973.
- Colin Partridge, Hitler's Atlantic Wall, D.I Publications,
Guernsey, 1976.