Vestige – Due to erosion gnawing at the coast, the bunkers of the Atlantic Wall, built during World War II, will certainly all disappear one day.
It has fallen from about twenty meters, ending up on the beach. During this winter, at Cap Ferret (Gironde), a bunker from the Atlantic Wall, built by Nazi Germany during World War II, fell from the dune on which it had been built. The several-ton concrete structure joined other fallen structures in its descent.
“We saw this blockhouse emerge from the dune in 2014,” says Bruno Castelle, research director at CNRS, at the Epoc Unit (Environments and Oceanic and Continental Palaeoenvironments) at the University of Bordeaux. “We knew it would eventually fall. For us, these bunkers have become markers of coastal erosion, allowing us to identify the most affected areas of the coast.”
“Since 1944, documents attest to erosion-related problems”
“The Atlantic Wall, which is rather linear and coastal, is disappearing more and more,” says Alain Chazette, former geometer, author, and specialist on the subject. “In 1944, the bunkers were at the top of the dune, about 100 meters behind the beach. Today, many are in the water. Not everywhere, of course, because erosion varies depending on the locations.”
The Atlantic Wall studies office for Nouvelle-Aquitaine (Bemalpa) estimates that “20% of the bunkers have fallen into the sea since the end of the war.” “Erosion phenomena have existed since the creation of the Atlantic Wall,” explains David, one of the res(…)
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World War II: The Atlantic Wall, the story of “an infernal machine that breaks humans”
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