vestige – Due to erosion eating away at the coast, the bunkers of the Atlantic Wall, built during the Second World War, will certainly all disappear one day
He fell about twenty meters, ending up on the beach. During this winter, at Cap Ferret (Gironde), an Atlantic Wall bunker, built by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, fell from the dune on which it had been built. The building, made of several tons of concrete, joined in its fall other structures that had already fallen in the past.
“We saw this blockhouse emerge from the dune in 2014,” says Bruno Castelle, research director at CNRS, at the Epoc Unit (Oceanic and Continental Environments and Paleoenvironments) at the University of Bordeaux. We knew he would eventually fall. For us, these bunkers have become markers of coastal erosion, they allow us to identify the most affected sectors of the coast. »
« Dès 1944, des documents attestent de problèmes liés à l’érosion »
“The Atlantic Wall, which is rather linear and coastal, is disappearing more and more,” indicates Alain Chazette, former surveyor, author, and specialist on the subject. In 1944, the bunkers were at the top of the dune, 100 meters back from the beach. Today, many are in the water. Not everywhere, obviously, because erosion is different depending on the place.”
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The Atlantic Wall design office for New Aquitaine (Bemalpa) estimates that “20% of 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 re(…)
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Second World War: The Atlantic Wall, the story of “an infernal machine that breaks humans”
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