The Atlantic Wall Was A Propaganda Tool

The Atlantic Wall was subject of many an article and the Todt Organisation was endowed with a highly active propaganda service which provided a multitude of technical details on sheets handed out to journalists. Here is an example of an article published in the magazine "L'Illiustration" in May 1943.

......................................................​

"The wall is even more extraordinary than we ever imagined. The audacity of its conception and the quantity of work engaged in its execution are barely believable. The only comparison to be found in history is the great wall erected to fight the Mongol invasions in the North of China, along a border of some 3,000 km. European coastal protection stretches from the North Cape to the Pyrenean Mountains. Across the 2,700 km of our coastline, there is no spot left unprepared to retaliate against a powerful attack. Immediately after the armistice, the Todt Organisation began fortification of coastal zones along the Channel and the installation of long range batteries firing occasionally towards Dover. It then set to the construction of submarine bases. In February 1942, inspired by experience from the Westwall (or Siegfried line) construction, the Fuhrer ordered the edification of the Atlantic rampart. The former, covering an 850 km front and including some 22,000 concrete bunkers, had been rapidly built in advantageous peacetime circumstances, whereas the Atlantik wall was to be built in the midst of the war, despite enemy airborne attacks and the depletion of efficient transport ...

A Propaganda poster in Dutch praising the strength of the Atlantic Wall. The coastal fortification is presented on this poster as a continuous and impenetrable line. The very concise text simply announces that 1943 will not be like 1918 the year on which the Second Reich was forced to sign armistice.​

​

Six thousand permanent elements and five thousand mobile elements, very high calibre guns fixed onto railway lines and rapid-fire anti-tank guns are all ready for action. Hundreds of thousands of labourers of various nationalities have been employed. Germans provided the teams' framework and represented 10% of the total labour force. As and when the young workers were called to arms, veterans stepped in to replace them. Team leaders commanded from 50 to 200 non-German labourers. The Todt Organisation has in its possession very many foreign foremen. Members of the Legion of French Volunteers (LVF) having distinguished themselves on the Eastern front masterfully managed these teams of French workers, many of whom had already worked on the construction of the Maginot Line. Two hundred thousand Frenchmen, among whom many volunteers, have worked on the Atlantic rampart".

Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, overseeing a drawing of the Atlantic Wall Construction​

.

​

The true figures were, of course, inferior to those mentioned in this article aimed at brainwashing. According to the Ob. West (the German supreme command in the Western front), at the end of 1943, there were, in fact, 2,692 pieces of artillery of a calibre superior to 7.5 cm on the Atlantic Wall.

 

Atlantic Wall

Enjoyed the thread re propagada re the Atlantic Wall.....evidently when Rommel took over the responsibility of defending against an Allied attack from the west, he took one look at the wall's defenses and declared them inadequate to do the job and worked furiously to bolster them. He called Hitler's wall a "figment of Hitler's wolkenkuckucksheim (cloud cuckoo land).....an enormous bluff."

Dick Avery

 

Now thats funny. :lol: