Landscape

The geometric design of defensive fortifications with its regular polygons was abandoned at the beginning of the twentieth century, its definitive demise occurring after the First World War. Henceforth, the landscape itself, in all its irregular multiformity, was to dictate the military lay-out of a particular region. The possibilities presented by the terrain features had to be used to full advantage. The spatial characteristics of the coastal landscapes in which the Atlantic Wall was built, from Norway down to southern France, were quite diverse. The landscape can nevertheless can be categorized as either sandy beach, with a low-lying hinterland, or steep and rocky cliffs.  

The coastline in which the various defense works of the Atlantic Wall had to be built offered numerous means of construction, lay-out and camouflage of the complexes. Any natural advantages the terrain might have, were fully utilized. Batteries and lookouts appeared on high dune tops, and supportive works such as bakeries, kitchens, wash rooms, storage spaces, and living quarters were built in the valleys. When under attack, individual complexes had to be self-sustaining for prolonged periods of time, which meant that they also had to have provisions for drinking water and food. After the structures had been completed, they would be camouflaged with sand and rocks, the vegetation would be restored and after some time, there would be (hardly) any visible evidence of these numerous bunker complexes.

In the western Netherlands, the high ground water level in the polders made bunker construction problematic. Here, positioning the works below grade was not feasible. In such situations, the bunkers would have to be placed above grade and earth bermed up to them. Even trenches had to be “dug” above grade: it was cut away in a dike of well over two meters high. For effective water management, sluices and other civil engineering works had to remain under German control. In the low-lying polders of the Netherlands, waterways constituted important potential barriers to an enemy landing force. Water management of the numerous Dutch lakes and marshy polders could be used as an effective defensive weapon against large troop units and tanks. Moreover, the north-south running waterways and the ability to inundate land could cut the enemy off. Mindful of this objective, the sluices at Katwijk, which serve to discharge excess water from the hinterland into the North Sea, were of great strategic significance. For this reason the village of Katwijk was made into a Stützpunktgruppe [group of strong points], which was surrounded by a continuous tank barrier. The plan required extensive demolition of existing urban construction. The rear cover of the Atlantic Wall consisted of two defensive water lines: the Vordere Wasserstellung [forward water position] and the Hintere [rear] Wasserstellung. The Vordere Wasserstellung was a system of waterways and measures with which polders parallel to the Atlantic Wall could be flooded. This defense line was aimed at halting enemies who might have landed on the coast or parachuted in right behind the coast line. The relative vulnerability of the linear defense line had been recognized as early as 1942. To increase the width of the line, a second inundation line - the Hintere Wasserstellung - was laid out to run east of the Vordere Wasserstellung.  It roughly traced the course of the 18th century Oude Hollandse Waterlinie, or old Dutch Water Line, and its purpose was to slow down or halt enemy advances.

Open space to plot a defense line was not always available in the coastal towns. To minimize the need for demolition, the preferred location for bunkers was in city parks. Existing planting and shrubbery also provided good camouflage. Countless houses and districts were razed to create a field of fire, and to dig strategically located anti-tank ditches. Demolition was wide-spread and extensive: in the towns of Katwijk and Zandvoort the seaside promenades were stripped of all buildings up to 200 meters inland. The village of Ter Heijde was completely wiped off the map, only the church remained. In The Hague and IJmuiden, whole neighborhoods were demolished to allow installation of anti-tank ditches and other obstacles. Tens of thousands of inhabitants of coastal areas were forcibly evacuated to the far-off provinces of Drenthe, Overijssel and South Limburg. Sometimes, the scale of the destruction was smaller and a new bunker – e.g. a communications post of a telephone exchange – would be erected in a clearance surrounded by housing. It might be clad in brick, have mock windows and a tiled roof, sometimes even a garden.  

Fortification builders benefitted from the possibilities that the terrain offered, but the reverse was not true at all. Construction of the Atlantic Wall emplacements had far-reaching consequences for the ecology of the shoreline. Narrow gauge railroads and concrete paved roads were laid out in the sand dunes to transport building supplies, equipment and laborers to the work sites. Construction required the presence of countless excavations, (temporary) depots and trailers. Any vegetation was removed and after completion of the defense works, the dunes would be “restored”. But unskilled replanting with beach grass, caused the vegetation to die off quickly and the dunes started drifting. This process was exacerbated by the fact that the grass used for replanting, had been harvested elsewhere. Furthermore, logging took place on an ever increasing scale. The wood was used for fuel or for the erection of barriers.   the Zandvoort dunes lost about seventy hectares (over 170 acres) of forest.

War’s end did not spell any relief for the natural environment. Although skilled replanting of the terrain was begun immediately, the dunes remained vulnerable because of the presence of the defense works. The flooding disaster of 1953 was so devastating, in part, because the exposed bunkers intensified the action of wind and water. In many places, the winds had already undermined the bunkers by blowing away the supporting sand. Next, the structures would begin to subside and eventually slide off the sand dune, with all the associated risks. Restoration of the dunes after 1953, almost completely hid the defense works from view. They were walled up and completely bermed over – at times with earth from elsewhere - resulting locally in remarkably rich, non-endemic vegetation. 

In spite of the above, the Atlantic Wall has benefitted the environment, albeit in unexpected and unintended ways. Thanks to the presence of all this obstinate concrete, many natural environments were left undisturbed for years. A case in point is the land front between Vlissingen and Middelburg, where the works have resulted in a green (buffer) zone between the cities. Bunkers often functioned as natural shelters for creatures such as bats. As public interest in the military and historical significance of these works is growing, the question presents itself whether environmental concerns and cultural historic issues can be addressed simultaneously.

Not only did the Atlantic Wall provide a refuge to nature, but also to people and their stuff; soon after the war, all along the coast, bunkers were finding a second use as vacation homes or homes, as cafes or restaurants, as storage facility, practice studios or youth centers. A small number of structures retained a military use during the Cold War. One wonders, though, if the significance of the Atlantic Wall for urban and rural development should be seen in the context of reuse. More often than not, the consequences that were most far-reaching, have been the unintended ones. The destruction of infrastructure as a consequence of the building of the Atlantic Wall, as well as the effects of targeted Allied bombing raids, also brought – damage and suffering not withstanding - unforeseen benefits. The cleared and bombed-out areas were prime locations for modern and coherent urban development. The disadvantages of typically unplanned, organic urban growth, which is the bane of many an architect and urban planner, could now be undone. This is what happened in some of the worst hit cities, such as The Hague, IJmuiden and Den Helder. In the first two, Dutch architect and urban planner Dudok played an important role. In The Hague, his Reconstruction Plan was integrated in his redevelopment plan for the entire urban area. As such, the Atlantikwall became the trigger for a scale shift in the development of the city.          

The prevalent post-war ideas about reconstruction of the Dutch seaside resorts are noteworthy. Pretentious towns like Scheveningen and Zandvoort came up with ambitious plans, though very few of these were ultimately realized. In contrast, the Reconstruction plan for Katwijk aan Zee was fully executed. This was not a plan that advocated a complete break with the past, but a concept in which architectural style and scale matched the fabric of pre-war life in what was left of the old village. Bear in mind that Katwijk always was more than just a resort; it is a community of fishermen, even though the fishing fleet has been relocated to the harbor at IJmuiden. Also, it is a family-oriented place, like most seaside towns along the Dutch coast.  The preferred style of architecture for post-war reconstruction was often traditional and reminiscent of the so-called Delft School, as demonstrated by Dudok’s plans for The Hague and IJmuiden.  

The Atlantic Wall was also a “Water Line”. Inundated lands provided the rear cover on the inland side of the front > see thematic map. The spatial consequences of the inundations were felt most acutely towards the end of the war. In one extremely important case, water served not only as a defense mechanism but was also used as an offensive strategy by the Allies in the attack on the Atlantic Wall: in the Battle of the Scheldt in the fall of 1944. The prolonged flooding of the Walcheren peninsula, had far-reaching consequences for the post-war agricultural landscape and local water management. Closing the breaches in Walcheren’s dikes was accomplished with the use of caissons, foreshadowing the methods for dike repair that would be employed following the catastrophic flood of 1953 and during construction of the dams of the Delta Works. After the dikes had been closed, extensive land consolidation was carried out on the peninsula, whereby small-sized, plots made way for a landscape of quite a larger scale. The post-war redesign of Walcheren’s landscape was based on its geomorphology. Traditionally, the more important settlements and roads had been located on higher elevation sandy deposits along the streams. Marshy, lower-elevation meadows were used as pasture land because the ground water table had – up to that point – been poorly regulated. This pattern of higher and lower-elevation lands had evolved into an infrastructure with tree-lined main roads along the streams or former streams, and lower regions planted with hawthorn shrubs. Land consolidation as practiced on Walcheren became the standard for future agricultural redevelopment. This type of redesign was seen, particularly following the 1953 Flooding Disaster, in many flood-ravaged parts of the provinces of South Holland and Zeeland.                              

Step by step, the Atlantic Wall is acquiring a position on the agenda and in the consciousness of spatial planners. To date, efforts and achievements still revolve primarily around the sorely needed preservation of what remains of this cultural heritage. But more and more, larger complexes, such as the Vlissingen land front, rather than individual objects, are coming into focus. The next step should be greater attention for the landscape as a whole, including there where the physical remnants of the wall are either gone or fragmentary. It can provide insight into the possible consequences, even the unintended ones, of large-scale spatial interventions such as this, and the differences between the effects on a local, regional and (inter)national level. The interrelationship of fortifications, environmental preservation and water management is an important theme. In the area of spatial planning, land reuse issues and strategies relating to the origin of the Atlantic Wall are relevant. Not only the hard, large-scale and emphatically ideological aspects of the wall (demolition, confrontation, confinement and the architecture of oppression) should be recognized, the same is true for the small-scale, concealed and pragmatic aspects (camouflage, self-sufficiency and utility). It is these latter aspects that are the relevant for 21st century spatial planning.