What was the Nazi underground city that Hitler built for an invasion that didn’t come like

History knows her as the “Atlantic Wall” and it’s nothing more than “The Nazi underground city”, one of the largest infrastructures of the last century that the German regime built in record time in Europe during World War II.

Adolf Hitler’s idea was to prevent a possible Allied invasion from Britain, and for this reason, he cordoned off more than ten thousand defensive structures from southern France to northern Norway.

Bunkers, trenches and sheltered firing points hundreds of thousands of German soldiers in this defensive chain with which the German army tried to stop an attack from the sea, a plan which failed on June 6, 1944 with the victory of the Allies after the Normandy landings.

Today, this underground wall and barely visible among the bushes of more than five thousand kilometers comes back to life: in some bands, especially in Holland, they were turning into museums and small inns where the visitor can relive both the monstrous and the gigantic of war.

The Nazi underground village

On the coast next to The Hague, Rotterdam and Amsterdam, the Dutch reclaim the memory of the war with museums that show intact rooms with radar communication devices and others that recreate life in the bunker, with original objects like kitchen utensils or lounge chairs . It is the living tale of a chapter of World War II that for decades the dunes and relentless vegetation have been responsible for hiding and today it is beginning to be exhumed.

There the German soldiers lived, awaiting the Allied offensive. And during the war, they served as baths, canteens and even theaters.

After the end of the war, many residents returned from neighboring towns. They searched and enlarged the buildings, painted them white, baptized them and used them as their primary or vacation residence. Since the end of August this year, some bunkers in the area of ​​Hoek van Holland – a town in the center of the west coast of the Netherlands – they will become sustainable housing with a view of the dunes, according to ABC Newspaper.

A non-profit association called coconut has launched a reconstruction and maintenance program to give a second life to these old, watertight and dark structures. Along this coast there are thousands of semi-hidden bunkers among the dunes, and Cocodono’s goal is to “preserve the cultural and historical heritage to maintain the stories behind these ancient constructions and help protect the surrounding nature. “.

Cocoondo recalls on its website that coastal towns like Hoek van Holland Yes Zandvoort they were evacuated during World War II by the German occupation forces and largely destroyed. After liberation, the freed citizens returned to a barren landscape.

In the dunes, however, they found dozens of empty bunkers and, out of necessity, a new special chapter began for the locals and the region. The bunkers were excavated, painted white, decorated and renamed. From there they served as a home or vacation home.

Before the pandemic, this association warned against growing urban pressure in the dunes. With the recovery of the old bunkers, many of which were damaged by vandalism, they believe they can protect this landscape. Thanks to collaborations with designers and artists, the dune bunkers of Hoek van Holland will be transformed into unique and environmentally friendly accommodation.

Other museums, the same story

Between 1942 and 1944, more than eleven million tons of concrete and one million tons of steel built this defensive chain with which the German army sought to stop an attack by sea, a plan that failed on June 6 1944 with the victory of the Allies at the Normandy landings.

But until then, those tens of thousands of bunkers served as a veritable underground city, able to house hundreds of Nazi soldiers for months, as well as ammunition and a whole radar communication system.

But fans of WWII history are happy, because in recent years several associations have restored some of the most representative bunkers of the Dutch “Atlantic Wall” and every Sunday in spring and summer they are open to the public.

Distributed in four museums, in IJmuiden aan Zee, cerca of Haarlem; Noordwijk; La Haya and Hook of Holland, in Rotterdam, all allow the visitor to enter the bunkers and even pass through the tunnels that connect to each other.

Most of them have more than one room and their walls are three meters wide and have a bomb-proof iron structure on the ceiling. Those which served as refuge for commanders and other superiors of the army had central heating and running water, as well as electricity and telephone communications with other important bunkers in the area. And that’s what German museums show.

In The Hague, 250 bunkers

As hundreds of cyclists use the trail, a few meters away two concrete walls rise up amidst the vegetation, with inscriptions in German and massive iron gates. Two of the 250 bunkers built in The Hague during World War II are hidden in a forest near Scheveningen.

One of them has the particularity of being a “commando” bunker: up to twenty soldiers and a commander could take refuge there. There you can see how he arranged a separate room so that he could stay there for a long time, with a work table and a bed..

A kitchen, another room with deckchairs For the rest of the soldiers and a radio communication office complete this museum which, with cabinets of war propaganda, weapons and other curiosities, gives an idea of ​​the functioning of these bunkers and their relevance during the war, according to the site. . Dutch Gazette.

Another interesting museum is the underground complex of Kijkduin, in a protected area on the coast of The Hague, where you can go through its tunnels which connect several bunkers and who came to house up to 60 soldiers. Ammunition stores, a water tank, and even an underground field hospital were some of the functions they had in addition to accommodation. Although part had to be closed, the rest can still be visited in spring and summer.

A little further north, on the beach of Noordwijk, there is another museum on the Atlantic Wall, which has a curiosity: in the years of the Cold War, one of the ammunition bunkers was fitted out for to be used as a warehouse for artistic heritage, or valuable works of art would be hidden in the event of war.

So, lost among the dunes, next to the beach and the sea, this underground Nazi city begins to emerge for its own visitors and tourists, looking for the pandemic to reopen the windows to rediscover history.