After The Battle 163 - The Siegfried Line

SP EC IA L IS SU E 6 3

THE SIEGFRIED LINE No. 163 9

770306 154103

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NUMBER 163 © Copyright After the Battle 2014 Editor: Karel Margry Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. Ramsey Published by Battle of Britain International Ltd., The Mews, Hobbs Cross House, Hobbs Cross, Old Harlow, Essex CM17 0NN, England Telephone: 01279 41 8833 Fax: 01279 41 9386 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.afterthebattle.com Printed in Great Britain by Warners Group Publications PLC, Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH. After the Battle is published on the 15th of February, May, August and November. LONDON STOCKIST for the After the Battle range: Foyles Limited, 113-119 Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0EB. Telephone: 020 7437 5660. Fax: 020 7434 1574. E-mail: [email protected]. Web site: www.foyles.co.uk United Kingdom Newsagent Distribution: Warners Group Publications PLC, Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH Australian Subscriptions and Back Issues: Renniks Publications Pty Limited Unit 3, 37-39 Green Street, Banksmeadow NSW 2019 Telephone: 61 2 9695 7055. Fax: 61 2 9695 7355 E-mail: [email protected]. Website: www.renniks.com Canadian Distribution and Subscriptions: Vanwell Publishing Ltd., 622 Welland Avenue, St. Catharines, Ontario Telephone: (905) 937 3100. Fax: (905) 937 1760 Toll Free: 1-800-661-6136 E-mail: [email protected] New Zealand Distribution: Dal McGuirk’s “MILITARY ARCHIVE”, PO Box 24486, Royal Oak, Auckland 1345, New Zealand Telephone: 021 627 870. Fax: 9-6252817 E-mail: [email protected] United States Distribution and Subscriptions: RZM Imports Inc, 184 North Ave., Stamford, CT 06901 Telephone: 1-203-324-5100. Fax: 1-203-324-5106 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.rzm.com Italian Distribution: Milistoria s.r.l. Via Sofia, 12-Interporto, 1-43010 Fontevivo (PR), Italy Telephone: ++390521 651910. Fax: ++390521 619204 Dutch Language Edition: SI Publicaties/Quo Vadis, Postbus 188, 6860 AD Oosterbeek Telephone: 026-4462834. E-mail: [email protected]

CONTENTS THE SIEGFRIED LINE 2 Front Cover: Remains of the German Siegfried Line. A long band of dragon’s teeth – concrete anti-tank obstacles – survives along the east side of the L233 Aachen to Monschau highway between the villages of Lichtenbusch and Schmithof. (Karel Margry)

Back Cover: Large stretches of the dragon’s teeth line have today been planted over with trees so as to blend them into the landscape. The section shown here lies just south of Lichtenbusch, close to the underpass under the L233 on Nütheimer Strasse. (Karel Margry) Acknowledgements: For help with the Siegfried Line story, the Editor would like to thank Frau Margarethe Dietzel of the Stadtarchiv Aachen and Marco Cillessen. Photo Credit Abbreviations: IWM — Imperial War Museum; USNA — US National Archives. 2

Propaganda images from 1939-40 of German troops manning the Westwall.

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‘We’re gonna hang out our washing on the Siegfried Line . . .’ So ran the lyrics of the popular song written by Ulster songwriter Jimmy Kennedy whilst he was a Royal Artillery captain in the British Expeditionary Force during the ‘Phoney War’ in the winter of 1939-40. Turned into a hit song by variety artists Leslie Sarony and Leslie Holmes (The Two Leslies), it mocked the strength of the 630-kilometre-long chain of fortifications which Nazi Germany had built along its western frontier.

Four years later American Signal Corps photographer Wescott undoubtedly had this song in mind when he pictured Private Anthony Mesinko of the US 9th Infantry Division stringing his laundry on a barbed-wire barrier among the dragon’s teeth at Roetgen on September 15, 1944. The name ‘Siegfried Line’ was coined after the Siegfried-Stellung built by the Germans in northern France during the First World War but it was not the name used by the Germans — to them it was the Westwall.

THE SIEGFRIED LINE The Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919 left Germany considerably dismembered and virtually disarmed and defenceless. In the West, the defeated Reich was forced to cede AlsaceLorraine, which contained most of its western frontier defences, to France. The Saargebiet, the coal-mining and heavily industrialised area west of the Saar river, was put under a League of Nations mandate. Germany was allowed to keep the Rhineland but the whole territory was to be completely demilitarised: no German troops were allowed to be stationed west of the Rhine and it was forbidden to build any fortifications there. The same restriction applied to the 50-kilometre-wide area east of the river. The Reichswehr, the German armed forces, was limited to a maximum of 100,000 troops. The German navy was seriously curtailed and Germany had to completely disband its air force. Despite these limitations, the Weimar Republic during the 1920s and early 1930s sought to protect the country’s frontiers.

Within the Reichswehr, fortification was the responsibility of six Festungskommandanturen, one in each of the six Wehrkreise (Army Districts). The Reichsmarine had their own Festungskommandanturen, one in each of its two Marine-Stations-Kommandos (Naval Station Commands). However, while France embarked on the massive task of building the Maginot Line along its borders with Germany (see After the Battle No. 60), the fortress engineers could do nothing to confront it. Forbidden to build fortifications in the West, they turned to their eastern borders. Already in 1921 they began surveys for defensive works in Eastern Prussia and along the German-Polish border east of Frankfurt-ander-Oder, both designed to protect against attacks from Poland. Between 1925 and 1930 a modest beginning was made with building actual fortifications, although the Inter-Allied Military Control Commission, which operated in Germany until 1927, subsequently forced many of these to be razed or cancelled.

By Karel Margry

A new start was made in 1931, the engineers reconnoitring and beginning works on the so-called Pommern-Stellung, a bunker line running from Stolpmünde on the Baltic coast south to Landsberg-ander-Warthe, and on the Oder-Stellung, which ran along the Oder river from Grünberg in the north to the German-CzechPolish border in the south. The 110-kilometre gap remaining between these two lines would from 1934 onwards be closed by the extensive works of the OderWarthe-Stellung — the three lines together forming what came to be known as the Ostwall. At the same time, from 1932 onwards, work was underway in East Prussia, notably on what was called the Heilsberger Dreieck (Heilsberg Triangle), a blocking position protecting the territory’s capital city, Königsberg. 3

GELDERN-STELLUNG

AACHEN-SAARBAUPROGRAMM

LUFTVERTEIDIGUNGSZONE WEST

WETTERAU-MAIN-TAUBER-STELLUNG

ORSCHOLZ-RIEGEL

AACHEN-SAAR-BAUPROGRAMM NECKAR-ENZ-STELLUNG

ETTLINGER RIEGEL

MARTIN WOLFF

SPICHERN-STELLUNG

The Westwall was built in various stages between 1936 and 1940, each stage either thickening or extending the line. The three main phases were the Pionier-Bauprogramm (March 1936-May 1938), the Limes-Bauprogramm (May-October 1938) and the Aachen-Saar-Bauprogramm (October 1938-December 1939) but these were followed by various smaller construction programmes: work on the Geldern-Stellung (September 1939June 1940), which pulled the line further north all the way to Kleve; the Orscholz-Riegel (January-June 1940), which comprised a switch position between the Moselle and Saar rivers; 4

and the Spichern-Stellung (January-June 1940) which reinforced the defences of Saarbrücken. Moreover, before work on the Westwall was begun, there had been the construction of defence lines further away from the frontier: the Neckar-EnzStellung (1935-38) and the Wetterau-Main-Tauber-Stellung (1936-37), and the first stage of the Pionier-Programm was a blocking line known as the Ettlinger Riegel (1936-37). The Luftwaffe added its share by building the Luftverteidingungszone West to back up the Westwall line with anti-aircraft defences (May 1938-1942).

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With the Westwall extending over such a huge area of Germany, we have decided to illustrate this special issue on the Siegfried Line not chronologically but geographically, travelling along the line from north to south. Since the war there has been a determined attempt to demolish the Westwall and erase all traces of it, with the result that today, of the around 18,000 installations built, a mere 850, or less than five per cent, survive intact. Many of them are hard to find, hidden away in PREDECESSORS OF THE WESTWALL (1933-36) After the Nazis came to power in January 1933, the Reichswehr engineers reverted their attention to the West. Still scrupulously obeying the stipulations of the Versailles Treaty, they first surveyed and then began construction of two fortified lines, located just outside the demilitarised zone, well east of the Rhine but facing west. They were to protect southern Germany and prevent a French advance across that part of the country towards Czechoslovakia. Both lines were named after the various rivers whose traces they followed. The first, known as the Neckar-Enz-Stellung, was to block a 85-kilometre gap between the Odenwald forest in the north and the Schwarzwald forest in the south. Construction began in the spring of 1935 and would continue until the spring of 1938. In all, it would come to comprise some 450 structures, mostly machine-gun bunkers of medium strength. The second line, located north of the Odenwald and designated the WetterauMain-Tauber-Stellung, was to block the Rhine-Main Plain, another suspected corri-

woodland or easily missed without good maps. Even so, there are still too many to include them all, so we have concentrated on sites where, by some fluke of history, an interesting bunker or cluster of bunkers has survived intact, and on bunkers that have been restored and turned into Westwall museums. While doing so, somewhat to our surprise, we managed to achieve a good many comparisons of wartime pictures. The numbers on the map will help to locate the various sites.

dor of French attack. Some 90 kilometres long, stretching from Büdingen in the north to Klingenberg-am-Main in the south, it was begun in 1936 and by 1937 a total of 326 bunkers of medium strength had been constructed. Simultaneously with the latter the Reichswehr also began work on another fortified line along part of the Czech border. Known as the Bayerisch-Tschechische Grenz-Stellung, it was to block a possible Czech westward advance into Germany through the Bavarian forests. Eighty kilometres long, from Selb in the north to Eslarn in the south, it comprised some 100 bunkers of simple design. With wide intervals between individual bunkers it could only serve as a temporary hold-up. Everything changed when Hitler decided the time had come to rebuild and massively enlarge the armed forces, this change being marked by the creation of the Wehrmacht on March 16, 1935, followed shortly by the reintroduction of military service on May 21. As part of this massive transformation, the army’s Corps of Fortress Engineers was completely re-organised. The old Inspektion der Pioniere und Festungen (Inspectorate of

Engineers and Fortresses) was split into two separate agencies, the Inspektion der Pioniere (Inspectorate of Engineers) and the Inspektion der Festungen (Inspectorate of Fortresses), both under the unified command of Generalmajor Otto-Wilhelm Förster (who retained his old title of Inspekteur der Pioniere und Festungen). The Inspektion der Festungen was given two subordinate bureaus, the Inspekteur der Ostbefestigungen (Inspector of Eastern Fortifications) and the Inspekteur der Westbefestigungen (Inspector of Western Fortifications), both initially stationed in Berlin. Below them, on the level of regiments, came six FestungsInspektionen (Fortress Inspectorates) and one echelon further down, on battalion level, a number of Festungs-Bau-Gruppen (Fortress Construction Groups). On March 1, 1936, the latter were renamed Festungs-Pionier-Stäbe (Fortress Engineer Staffs). Two of the fortress inspectorates and seven of the engineer staffs were stationed in the West: Festungs-Inspektion V, with headquarters in Heilbrunn, commanded Festungs-Pionier-Stäbe 10, 11 and 12; Festungs-Inspektion VI, with command post at Aschaffenburg, had Festungs-Pionier-Stäbe 13 to 16. 5

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The very northernmost stretch of dragon’s teeth starts just north of Herzogenrath and runs south to Aachen almost uninterruptedly for over ten kilometres. At the point where it crosses the L232 (Roermonder Strasse) at Herzogenrath-Pannesheide, virtually on the German-Dutch border [2], an information panel was set up in 2001, explaining the history of the Westwall in two languages. It was the initiative of a local historical group — the Projektgruppe Spurensuche Westwall — and at the time this was the first panel of its kind along the entire Siegfried Line. The barrier here is of the 1939 type, with five rows of teeth.

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THE PIONIER-BAUPROGRAMM (March 1936-May 1938) On January 13, 1935, in a plebiscite supervised by the League of Nations, the population of the Saargebiet, the industrial region along the Saar river bordering on France, voted by a massive majority of 88 per cent for re-unification with the German Reich. A year later, on March 7, 1936, German troops re-entered the Rhineland, marching into Cologne and other cities, thereby unilaterally ending the demilitarisation of that border region and denouncing the Versailles Treaty. Even before that happened, on February 23, the Inspektion der Festungen was ordered, under the strictest secrecy, to begin surveying locations for fortifications in the Rhineland. Over the next weeks, German engineer officers, dressed in civilian clothes and travelling in civilian cars, toured the Rhineland, surreptitiously surveying and planning sites for a fortified line along the country’s western frontier. In the face of the fierce foreign disapproval of the re-occupation of the Rhineland, the Generalstabschef des Heeres (Chief of the German General Staff), General der Artillerie Ludwig Beck, advised Hitler to refrain from building fortifications west of the Rhine but Hitler brusquely rebuffed the suggestion, ordering the Inspektion der Festungen to continue its surveys of the

were booty taken from Czech fortifications after the German occupation of that country in March 1938. Built in 1938-39, this was the only barrier of its kind in the entire Westwall. Right: After the war, the steel beams were cut off with acetylene torches, leaving only low stumps sticking out of the concrete. The double line of concrete foundations remains along the L346, zigzagging through the meadows between the road and the river.

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Left: Although dragon’s teeth have become iconic for the Siegfried Line, they actually only covered 168 kilometres of the 630-kilometre-long line. Also, they were not the only type of anti-tank barrier used in the Westwall. Between Geilenkirchen and Frelenberg ([1] on the map), along a two-kilometre stretch on the east side of the Wurm river, a defensive obstruction had been built consisting of two rows of steel U-beams embedded into concrete foundation strips, five metres apart. The beams

Just north-west of Aachen, where the countryside is broken by steep hills, the dragon’s teeth are substituted in two places by so-called Panzermauer, 3.7-metre-high concrete anti-tank walls. The first one is on the south side of the Schneeberg hill [3]. Some 370 metres long, it shows signs of shell impacts at its western end. 6

The second Panzermauer is just 600 metres further to the south-east, lining the southern slope of the Wachtelkopf hill [4]. The iron rods seen sticking out from the concrete served to hold barbed wire as an extra obstruction against scaling the obstacle. Immediately above the wall are the broken remains of two machine-gun bunkers.

As Brooke described it in his memoirs: ‘As we were leaving Simpson’s headquarters, Simpson asked Winston whether he wished to make use of the lavatory before starting. Without a moment’s hesitation, he asked, “How far is the Siegfried Line?” On being told about a half-an-hour’s run, he replied that he would not visit the lavatory but that we should halt on reaching the Siegfried Line! On arrival there the column of some 20 or 30 cars halted, we processed solemnly out and lined up along the Line. As the photographers had all rushed up to secure good vantage points, he turned to them and said, “This is one of the operations connected with this great war which must not be reproduced photographically.” To give them credit, they obeyed their orders and, in doing so, missed a chance of publishing the greatest photographic catch of the war! I shall never forget his childish grin of intense satisfaction that spread all over his face as he looked down at the critical moment.’

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Rhineland. The task was relegated to Festungs-Inspektion V, under Generalmajor Rudolf Schmetzer, and mainly carried out by Festungs-Pionier-Stab 11. The project was pressed ahead rapidly. On March 12, just five days after the Rhineland occupation, the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH — Supreme Command of the Army) instructed the Inspekteur der Westbefestigungen, Generalmajor Richard Speich, to begin construction of fortifications blocking the Saar river crossings in the Saarland and along the Upper Rhine. By now, the army fortress engineers had formulated various Ausbaustärken (strength categories) that would standardise the thickness of reinforced-concrete roofs and walls of the planned fortifications. In all there were six: Ausbaustärke A: 3.5 metres Ausbaustärke A1: 2.5 metres Ausbaustärke B: 1.5 metres Ausbaustärke B1: 1 metre Ausbaustärke C: 60 centimetres Ausbaustärke D: 30 centimetres At the same time, based on the experiences gained in the trench warfare of the First World War, the fortress engineers had determined three so-called Ausbauformen (forms of fortified defence) that could be applied both along the eastern and western borders. The strongest type was the so-called Festungs-Ausbau, also known as ‘befestigtes Gebiet’ (Fortified Area) or ‘Festungskampffeld’ (Fortress Combat Field). Similar to the ‘gros ouvrages’ of the French Maginot Line, this comprised a fortress complex, or group of fortresses, that could withstand an enemy attack for an indefinite period. Fortifications of this type would be of Baustärke A, A1 or B; be fitted out with a variety of weapons for all-round defence, and be able to survive independently, having their own machinery to generate electricity, heating, lighting, fresh air, water supply and drainage. Troops here would not come out to fight in the open but would battle the enemy from the interior of their combat stations. All fortifications within a Fortified Area were to be linked by a subterranean tunnel system, which would also contain barracks, machine rooms, stores and ammunition depots. A main gallery would run parallel with the front, several hundred metres to the rear, connecting all positions within the sector. Galleries running back from the main tunnel to entrances lying well to the rear would allow troops to enter the fortress system safely and well out of reach of enemy action. Because of the huge cost and effort involved in building them, fortifications of this type were to be strictly reserved for particularly threatened areas. As it turned out, fortifications of this kind never actually materialised along Germany’s western frontier. The second type of fortification was the so-called Stellungs-Ausbau (Line of Fortifications). This comprised a series of separate bunker positions of medium strength (Baustärke B, B1 and C) which were to be positioned sufficiently close to one another so as to form a continuous line of mutuallysupporting machine-gun positions. As a rule this would mean four to six bunkers per kilo-

IWM B15164

Another kilometre to the south-east, at Vaalserquartier [5], is the spot where on March 3, 1945, the famous photos were taken of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill visiting the Siegfried Line. Here he stands among the dragon’s teeth with (L-R) Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff; Field-Marshal Bernard Montgomery, commander of the British 21st Army Group, and Lieutenant General William H. Simpson, commander of the US Ninth Army. This particular picture was taken by Sergeant Jimmy Mapham of the Army Film & Photo Unit.

None of the captions of the many press photos taken on this occasion identified the exact spot where Churchill’s party inspected the dragon’s teeth. However, the accounts that do exist make it clear that it was somewhere between Simpson’s command post, which was at Maastricht in the Netherlands, and the recently captured German town of Jülich which Churchill visited in the afternoon. The logical route would be via Vaals and Aachen which meant the motorcade would cross the Siegfried Line at Vaalserquartier. Although the dragon’s teeth at this spot have been completely cleared away, the lay of the land on the north side of the Vaalser Strasse is still recognisable. 7

Right: Four kilometres south of Vaalserquartier, another main road approaches Aachen, this time from Belgium — the Lütticher Strasse (B246) — and the frontier post here is known as Aachen-Bildchen [6]. In the woods just south of there, close to the Entenpfuhl Restaurant, is a well-preserved Westwall bunker. Built in 1939, it is a Limes-Regelbau SK (Sonderkonstruktion) 6a, a machine-gun bunker of B-neu strength (2-metre-thick roof and walls) with a Type 423PO1 armoured turret with six embrasures, manned by a crew of nine. Only 11 bunkers of this special design were built in the entire Westwall, all of them in the Aachen forest, and this is the only surviving one (albeit without the turret). Today it is in use as a bat refuge.

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metre (but in particular important sectors it could rise to ten or even 20 bunkers per kilometre). The fortifications would include casemates for anti-tank guns, observation posts, command posts, troop shelters and ammunition depots. Compared to the larger fort complex, the Stellungs-Ausbau had the advantage that defences could be gradually built up and supplemented quite rapidly; the bunkers were smaller and more difficult to hit, hence their protective cover could be thinner, resulting in savings both in building time and materials used. The third and last type was known as the Sperr-Ausbau (Blocking Position). The weakest of the three defence systems, it comprised construction of a limited number of bunkers of lesser strength (Baustärke B1, C and D), placed at river crossings and main roads close to the frontier, their limited task being to hold up and delay enemy attacks.

BELL ARCHIVE

Right: A further three kilometres on, yet another main highway — the B57 Eupener Strasse — crosses the BelgianGerman frontier at Köpfchen [7] just south of Aachen. Here the dragon’s teeth ran just in front of the two housing blocks for German customs’ personnel. On September 12, troops of the 16th Infantry of the US 1st Infantry Division breached the Westwall in this sector, penetrating into the Aachen Forest and forcing back the defending troops of the 353. InfanterieDivision. Some time later, Press war photographer Bert Brandt of the Acme photo agency pictured Captain Max Zera and Private Jim Spilker of the 1st Division hanging out their washing outside the customs’ barracks (which the American soldiers had taken over as quarters). Note the damage from Allied shelling. On average this would mean about one bunker per kilometre of the line. A trait peculiar to German bunker construction was the use of so-called Regelbauten (standardised structures), which introduced a limited number of prescribed designs for various types of bunkers, which could be fitted into any site. All units conformed to exact specifications regarding dimensions, shape, accommodation for troops and provision for guns. This system not only allowed for efficient calculation of the amounts of building materials and fortress weapons needed and of the financial cost per bunker, but also minimised misunderstandings between the commissioning engineers and the building contractors. The initial series of Regelbauten, introduced in 1935, consisted of 39 different models and sub-models, 21 in strength category B1, 12 in category C and six in category D.

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Left: Neatly repaired, today the old customs’ quarters at Aachen-Köpfchen have been turned into private housing, and the moss-covered dragon’s teeth form part of their gardens. 8

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On September 29, 1944, Signal Corps photographer Tech/4 Leo B. Moran pictured ‘soldiers of an engineer battalion’ (probably the 1st Engineer Combat Battalion of the 1st Division) guarding a passage through the line of teeth. By May 1938 the list had grown to 53 models (37 of strength B1, 11 of C and five of D), comprising 38 types of machine-gun nests, 11 types of anti-tank gun casemates, two types of observation posts and two types of command posts. For example, Regelbau B1-11a was a machine-gun nest with an armourplate roof and an observation cupola. Many of these early Regelbauten were already outmoded when they were being built. Characteristic of the machine-gun bunkers was that they could only give frontal fire, with an arc of 60 degrees, which made it difficult for them to create interlocking fields of fire. The bunkers of D strength were not gas-proof and, with only 30 centimetres of concrete, could at best only protect against shrapnel.

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Construction in 1936 In April 1936, the Oberbefehlshaber der Wehrmacht (Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces), General der Infanterie Werner von Blomberg, and the Oberbefehlshaber des Heeres (Supreme Commander of the Army), Generaloberst Werner

Freiherr von Fritsch, agreed to refrain from building long linear fortified positions, such as the French had undertaken with the construction of the Maginot Line. Instead, they decided to only carry out surveys for fortifications along the western frontier between the Rhine and Moselle rivers, and meanwhile concentrate on building blocking positions of the lighter Sperr-Ausbau type. In particular, they ordered the construction of a blocking line at the Upper Rhine south of Karlsruhe, at a point where the Franco-German border reaches the river. Its purpose was to stave off a possible French attack through the Rhine valley. Starting at the town of Ettlingen, immediately south of Karlsruhe, and running eastwards at right angle with the river, the ten-kilometre-long line was known as the Ettlinger RiegelStellung (Ettlingen Blocking Position). Comprising a series of machine-gun bunkers of lighter strength, protected by water-filled ditches and infantry obstacles, it was completed in 1937. This can be seen as the very first segment of what later became the Westwall.

By June 1936, following Blomberg and Fritsch’s directive, the Inspekteur der Westbefestigungen had drawn up a plan for the strengthening of Germany’s western border. Limiting itself to the frontier with France, the scheme envisaged the construction of fortifications along a 350-kilometre stretch, from the small town of Irrel, in the forested Eifel region 16 kilometres north-west of Trier, to the village of Neuburg, on the banks of the Rhine near Karlsruhe (where it would link up with the Ettlinger Riegel), then continuing south along the east bank of the Rhine all the way to the Swiss border at Basel. An analysis of the terrain between the Moselle and Rhine had shown up four areas that could potentially serve as main avenues of attack for invading French armies. From north to south they were: The Moselle valley near Trier. The Saarland between the Schwarzwälder Hochwald and Saarbrücken. The valley of the Blies river near Zweibrücken. The Wissembourg Gap (the classic corridor of attack for invading forces, and the route taken by the French Army in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870). These gaps were now to be closed with 11 groups of fortresses of Ausbaustärke A, and the intervening ground was to be protected by a continuous line of fortifications of the lesser Stellungs-Ausbau type. The northern half of the line — the stretch from Irrel to the Rhine, a distance of some 150 kilometres — was considered of prime importance and would get the most resources. The southern half, the Upper Rhine sector, being shielded by the river itself and by the difficult obstacle of the Schwarzwald forest behind it, was assigned less weight. As a rule, the line was to be constructed as close as possible to the frontier, but not in such proximity so as to allow the other side to see the fortifications. For this reason, it could not pass through the Saar valley south of Beckingen (for the French would have been able to clearly observe the works from their side of the river), necessitating its trace to be drawn in a wide curve north of Saarbrücken, running via the Hoxberg mountain and the Hilgenbach and Göttelborn Heights to Zweibrücken. For the same reason, the valleys of the Saarbach and Wieslauter rivers in the Palatinate Forest further east could not be used. Here the line was positioned a full seven kilometres from the frontier. The whole building project was predicted to take six years, until 1942. Hitler approved the plan — which became known as the Pionier-Bauprogramm — on June 26, 1936, and work started immediately.

Right: Although the wartime caption did not identify the spot, Karel Margry deduced it was taken on Augustinerweg [8], a small lane leading through the Aachen Municipal Forest just one kilometre east of Köpfchen. The woods in between were in fact so thick that there was no need for an anti-tank obstacle, and the dragon’s teeth seen on the right in the wartime picture are actually the start of a new stretch. Above: They are still there, protruding from the road bank, but hidden by the stacks of wood. 9

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Half a kilometre further on, the dragon’s teeth crossed Grüne Eiche [9], a small road running from the village of Lichtenbusch to the southern outskirts of Aachen. It was here that the engineers of the 1st Division constructed a first bypass for vehicles passing through the dragon’s teeth — it can be clearly seen on the right of the road in this aerial shot. Construction in 1937 Work on the line continued throughout 1937 but, due to the scarcity of supplies and the lack of qualified engineers, did not progress as swiftly as planned. The estimated date of completion was moved forward, first from 1942 to 1948, and then to 1952. A persistent bottleneck was the availability of armoured turrets, either machine-gun

turrets with three or six apertures or the smaller observation cupolas. The necessary alloys — nickel and molybdenum — were in short supply and the German steel industry, Krupp and others, could not keep up with the rapidly-increased demand for armour. Whereas construction in 1936 had concentrated on defence works of the least-dense Sperr-Ausbau type, 1937 saw the start of

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GRÜNE EICHE

Seven decades later, the line of concrete has disappeared without a trace. Only the tall tree along Grüne Eiche and the houses along Augustinerweg seen at the top of the picture remain to link past with present.

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Building followed the same procedure as had been developed for the fortifications in the East: the fortress engineers surveyed a particular site and determined the type and strength of bunker to be erected there; they then contracted a civilian building firm who undertook the job of actually erecting the structure, all being co-ordinated and supervised by the army engineers. The expansion of work necessitated the deployment of extra engineer staffs. By February 1937, the number of fortress inspectorates in the West had been increased from two to three (the new one was FestungsInspektion VII) and the number of subordinate Festungs-Pionier-Stäbe from seven to eight (the new one being No. 17). As had been planned, the engineers initially concentrated on fortifications of the Sperr-Ausbau category, building individual bunkers to block river bridges and main roads. By the end of 1936 a total of 156 had been completed: 22 in the Merzig–Völklingen sector (in the Saarland), 18 in the Reichenbrunn–Dellfeld sector (in the Zweibrücken area), ten in the sector Oberotterbach–Büchelberg (in the Wissembourg Gap), and 106 along the Upper Rhine. Most were of the lesser C and D strength. In most cases these bunkers were to be manned by border troops. In March 1936, as a first step to secure the western frontier after the re-occupation of the Rhineland, Hitler had ordered the creation of a Grenzwacht (Border Guard). Its troops were lightly armed with hand guns, machine guns and 3.7cm anti-tank guns. Many of their positions were just fieldworks but there were also Grenzwacht bunkers, mainly Regelbau D-2 (a machine-gun nest with three firing embrasures) and the so-called Grenzwacht-PaKGarage (a small concrete open-end box to house the 3.7cm anti-tank gun).

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work on the middle category of fortification, the Stellungs-Ausbau. According to the 1936 master plan, such sectors were to be principally defended by works of B strength, i.e. with roofs and walls of 1.5-metre thickness, able to withstand artillery bombardment with shells of up to 21cm calibre. Known as B-Werke, they were not of a standard design but adapted to fit in with local topography. The largest type was a bunker block that was armed with multiple weaponry for all-round defence, and could survive on its own for considerable time. Featuring two floors, one of them underground, and four armoured turrets on its roof — two for mounting machine guns, one a 5cm mortar and one a flame-thrower — manned by a garrison of over 80 men, and with its own ammunition depot and water reservoir, it was designed to hold out for four weeks. B-Werke were intricate installations that on average took more than a year to build. They were very expensive too, the larger types costing up to 1.4 million Reichsmark each. Work on 17 of them was started in 1937, all of them in sectors between the Moselle and the Rhine. A further 15 were planned for later. As there would never be any fortifications built in the strongest A category, the B-Werke would remain the largest type of bunker that materialised in the Westwall. Also in 1937, the first plans were formulated for an extension of the line northwards of Irrel. This was to counteract the possibility that a future enemy might possibly bypass the line to the north, through Luxembourg and/or Belgium. To plan and co-ordinate the extension, a fourth inspectorate was deployed in October, Festungs-Inspektion VIII based at Trier, together with three more Festungs-Pionier-Stäbe (Nos. 18, 19, and 20). By the end of the year, despite the shortage of building material and many other problems, a total of 430 works had been added to the nascent line: 60 between Irrel and Igel in the Moselle sector; 70 along the Saar river (of which 35 were concentrated in the four kilometres between Mettlach and Besseringen and the remaining 35 along the much longer stretch between Besseringen and Brebach); 52 in the long arc east of the Saar but north of Saarbrücken; 211 in the continuation through the woods and valleys past Zweibrücken to the Rhine; 15 along the Ettlinger Riegel; 17 blocking the Rhine crossings between Karlsruhe and Basel, and four in the Isteiner Klotz, the cliff-like rock overlooking the Rhine that formed the southern anchor of the line near the Swiss border. The 15 works in the Ettlinger Riegel were all of B1 strength but all the others were in the lesser C and D categories. In all there were now some 600 bunkers either finished or in various stages of construction.

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Right: The road itself could not be used, being firmly blocked by a steel swingbarrier and a series of H-beams firmly embedded into the roadway of a small culvert bridge. As this was one of the very first breaches through the Siegfried Line, war photographers flocked to the site to picture the engineers at work, this shot being taken by Pete Carroll of Associated Press.

Looking down Grüne Eiche today. Although the dragon’s teeth have gone and the bridge has been replaced by a small culvert, the two trees still form the backdrop.

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Right: With a number of the concrete teeth having been demolished, and a corduroy road laid out from the road to the gap, engineers stand by with spades in case they are needed to keep traffic moving through the opening. Note the halfraised swing-barrier at the western end of the bridge. By this time, September 15, the forward units of the 1st Division had already bypassed Aachen to the south and were fighting on the city’s southeastern fringe so they were eagerly awaiting their armoured support. 11

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Looking from the bridge in the opposite direction, one has a good view of the swinggate and its heavy steel end pillar. Another picture by Bert Brandt of Acme.

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Construction in early 1938 For the first five months of 1938 work on the line continued as before, although still and increasingly hampered by a shortage of cement and other building materials. The scarcity was further exacerbated by a 60 per cent reduction in the assignment of steel in early spring. By March, an estimated 2,000 bunkers had been completed. On March 9, after a lecture on the subject by Generaloberst von Fritsch, Hitler approved the plans to extend the line northwards beyond Irrel. The new section comprised two sectors: the stretch from Irrel to Ormont, roughly equalling the border with Luxembourg, and the stretch Ormont to Brüggen, which pulled the line past Belgium and part of the Dutch frontier. As had happened with Saarbrücken in the south, the city of Aachen was not included in the defence line, the projected trace passing in a shallow arc behind the city, through the Hürtgenwald forest and Stolberg, and only returning to close proximity of the frontier near the town of Herzogenrath. This left Aachen in an exposed position forward of the main defence line — the only fortifications protecting it being the few light Grenzwacht bunkers that had been or were being built at the main border crossing points on the city’s western outskirts. The widening of the work necessitated another expansion of the fortress engineers, the number of inspectorates going from four to five and the staffs from 11 to 14 (the newcomers were Festungs-Inspektion IX, based at Cologne, and Festungs-Pionier-Stäbe 21, 22 and 23).

of Associated Press. Right: The two houses on Augustinerweg form the link with the past.

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Left: A Jeep and trailer pass through the breach. This picture and the one on the preceding page were taken by Harry Harris

Left: A Sherman of the 745th Tank Battalion, the tank unit attached to the 1st Division, rolls through the gap. Note the height of the dragon’s teeth at this point: with these Type 1939 12

five-row obstacles, the rear-most blocks were 1.5 metres high. Right: The historic past obliterated at this spot — only the wood on the crest of the hill remains unaltered.

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From Grüne Eiche, the dragon’s teeth continued uninterruptedly for a distance of seven kilometres. On September 29, 1944, Signal Corps photographer Moran took off in a light aircraft in order to take a series of oblique shots of the Siegfried Line. With the help of the Aachen City Archives we pinpointed this one to the crossroads [10] just west of the village of

Walheim, two kilometres south of Lichtenbusch. The view is looking northwards and the road running from upper left to lower right is the L233 Aachen to Monschau highway. The cluster of buildings at top right is Eisenhütte. Although they do not show up, there are half a dozen pillboxes on the hillock between the two roads.

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OLD L233

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Right: A Google Earth aerial of the same area today shows that only a short section of the Höckerlinie survives to the north-west of the crossroads, completely hidden under a thick cover of trees and undergrowth (above). Note that the present-day L233 has been realigned, just to the west of the old road.

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A little further on, this magnificent view can be had on the east side of the L233 (Monschauer Strasse). All of this was part of the Vorstellung Aachen, the band of the Westwall running in

been given on April 21. By forcing the hastily completion of a fortified line in the West, Hitler wanted to make sure that the Western allies, particularly Britain and France, would not intervene militarily while his armies were deployed against the Czechs. The new building programme went under the code-name of ‘Limes’, after the Latin word for frontier (the Limes Germanicus was the name given by the Romans to the 570-kilometre-long line of forts and watchtowers built to protect their empire from invading Germanic tribes). Within three days of Hitler’s directive, on May 31, the OKH assigned the responsibility of the new task to General der Infanterie Wilhelm Adam, the commander of Heeresgruppen-Kommando 2, who commanded the army units stationed in western Germany. The formations involved were the Grenz-

kommandantur Eifel (Eifel Border Command) and the Generalkommandos Saarpfaltz and Oberrhein (Army Commands Saar-Palatinate and Upper Rhine). From August 30, Adams was also made responsible for the entire supply of the fortification programme. This meant that the Inspektion der Festungen, who hitherto had been responsible for fortifying the western frontier, was no longer in overall charge. However, the fortress engineers remained responsible for surveying the sites for the line, specifying the technical details of individual works, determining the workforce needed, supervising the construction and approving the finished work. In all, some 56,000 fortress engineer troops were deployed in the effort. With the upgrading of the building programme to a scale and tempo so much larger than before, the old system used by the army

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THE LIMES-BAUPROGRAMM (May-October 1938) On May 28, 1938, Hitler issued a directive which totally changed the whole scale and dimension of the fortification project. Calling for an unprecedented increase in numbers and building tempo, he ordered the erection of no less than 10,000 troop shelters and 1,800 machine-gun bunkers along the Reich’s western frontier, the whole project to be finished on October 1, 1938 — i.e. in just four months. This very tall order stood in direct relation to Hitler’s plans for military action against Czechoslovakia in order to wrestle the German-speaking Sudetenland border region from that country — the planned starting date of which he had set for October 2, 1938. The order to prepare for this military operation (code-named ‘Fall Grün’) had already

front of Aachen, construction of which started in October 1938. Behind the dragon’s teeth lay hundreds of bunkers of which today only a handful survive.

This one stands in Lichtenbusch [11] on what is today the corner of Oberforstbacher Strasse and Tannenallee. A forwardfiring machine-gun bunker with an open rear, it is not a Regelbau type but a pillbox built in late 1939, at the request of the troops holding the line during the ‘Phoney War’, to replace a fieldwork position at the same spot. A fair number of them were built in the Vorstellung Aachen, their special purpose being to guard the many roads that ran at perpendicular angle to the frontier in this sector. 14

Another surviving bunker stands on the crest of a rise, just south of Pascalstrasse in Lichtenbusch. An artillery observation bunker, it is again not a Regelbau type but a special design. Since it is located close to where there was a regular Regelbau 121 artillery observation bunker, it is assumed that it was built as a fall-back position in case the main OP was knocked out. It was not marked on any of the official Wehrmacht bunker maps or lists, which might explain why it was not demolished after the war.

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Another oblique aerial by Tech/4 Moran, this one taken just west of the village of Schmithof [12]. The view is looking

south. Again, although they do not show up, there are two pillboxes in the field behind the farm on the left.

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The Google comparison shows that the realigned L233 has cut through the tip of the zig-zag, forming a new crossroads with Schmithofer Strasse. Most of the dragon’s teeth here were

cleared away but two stretches survive. The one at lower left is now hidden under bushes but the one in the centre remains clearly visible. 15

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visit because it vividly illustrates the density of bunkers in the Westwall. The reason that the remains have not been cleared away is probably because the piece of land (between Cockerillstrasse and Meigenstrasse) was originally a Bundeswehr military training area. Today it is freely accessible.

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Above and below: Two kilometres further east, at Stolberg-Münsterbusch [14], lies a stretch of parkland that holds the remains of no less than 14 Westwall bunkers, four of them machine-gun nests, the others all Limes-Regelbau 10 or 11 troop shelters. Although they have all been blown up, it is an interesting site to

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Right: When in March 1938 it was decided to extend the Westwall northwards under the Pionier-Programm, the main line was initially drawn to run behind Aachen, leaving the city itself forward of the defences. When the Vorstellung Aachen was begun in October of that year, this rearward line then became the second line of defence in the Aachen sector. The dragon’s teeth in this rear position were all of the early type, with four rows of teeth instead of five. An almost continuous band ran for over five kilometres between Eilendorf and Stolberg [13]. Several stretches of it remain, some long, some short, some now passing through the gardens of new houses. This is the one at Sebastianusweg, a kilometre south of Eilendorf. It was here on September 15, 1944, that Task Force Doan from Combat Command A of the US 3rd Armored Division found a gap in the line, the tanks nosing aside a road-block of farm wagons and pushing through, thus becoming the first Allied unit to get all the way through the Westwall.

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Left: Not far away, on a piece of rolling countryside between Cockerillstrasse (L221) and Buschmühle on the northern outskirts of Stolberg, stands something very special: the only two bunkers of the Westwall known to have been built by the Reichsarbeitsdienst. Located on the former site of a RAD labour camp, they were commissioned by Arbeitsgauführer Fritz Schinnerer, the chief of the RAD Gau XXXI (Cologne), who wanted to prove that his men were capable of building bunkers independently of the Organisation Todt. (Tens of thousands of youths conscripted into the RAD labour service assisted in the Westwall building project but always under the orders and instructions of the Organisation Todt engineers.) Hitler saw the pair of bunkers on August 27, 1938, during his first inspection tour of the Westwall. Remarkably, one of them features a steel swastika over its entrance. As the public display of the Hakenkreuz is forbidden in Germany it is strange that this one has been left in place, although since then vandals have broken off one of its arms. Let us hope the authorities leave it alone. 16

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Right: On September 13, Task Force Lovelady from Combat Command B of the US 3rd Armored Division made the first penetration of the Westwall at Roetgen [15], advancing another three kilometres down the forest-fringed highway before being halted by German tank and anti-tank fire. Here troops of the 39th Infantry Regiment of the 9th Division, hitching a ride on a Sherman from the 746th Tank Battalion, pass through the Höckerlinie at Roetgen on the 15th. Note the steel beams inserted into the roadway and the locking pillar of the steel swing-gate that closed the road at this point. Below: When we first presented this story back in 1983 (see After the Battle No. 42), the short stretch of dragon’s teeth blocking the narrow valley between the road and the forest (which Eisenhower visited with Bradley in November) was still clearly visible. However, in the years since then, the owner of the land — probably wary of all the ‘Siegfried Line tourists’ trespassing on his meadow — has thoroughly obstructed the view with new plantings of trees and bushes, spoiling much of the comparison. The road in front is the L238, leading left to Roetgen and right to Rott.

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The dragon’s teeth are carried over the Grölisbach by a massive bridge which divides the stream into two canals.

The view from the edge of the wood back to the road. The Höckerlinie is of the 1939 type, with five rows of teeth. The triple swing-barrier can be seen in its opened position.

It is a shame that over the last 30 years the slope has become completely overgrown, blocking the view down to the main road. 17

Right: Deploying south-eastwards from Roetgen, the 39th Infantry cleared the forward band of the Westwall as far as the village of Lammersdorf but there the attack ground to a halt in front of Rollesbroich on September 15. The assault was resumed on the 18th but gains were few. This was one of the strongest sections of the Vorstellung Aachen, giving the defending troops of the 89. Infanterie-Division a strong backbone. On the 20th, Signal Corps photographer Tech/4 William I. Spangle pictured men of the 39th moving through a gap in the line on their way to the front.

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engineers of contracting private firms to build individual defence works was no longer practical. The entire effort needed to be organised on a much grander scale. On June 9, Hitler entrusted the execution of the whole project to Dr Fritz Todt, the man who since 1933 had led the equally massive building of the new Autobahnen. Acting under the title Generalinspektor für das deutsche Strassenwegen (General Inspector for German Motorways), Todt had masterfully mobilised construction firms and workforces throughout Germany to build the motorways and associated bridges, viaducts and other installations. Now, he was to employ this same organisation in fulfilling Hitler’s order for the Westwall. On June 14, Hitler assigned Todt plenipotentiary powers that enabled him to procure building materials and mobilise manpower throughout the Reich. Using the same staff of trusted collaborators and the same building contractors, large and small, from all over Germany, Todt created what soon came to be known as the Organisation Todt. To coordinate efficiently with the Army engineers, he set up his headquarters in the same building that also housed the Inspektion der Westbefestigungen (the Hotel Kaiserhof in Wiesbaden) and created Ober-Bauleitungen (Chief Building Command Staffs) which he

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Right: A long stretch of Höckerlinie remains immediately north-west of Lammersdorf [16]. It can be reached by taking Schiessgasse and Häckeliges Weg, then following the signs to Am Cholera-Friedhof. One can imagine Karel’s exhilaration when he recognised it as the very same section as seen in Spangle’s photograph. Lining up the exact dragon’s teeth, he took this perfect comparison.

Left: About a kilometre north-west from there is a unique object: the only intact Sperrschranke (swing-gate barrier) to remain in the entire Westwall. The obstruction here originally consisted of three barriers (like the one seen at Roetgen) but the two upper ones were removed after the war. The remaining one unfortunately cracked in the middle a few years ago, so that it can no longer be closed. 18

Right: Once the barrier was locked in the pillar on the other side of the road, it could only be opened with a special key. Pairs of anchor pillars remain at many other places along the Westwall but this is the only one where the steel post has not been cut off. It can be reached by taking the B399 Lammersdorf to Zweifall road and then taking the first farm track after Im Kämpchen on the right.

Right: Two kilometres further north along the B399, a short distance into the woods from the Langschoss parking area on the right [17], lies a large cistern bunker. Built in 1939, below the level of the ground, it contains three large basins, each capable of holding 75,000 litres (approximately 20,000 gallons) of water. The water stored here was sufficient to serve over 4,000 men.

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stationed adjacent to the associate FestungsPionier-Stäbe in the various regions. By the autumn of 1938 the Organisation Todt had about a thousand building contractors and sub-contractors and some 250,000 workers employed on erecting fortifications in the West. In addition to the engineer troops and OT workers, the workforce on the Westwall was augmented by units of the Reichsarbeitsdienst (RAD — Reich Labour Service), the National-Socialist semi-militarised labour corps comprised of young men doing six months of obligatory labour service before

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Above: The pillbox-studded valley between Lammersdorf and Rollesbroich remained a static front for over four months, both sides holding on while the battle of the Hürtgen Forest raged to the north and then the Battle of the Bulge erupted in the Ardennes to the south. For most of this period the front was held by the US 78th Infantry Division. In January 1945, Fred Ramage of Keystone pictured a five-man ski patrol of the 310th Infantry, set up and led by Tech/Sergeant James R. Weik (an American of Norwegian descent), making its way through the dragon’s teeth. Right: Karel discovered that the picture was taken just south-east of Lammersdorf, looking south to Paustenbach, the first houses of which can be seen on the ridge. The dragon’s teeth at this point [18] are now completely overgrown, forcing him to take his comparison from their edge (note the iron rods sticking out). The section rising to Paustenbach can just be made out among the trees in the distance. 19

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The anti-tank barrier in this sector of the Vorstellung Aachen ran for a full 12 kilometres, from just north of Lammersdorf all the way south to Monschau. Most of it remains to this day. At Simmerath-Bickerath, a local association in the early 1990s created a Westwall-Wanderweg (Westwall walking path), which leads visitors along a three-kilometre stretch of the Höckerlinie — one of the first initiatives exploiting the tourist potential of the Siegfried Line. The starting point is along the K19 Paustenbach to Simmerath road, just north of the bridge across the Kall river [19].

Between Simmerath and Lammersdorf, on a forested slope above the L12, just opposite of its junction with Lönsstrasse [20], remains a so-called PaK-Garage, a parking shelter for a 3.7cm anti-tank gun. This is one of 18 such shelters built for the Grenzwacht (Border Guard) in the Aachen sector under the PionierProgramm from March 1938 onwards. They were not Regelbau bunkers but a Sonderkonstruktion of D strength (walls and roofs of 30cm thickness). The crew had to roll out the gun to move it into a firing position. Only three other PaK-Garages survive: at Aachen-Bildchen, Roetgen and Monschau-Konzen.

Above: The rearward band of the Westwall in this sector ran through the Hürtgenwald, the scene of bitter and ferocious battles from September 1944 to February 1945. Two kilometres south of Zweifall [21], along the L24 (Jägerhaus-Strasse) to Vossenack, stood Bunkers Nos. 339 and 340. (The entire Westwall had been divided into divisional and regimental sectors and bunkers were usually numbered per regimental sector.) In November 1944, the commanding general of the US 8th Infantry Division (Major General Donald A. Stroh, relieved on November 28 by Brigadier General William G. Weaver) used this pair of blockhouses as his divisional headquarters — note the ‘CG’ signs on the log cabin and the bunker. Right: They stood in the grounds of the Harpers sawmill at No. 136c, across the street from the Forsthaus Zweifall. Both were demolished after the war and whatever remains of them now lies hidden behind stacks of timber. There are several other blown-up bunkers of the Siegfried Line further along this road, all of them sited to cover a bend in the road. 20

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entering the army. Commanded by Reichsarbeitsführer Konstantin Hierl, the RAD assigned units from three of its Gaue (Districts) to assist in the building project. By September, 58,500 RAD workers were employed on the Westwall, their main tasks being to build roads to the construction sites, conceal the building sites from the preying eyes of French and other spies, dig out the pits for the bunker’s foundation, and finally to paint and camouflage the completed installations. Many a bunker was disguised to look like an ordinary farm barn, house, shop or fire-station. The invasion of nearly half a million construction workers from all over Germany did not go unnoticed in the mostly agricultural or forested border regions. Accommodation had to be found or created for them. Numerous hutted camps sprang up to house the RAD troops and labourers, but many others found lodgings in hotels and inns or were billeted in dance halls, schools, monasteries or farm buildings. Many small towns and villages, which hitherto had lived quiet lives, were flooded by the multitude of men descending on them from every province and city of the country, causing both a prospering

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Left: At Simonskall [22], in the steep gorge of the Kall river, remains a large hospital bunker. It is a Limes-Regelbau 32, with 1.5-metre-thick roof and walls, featuring ten rooms and accommodation for two doctors, two orderlies and 20-30 patients. A total of 81 bunkers of this type were built in the Westwall. Simonskall and the bunker were captured by the 3rd Battalion, 110th Infantry, of the US 28th Division on

November 4, 1944. After the war, a timber-frame house was erected on top of it, being replaced in 2008 by the more-modern villa that stands on top of it today. The entrance to the bunker is on the right, below the stairway. Refurbished by the Hürtgenwald Historical Association, it was opened as a museum in 2002, guided tours of the interior (above right and below) being given by appointment.

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trade and social upheaval. Innkeepers and hotel owners were doing roaring business, but the influx of construction workers also led to problems. Many locals complained about the trucks and lorries racing through their villages or about the late-night noise of workers brawling in pubs and cafes. Farmers and landowners complained about the way in which their land was suddenly taken from them. Instances were reported where a team of fortress engineers arrived without prior notification, staked out a plot on a farmer’s property and told the astonished farmer that it was requisitioned for the building of a bunker. Others were enraged about the way the building teams trashed up the crops in the fields or made a mess of the building sites on their land. Naturally there were regulations to compensate a landowner for his loss but bureaucracy was slow and about a quarter of them were still awaiting compensation payment in 1945. The vast building campaign naturally led to a rapid increase in prices and wages. The procurement price of concrete multiplied nearly fivefold, from 65 Reichsmark per cubic metre in 1937 to 300 RM in 1938. To entice building contractors to come work on the Westwall, the government offered them a fixed profit on all their various expenditures which could go as high as 20.5 per cent. Firms were also given a premium of 200 RM per foreman and 15 RM per steelworker provided. A foreman could earn up to 165 RM a week and an unskilled worker up to 90 RM — almost a triplication of their normal wages. Not surprisingly, there were soon reports that construction firms and the supply industry were making inordinate profits and that building sites were overcrowded with too many workers. Todt justified it all by emphasising the vital importance of the Westwall to the Reich’s national security and the short time set for completing the job.

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Right: A kilometre south of Simonskall, in the meadows of the Kall gorge along the L36 Kallstrasse, a lone bunker survives. Small and thinly-roofed, its precise purpose is unknown but it probably served an RAD labour camp that was here in 1938. Each RAD camp housed one Abteilung of 216 men and typically consisted of five wooden barrack huts. 21

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Labour conditions on the Westwall were austere. People worked 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, with little leave, and there were many on-site accidents. The Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Labour Front), responsible for feeding and catering for the labourers, was severely overtaxed and there were many complaints about food and housing. The number of workers disabled by sickness or injuries rose sharply, and many soon began shirking from the job. There were even some strikes.

By now the Westwall was the largest construction site in the world. Between May 1938 and September 1939, 20 per cent of Germany’s total annual production of cement (17.3 million tons), five per cent of its steel (1.2 million tons), and eight per cent of its timber (one million cubic metres) went into the works. As stipulated in Hitler’s directive of May 28, all 11,800 bunkers of the Limes programme were to be of B1 strength, i.e. with roofs and walls of 1-metre thickness. How-

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One of the most-fascinating sites to visit in the entire Westwall is Der Buhlert [23], a densely forested hill located south of Simonskall in the fork of the L160 Germeter to Rollesbroich and the L246 Schmidt to Rollesbroich roads. Here, deep within the forest, are four completely intact bunkers of the rearward band of the Westwall, all built under the 1938 Limes programme. All four lie within a distance of 600 metres of each other along a track that runs on top of the ridge. Above: This is the northernmost one, Bunker No. 132. It is a Limes-Regelbau 10, a troop shelter for 15 men with an attached machine-gun compartment. The shelter part had one embrasure for flanking fire to protect the entrance area, and the attached compartment a frontally-firing machine-gun embrasure (right) and a rifle aperture to protect the bunker’s front and side respectively. With 3,471 specimens built, this was the most-frequent bunker type of the Westwall. However, its design proved tactically unsound because the MG34 crew had to leave the safety of the shelter (the doors on the left) in order to get to their machine-gun station (the door on the right). ever, with the accelerated speed of construction, the old series of Regelbauten had become unpractical because their designs were too cumbersome for mass production; also, the engineers had to take into account the continued scarcity of armoured turrets and embrasure shields. To overcome these two problems, in early June 1938 they introduced an entirely new series of Regelbauten. Its numbering system re-started with No. 1 and by October there were already 40 different types available. To distinguish the new series from the old, the new designs were referred to as Limes-Regelbauten. To further prevent confusion, their numerals were also always typed in red colour (rote Nummer — red number). Thus ‘Limes-Regelbau Rote Nummer 1’ was quite a different machine-gun bunker compared to the old ‘Regelbau B1-1’ of the Pionier-Programm. A major change of the Limes series was that it provided more sorts of bunkers but less variations within a sort: in all, there were now just four variations of machine-gun bunkers with one gun (compared to 21 in the earlier series); four of machine-gun bunkers with two guns (11 in the earlier series); four of anti-tank gun bunkers (11 earlier); only one type of bunker with armoured turrets (six earlier), and two of command post bunkers (one earlier). On the other hand, artillery observation post bunkers now came in eight variations (only two earlier) and there were five entirely new sorts of bunker: troop shelters with an attached machine-gun

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Left: Some 150 metres further south, to the east of the track, is Bunker No. 131, another Limes-Regelbau 10. 22

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compartment (five variations), artillery gun casemates (ten variations), ammunition storage bunkers (two variations) and hospital bunkers (one variation). The main characteristic of the new series was the absence of heavy armoured parts, such as turrets and gun-aperture plates. Only types 1, 1a, 2 and 3 — all machine-gun bunkers — received ‘Panzer-Scharten’, steel aperture shields of 100mm thickness; all the other types had to make do with ‘Maul-Scharten’, open embrasures reinforced with a 10mm steel lining. In all, only 926 bunkers (or less than one per cent of the total) would receive the Panzer-Scharten embrasure shield. On July 1, Hitler issued his Denkschrift zur Frage unserer Festungsanlagen (Memorandum on the Question of our Fortress Works), in which he set forth his thoughts behind the Limes programme. Whereas until now the emphasis had been on machine-gun bunkers, now it was shifted to troop shelters. As Hitler saw it, the main function of bunkers was to protect the troops from shelling and bombardment; once these had been weathered out, the mass of the troops was to emerge from their concrete shelters and fight from open positions, supported by the machine guns in the pillboxes. This explains why, of the 9,700 structures completed under the Limes programme, the great majority — 6,345 — consisted of troop shelters, either Regelbau 10 (a troop shelter for 15 men with attached fighting compartment), Regelbau 10a (same but with a command-post function) or Regelbau 11a (same but with a double capacity of 30 men). With 3,471 specimens built, Regelbau 10 would become the most-occurring bunker type of the Westwall. All three types of troop shelter had a socalled ‘angehängte Kampfraum’ (attached fighting compartment) armed with a machine gun and rifle slit with which the bunker crew could defend its own immediate area. A marked flaw however, which would persist up to early 1939, was that these machine-gun booths had no interior connection to the rest of the bunker. A gunner needed to leave the safety of his billet area in order to reach it, which exposed him to unnecessary danger. All bunkers of the Limes programme were gas-proof and equipped with hand-operated ventilation devices. Most installations had some form of escape hatch. Heat might come from a small coal-burning stove equipped with a tin chimney, both of which could be closed off by a heavy steel door. Each entrance usually had a double set of casehardened steel doors separated by a gasproof vestibule. Sleeping bunks were oblong metal frames with rope netting and suspended from the ceiling. Sanitary facilities were rarely provided. Electric and telephone wires were installed underground.

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Right: Just 100 metres behind No. 131 sits Bunker No. 135. This is a LimesRegelbau 23, a forward-firing machinegun bunker crewed by five men. In all, 458 pillboxes of this type were built in the Westwall.

The Maul-Scharte (‘open-mouthed’ MG embrasure) from inside (left) and outside (right). The fortifications of the Limes programme also included several types of anti-tank obstacles. They were to be constructed forward of the bunker line at places where a natural barrier, such as rivers, mountains or impenetrable forests did not exist. The most

common of these was a band consisting of multiple rows of pyramid-shaped reinforcedconcrete blocks, each row a little higher than the one in front of it. The idea behind this was that an armoured vehicle endeavouring to pass over the barrier would not only get

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Right: The southernmost bunker is No. 139/140. This is a Limes-Regelbau 11, a troop shelter for 27 men with attached machine-gun compartment. A doublecapacity version of Regelbau 10, its design suffered from the same fault as the latter. A total of 1,338 were built in the Westwall. The bunkers on Der Buhlert were occupied and held — first by Grenadier-Regiment 1056 of the 89. Infanterie-Division and then from November 3 by GrenadierRegiment 982 of the 272. VolksgrenadierDivision — throughout the Hürtgenwald battle and subsequent Ardennes offensive, not being finally captured by the US 78th Division until February 5, 1945. 23

BRANDSCHEID

HABSCHEID

HECKHUSCHEID

GROSSKAMPENBERG LÜTZKAMPEN

NIEDER-ÜTTFELD US OFFICIAL HISTORY

LEIDENBORN

The Allied attack against the Siegfried Line was resumed after the Battle of the Bulge. In the Schnee Eifel, the sector facing the northern Ardennes, the VIII Corps of the US Third Army began a drive on Prüm (see After the Battle No. 46), with the 4th Division on the left and the 90th Division on the right. The 4th Division had the rare opportunity to re-fight an earlier stuck on it but, as it climbed the rising blocks, expose its vulnerable underbelly to anti-tank weapons. The Germans nicknamed this type of barrier ‘Höcker’ (humps) but to the Allies they became known as ‘dragon’s teeth’. The initial type, introduced in 1938, was seven metres wide and consisted of four rows of teeth rising in height from 60 centimetres at the front to one metre at the rear. The later type, adopted in 1939, was over 13 metres wide, comprised five to six rows, and rose from 80 centimetres in front to 1.5 metres at rear. The concrete foundation, which extended 70 centimetres above the ground on the approach side, formed an additional obstacle. (Some stretches of the early 1938 model later had another three rows built in front of them, resulting in a seven-row barrier 17 metres wide.) The Germans devised various other types of anti-tank obstacles. These included rows of heavy wooden posts or steel beams embedded in the ground; so-called Hemmkurvenhindernisse (5.7-metre-wide sections of curved steel beams rising to 2.3 metres, linked together to form a continuous blocking screen); concrete walls, one metre thick and several metres high (usually built at the foot of a slope); water-filled ditches, etc — but the dragon’s teeth were the most-widely used. Long stretches of them were built, zigzagging or meandering over open fields and across brooks and valleys. All told they would cover 168 kilometres of the 630-kilometre-long Westwall. 24

engagement over the same ground as back in September 1944, they had already attacked this same area and had cleared the thin line of pillboxes before increasing German strength had brought them to a halt. The shallow bridgehead had been lost again in the Ardennes Offensive: now the 4th Division was to retrace its steps.

In numerous places, roads, country lanes and farm trails passed through the dragon’s teeth. To quickly close these gaps in the event of an enemy attack, the Germans designed various types of special barricades or hinged swing-gates, usually comprising one or more steel barriers. These were usually preceded by three rows of steel beams embedded diagonally in the roadway. Though such obstacles could conceivably be removed or demolished by an attacking force, it would prove difficult under fire from nearby pillboxes. On July 9, the Inspektion der Westbefestigungen gave a first estimate of the cost of the Limes building programme: 520 million Reichsmark for the bunkers; 64 million RM for the anti-tank barriers, 32 million for the line’s communications network, and 19.5 million for the erection of hutted camps for the construction workers. However, this calculation did not include the cost of the bunkers’ armoured doors and turrets, nor of their interior fittings, nor of the construction of worksite access roads, nor of the compensation to be paid to landowners, so the actual costs would be very much higher than the grand total of 635.5 million. It is estimated that total expenditure on the Westwall reached 3.5 milliard Reichsmark. Between August 26 and 29, as the crisis over the Sudetenland was mounting daily, Hitler undertook a first inspection tour of the Westwall. For four days he travelled along the entire line, from Stolberg in the

north to Efringen on the Upper Rhine in the south. The tour was a top-secret affair, carried out without any publicity. As was to be expected, the ambitious building programme did not achieve its goal in the very short time set for it. By the time the deadline of October 1 was reached, the line was considered defensible but it was still far from complete. Many bunkers that had been erected still lacked part or all of their internal fittings and armament. However, the war with Czechoslovakia which Hitler had expected over the Sudetenland and for which he had ordained the rapid completion of the defensive line in the West did not materialise, the crisis being averted at the last moment by the Four-Power Conference at Munich of September 29-30 (see After the Battle No. 62). Certainly the propaganda surrounding the Westwall contributed to Hitler’s success in bluffing France and Britain at the conference table. However, Hitler still needed the line for his next planned move in the East, the military invasion of Poland, planned for September 1939. Already on September 24 he had decreed the continuation of the Limes programme. A week after the Munich Conference, on October 6, he ordered the settingup of 600 additional gun batteries to back up the forward defence lines. This figure was later raised to 1,200. These artillery positions included the construction of several casemates for heavy naval guns along the Upper Rhine — five batteries of three 17cm guns

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The Siegfried Line near Brandscheid (see the map opposite) pictured from the air by Signal Corps photographer Lieutenant

Adrian J. Salvas on February 14, 1945. The 4th Division attacked over this ground on February 4, breaching the line on the 6th.

BLEIALF

REMAINS OF PILLBOX

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TO BRANDSCHEID

The same view is looking north-east, towards Bleialf and the German-Belgian frontier. Most of the dragon’s teeth have been removed or been buried but parts of the line can still be recog-

nised as bands of undergrowth. Exploring the same terrain on the ground, Karel found the remains of a demolished bunker in the lower right corner of the square patch of wood. 25

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Attacking on February 6, the 90th Division’s 359th Infantry took the village of Habscheid (see the map on page 24) before dawn, passing through the heavy gate of steel beams anchored in concrete that blocked the main road at the entrance of the village. However, when engineers arrived to blow up the obstacle, they discovered that the infantry passing in the dark had failed to take out enemy machine guns in nearby pillboxes that were sited to cover the gate. Alerted by the explosion, the Germans suddenly came to life, spraying the engineers with automatic fire and calling down mortar and Nebelwerfer fire.

It was only after a 155mm self-propelled gun arrived to knock out the pillboxes that Habscheid could be properly cleared. Later Signal Corps photographer Tech/4 James A. Ryan pictured men of Company E of the 358th Infantry passing through the road-block. This type of barricade, known by the Germans as Beton-Sperren, comprising four heavy steel beams mounted in two concrete anchor blocks, was built in many places along the Westwall. Much stronger than the Sperrschranke (swing-gate barrier) it was the preferred method to block main roads.

Right: We often wondered what this well-known picture of the Siegfried Line would look like today and Karel was successful in pinpointing it on the L16 Hauptstrasse at the western entrance to the village. Nothing at all remains of the road-block’s heavy concrete anchors. However, the bunker that fired on the engineers is still there, a short distance further up on the left-hand side of the road, albeit completely buried under soil and now just a mound of earth. 26

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each (in Regelbau 30 and 30a casemates), one of two 24cm guns (in Regelbau 34 casemates) and one with two 30,5cm guns (in Regelbau 35 casemates) — all of them completed in the autumn of 1938. It was during this time that the name ‘Westwall’ came to the fore as the term for the new fortified line. Probably it was first coined by construction workers employed on the line, and the name caught on. Hitler first used it on May 20, 1939, in an Order of the Day to the workers and soldiers on the Western front. It was also during this time that Germany geared up a massive propaganda campaign, designed for consumption both at home and abroad, to sell the Westwall as ‘the strongest

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Left: The rows of heavy logs sunk into the ground as an antitank obstacle (seen starting on the right-hand side of the road in the previous picture) continued down into the valley of the

Bierbach stream. This type of barricade, known as BaumphalSperre (tree-trunk barrier) was not very effective. Another picture by Tech/4 Ryan. Right: The same view today.

defence line of all times’. An endless stream of newspaper and magazine articles, posters, postcards, brochures and newsreel reports extolled the impregnability of the new line calling it, in Hitler’s words, ‘German security in concrete and steel’. At the same time, while emphasising that the Westwall was an installation merely designed for defence, the Nazi propagandists denounced France’s Maginot Line as being first and foremost a springboard for attack. In early August 1939, when Hitler’s design on Danzig strained German-Polish relations to breaking point, Hitler ordered a film on the Westwall to be shown in all German cinemas to bolster home-front conviction that Germany was inviolate from the West.

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Right: A little further south, near the village of Heckhuscheid (see the map on page 24), the 90th Division’s 357th Infantry had a hard time fighting through the bunker line as it pushed south-eastwards towards Pronsfeld, not breaking free of the Siegfried Line until February 10. Tech/4 Ryan photographed men of the regiment and armoured support moving though the dragon’s teeth. Note the Czech hedgehogs and the broken farm cart that the Germans had used in a futile attempt to block the road.

Left: Karel discovered the picture had been taken on the L1 Heckhuscheid to Üttfeld road, just a kilometre south of Heckhuscheid. The overgrown foundation of the anti-tank obstacle remains on the right-hand side of the road.

Right: Just a few metres further to the right (outside the picture), the dragon’s teeth themselves survive intact, a long band of concrete obstacles stretching out into the forest in the background. 27

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Right: The same stretch today but looking in the opposite direction, pictured from beside the information panel. 28

The Höckerlinie at Grosskampenberg as it appeared in March 1945.

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THE LUFTVERTEIDIGUNGSZONE WEST In May 1938, simultaneous with his directive ordering the Limes programme, Hitler issued an order for the construction of an air defence zone in the immediate rear of the Westwall, its purpose being to protect the German interior against enemy bomber and fighter attacks. Hermann Göring, in his capacity of Reich aviation minister and supreme commander of the Luftwaffe, gave out the necessary orders on June 1 and planning and surveying began immediately. The new line, which came to be known as the Luftverteidigungszone West (LVZ West — Air Defence Zone West), was to consist of a belt of about 60 heavy and light anti-aircraft batteries distributed over a curved area from Jülich in the north to Speyer in the south. The batteries were to be supplemented by anti-aircraft balloons and fighter aircraft operating from Luftwaffe airfields in the zone. Each battery was to have three 3,7cm light or four or five heavy dual-purpose 8,8cm guns in open emplacements and be fitted out with its own troop shelters, firecontrol posts, ammunition storage, water reservoirs and fighting bunkers for local defence. In November 1938 orders were given to extend the line further north, to beyond Mönchengladbach, and further south, along the Upper Rhine through the Schwarzwald forest all the way to the Swiss border. Thus the number of batteries increased to 214. It was a building project of considerable magnitude. In overall charge was Luftverteidigung West (Air Defence Command West). Planning, surveying and supervising was the task of engineers from the Luftwaffe-Unterabschnitte (Air Force Districts), who worked closely with their assigned Ober-Bauleitungen of the Organisation Todt. As with the rest of the Westwall, manpower was provided by the building firms working under the Organisation Todt and by the Reichsarbeitsdienst, the latter assigning some 4,200 men to the work.

fighting that occurred here in September 1944 and February 1945. The panel stands just south of the village, at the junction of Hauptstrasse and Heerstrasse.

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Three kilometres south of Heckhuscheid, at Grosskampenberg, an information panel has been set up next to the dragon’s teeth line, describing the construction of the Westwall and the

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Irrhausen. Here a Jeep from the division passes through the teeth via another Beton-Sperre road-block, pictured by Signal Corps photographer Private Kenneth H. Parker on the 21st.

The wartime caption only stated that the photo was taken near ‘Nar-Uttfeld’ but by plotting the trace of the Höckerlinie on a map and doggedly checking out each road that crossed the line near Nieder-Üttfeld, Karel finally found the spot here on the L1

Lützkampen to Leidenborn road, four kilometres west of Nieder-Üttfeld. The dragon’s teeth on the left and right have been buried under soil and planted over but a few concrete blocks remain in the left-hand verge.

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Having been halted because of crumbling supply roads, the VIII Corps resumed the offensive on February 18, the 11th Armored Division thrusting due south to capture high ground near

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Turning his camera to the right, Parker’s next shot showed half-tracks moving up the road past two pillboxes.

Covered with earth after the war, the pillboxes remain as low mounds on the otherwise flat high ground. With the bushes

that grow on top of the buried dragon’s teeth obstructing his view, Karel took his comparison just forward of them. For the bunkers at the flak batteries, the Luftwaffe engineers had their own series of Regelbauten. Far more limited in scope than that of their army colleagues, it comprised only seven types, five of them identical or similar to Regelbauten from the Limes series: B-Stand: machine-gun bunker (similar to Regelbau 1). F-Stand: troop shelter for 18 men (similar to Regelbau 10a).

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Left: Although not an authentic part of the Westwall, this monument at Stolzembourg in Luxembourg on the bank of the Our river deserves a place in our story because it commemorates the very first Allied patrol to enter Germany and reconnoitre the Westwall. Here at 1805 hours on September 11, 1944, a fiveman patrol led by Staff Sergeant Warner W. Holzinger of 2nd Platoon, Troop B, 85th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron of the US 5th Armored Division waded across the Our at this point and climbed the hill on the far bank, there spotting a large number of Westwall pillboxes. 30

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Right: When the Westwall was first planned in 1936 its northern anchor was at Irrel, a small town on the Prüm river north-west of Trier. It was here also that two of the B-Werke were built, the strongest type of fortification in the Westwall. B-Werke, of which 32 were built, were large, multi-storied fortress blocks of B strength (roof and walls 1.5 metres thick) that were heavily armed and designed to fight independently for at least four weeks. The two at Irrel were B-Werk N38410 ‘Katzenkopf’ and N38420 ‘Nimswerk’, each one located on a hill overlooking the town. Katzenkopf (also known as Panzerwerk Seeckt Nr. 1520) had two 20P7 armoured turrets with six apertures, each mounting two MG34 machine guns; an M19 rapid-firing 5cm mortar and a rotating flame-thrower (both weapons built into the roof and operated from within); a 90P9 small infantry observation cupola, plus a 21P7 artillery observation turret. It had 41 rooms divided over two floors, and two underground tunnels, one of 41 metres leading to the fort’s own water well, the other of 75 metres and leading to one of the machine-gun turrets. Its garrison numbered 84 men. Completed in 1939, it did not see action until February 26-27, 1945, when it defended itself against attacks by the US 76th Infantry Division. Here GIs are pictured outside the main block. Right: Katzenkopf was blown up by French Army engineers in 1947, the ruined remains being bulldozed with earth. In 1976 members of the local volunteer fire brigade began excavating and cleaning out the shattered remains of the fortress, restoring it to such an extent that it was ready to be opened to the general public in 1979 — thus becoming the first Westwall museum to open in Germany.

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K-Stand: command post and troop shelter for 24 men (similar to Regelbau 31). M-Stand: ammunition storage bunker. Pz-Stand: battery command post and anti-tank gun garage for 15 men with small armoured observation turret. U-Stand: troop shelter for 27 men (similar to Regelbau 11). V-Stand: troop shelter for 12 men on forward hill slope (similar to Regelbau 10b2). Construction proceeded rapidly and by March 1940, the LVZ West had most of its batteries in place. Beside their flak guns in open emplacements, they comprised a total of 1,544 reinforced-concrete structures: 251 machine-gun bunkers; 470 troop shelters of type F and 43 of type K; 172 ammo bunkers; 141 battery command posts; 438 troop shelters of type U and 29 of type V.

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A GI inspecting the impact of 90mm shells on one of the armoured cupolas. THE AACHEN-SAAR-BAUPROGRAMM (October 1938-December 1939) As building continued at a feverish tempo, Hitler had already decided to further expand the Westwall. On October 9, in his speech at the Gau Party Day held at Saarbrücken, he announced that Saarbrücken and Aachen — the two big cities that had been left outside the new defensive line — were now to be included in it. Already on the 12th, Heeresgruppen-Kommando 2 issued its plans for the Aachen sector. The new line was to branch off from the existing one at Herzogenrath in the north and run forward of Aachen to rejoin the original line near the village of Steckenborn in the south. An estimated 700 to 800 machine-gun bunkers, troop shelters and observation post bunkers were foreseen, as were several long stretches of dragon’s teeth anti-tank barriers. The new line would incorporate the 138 light Grenzwacht bunkers that had been started in this sector earlier that year.

All the turrets were removed from the fort by the French after the war but the Irrel firemen have constructed nice replicas made of concrete. This is the replacement for the outlying machine-gun turret. 31

SINZ

TETTINGEN

94th DIVISION MEMORIAL

B-WERK BESSERINGEN

Plans for the new line shielding Saarbrücken were ready on October 26. It would branch off from the existing line at Beckingen in the north and follow the Saar river to Saarbrücken, then circle around this big city to include the southern suburb of SanktArnual and rejoin the original line near Niederwürzbach east of the city. Here too, there would be several stretches of dragon’s teeth to protect open areas. The new building programme meant that both Aachen and Saarbrücken would be enveloped by a double line of fortifications, giving defences in these areas considerable depth. The total number of bunkers planned under the Limes programme had now increased from 11,800 to 14,638. However, the overwhelming majority of these had yet to materialise. By December 1938, only 945 bunkers had been fully completed and been handed over to the Army. A further 10,024 were under construction, of which 8,274 were ready in concrete and 1,750 could only provisionally be defended. As building continued, and designs of existing bunker types were revised and improved, the fortress engineers introduced yet another series of Limes-Regelbauten. At first numbered 1 to 17, they were re-classified on December 4, forming ‘red numbers’ 101 to 130, later extended to 139. Right: Just north of the village of Sinz (see the map above), along the Kreuzweiler Strasse, remains a Regelbau 501 which was a troop shelter for 14 men. In all, 29 bunkers of this type were built along the Westwall. The yard in front served as a mortar position. Now beautifully restored by the private owner, Herr Sebastian Kirch, it is today another Westwall Museum, open the first Sunday of every month. 32

that extended from the main Westwall line. The US Third Army first approached it in November 1944 but did not finally break through it until January 1945.

The main tactical change compared to the earlier Limes models was that no longer were there to be any machine-gun bunkers firing frontally; as far as possible, all bunkers were now to give flanking fire, creating an impregnable barrier of interlocking lines of fire. Also, every firing embrasure was now to be fitted out with a 100mm-thick armoured shield, and in cases where frontal fire could not be avoided it had to be 200mm. A main improvement in bunker layout compared to previous models was that machine-gun compartments within a bunker were now no longer separate from the troop-shelter part but connected to it. Also, the new regula-

tions for the first time allowed works to be erected in mirror-form. Each type now came in four variations: (a) with flanking machine gun and small infantry observation cupola; (b) with flanking machine gun and periscope; (c) with small infantry observation cupola only, and (d) with periscope only. The thickness of the reinforced concrete was also increased. On December 23, the Inspektion der Festungen instructed that all bunkers were to be built, no longer in Baustärke B1, but in the stronger category B. At the same time they revised the definition of category B, changing it from 1.5 metres to

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The Orscholz-Riegel was a switch position built in early 1940 to protect the triangle of German territory lying between the Moselle and Saar rivers. In effect, it was a defensive position

US OFFICIAL HISTORY

OBERLEUKEN

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The dragon’s teeth of the Orscholz line ran almost continuously from the village of Tettingen eastwards via Oberleuken to Orscholz, interrupted only by stretches of impenetrable woodland. Tettingen was attacked twice, first by the 358th Infantry of the US 90th Division on November 23-25, 1944 and then — after the Americans had been forced to relinquish the ground due to the outbreak

of the Ardennes counter-offensive further north — again by the 376th Infantry of the US 94th Division on January 14, 1945. On January 18, the 11. Panzer-Division counter-attacked from Sinz, and Tettingen was almost lost yet again but he Americans held on. Signal Corps photographer Heimberger pictured men of the 94th Division ‘racing for cover across the dragon’s teeth’ on the 19th.

2 metres (the old classification was henceforth referred to as ‘B-alt’ and the new one as ‘B-neu’). The weakest of the old categories, Baustärke D (30 centimetres), had already been completely abolished in June. On January 19, 1939, the OKH gave out orders to implement the new list of Regelbauten and Baustärken, the construction phase that followed becoming known as the Neubau-Programm (New Construction Programme).

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Right: Although there is little to confirm the comparison except the lay of the land, this is certainly the same spot. The dragon’s teeth have been demolished but Karel found part of their concrete foundation still in place on the left. The picture was taken at the southern exit of Tettingen, just beside the main road to Wochern.

Left: A long stretch of Höckerlinie survives on the other side of the road, close to the village church.

Right: An information panel has been erected here with a map showing the Westwall defences in the Tettingen sector. 33

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Alongside the B406 between Sinz and Oberleuken, on a ridge overlooking the Orscholz-Riegel battlefield (see the map on page 32), stands a monument to the US 94th Infantry Division — quite remarkable because it is one of the very few unit memorials for a World War II American division to be erected on German territory. This was as a result of meetings between

access tunnels to positions on forward hill slopes and other exposed positions. Plans were for 11 of such systems to be started in 1937. Hitler, however, was not in favour of tunnels and their construction was not pressed forward under the Limes programme. It was not until the end of 1938 that work on them was resumed, the continued

shortage of steel forcing a decision to fall back on mined tunnels. One of the tunnel systems that materialised, and by far the largest, was that at Gerstfeldhöhe, in the Palatinate hills south of Pirmasens, which had a planned length of 13 kilometres (of which over a kilometre was actually completed). From early 1939, and particularly

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From early on, underground tunnel systems and galleries had been included in the plans drawn up for the Westwall. Within the concept of the Festungs-Bau, the strongest of the three forms of fortification envisaged by the engineers in 1935, the tunnel systems were to serve as underground barracks and supply bases in the rear and the galleries as

veterans from both countries and it was dedicated in October 1991. What makes it even more special is that it incorporates a memorial tablet left here by Company M of the division’s 302nd Infantry Regiment in November 1949 to commemorate nine of its members who fell in battle. It is locally known as the Friedensdenkmal (Peace Monument).

Left: Little else remains of the Orscholz Line, except for a stretch of dragon’s teeth alongside the L77 Oberleuken to Orscholz road about two kilometres west of the latter village. 34

Close to the road the line of concrete crosses a small stream, the Schwarzbruchbach. Right: Nearby the participants of a youth camp have brightened up some of the concrete blocks.

German troops entering an unidentified B-Werk in 1940 — a propaganda image from the ‘Phoney War’. the installation of armoured turrets along the entire stretch of the line. Up to 25 heavy turrets of Baustärke B (thickness 295mm) could now be delivered monthly, and they were to be urgently installed in the more vital sectors. By March of 1939 it could be said that a great deal had been achieved in a very short time. However, as many sector and area commanders reported, there was still much to be desired. The majority of the bunkers were not yet fully finished and could only be used for improvised defence. It had also turned out that, due to the hasty surveying, a considerable number of bunkers had been

sited in positions that were tactically wrong or completely exposed to enemy observation. In many places the defences comprised only a thin battle line and lacked depth. Long stretches of the anti-tank barriers and many of the rearward artillery positions were still not ready. Between May 14 and 19, 1939, Hitler embarked on a third tour of inspection of the Westwall. In contrast with his earlier trips, this one was not kept secret but, quite the reverse, fully exploited for propaganda purposes. Starting at Herzogenrath, his motorcade cheered on by throngs of civilians and Westwall workers, he travelled along the

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after the army mobilised in August later that year, the construction of tunnels gained new momentum, many smaller installations being completed. Often consisting of two parallel tunnels with a connecting gallery, they mostly housed divisional, regimental or battalion command posts and hospitals. On March 2, an order from Heeresgruppen-Kommando 2 (now under General der Infanterie Erwin von Witzleben) announced the end of the Limes programme. Sites and installations still under construction were to be completed, with priority going to those in the Aachen and Saarbrücken sectors. Another priority, ordered on March 30, was

Of the 32 B-Werke built in the Westwall, that at Besseringen (see the maps on pages 32 and 37) is the only one preserved completely intact. Known as B-Werk N38401, its construction took over two years, being completed in December 1939. Of a

similar design as B-Werk Katzenkopf, it had 44 rooms divided over two floors, a plethora of modern fortress weapons, machinery and supplies to maintain itself autonomously for four weeks, and was garrisoned by a crew of 85-90 men. 35

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the two extra metres of concrete to the roof. Nonetheless, it was achieved with at least two of the B-Werke, the one at Igel and the one at Schaidt.) On August 2, Hitler created a special medal to honour the planners and workers of the Westwall. Known as the Deutsche Schutzwall-Ehrenzeichen, by January 1941 a total of 622,064 had been awarded. Germany mobilised on August 26, the Wehrmacht invaded Poland on September 1, and two days later Britain and France declared war on Germany. With mobilisation came an order for the general evacuation of all civilians from the so-called ‘Red Zone’ — the ten-kilometre-wide band of territory along the frontier’s main battle line. Within a few days over half a million civilians left their homestead, taking cattle and other livestock with them, to move to evacuation and reception centres deeper into the interior.

Work on the Westwall was only suspended for a few days but thereafter continued as before. By now, the line (excluding the air defences of LVZ West) consisted of 14,275 reinforced-concrete buildings: 11,167 were infantry bunkers, 1,160 anti-tank gun positions, 1,809 artillery sites and 139 constructions for other purposes. The advent of war brought several organisational changes. Heeresgruppen-Kommando 2 was succeeded by Heeresgruppe C under Generaloberst Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb, which now occupied the frontier line

STADT MERZIG

STADT MERZIG

line, through the Eifel, Saarland and Upper Palatinate, inspecting pillboxes, bunkers, gun sites, anti-aircraft positions, the tunnel system at Gerstfeldhöhe, etc, finally ending his tour at Efringen on the Rhine. The trip was widely covered in the German Press and newsreels. On May 27 and 28, and again on July 29, Hitler returned to Saarbrücken for another, less-publicised, inspection of the Westwall in that sector. Although reasonably satisfied with what he had seen, Hitler followed up his inspections with a whole series of orders and instructions for local improvements. One such directive ordered the wall and roof strength of the B-Werke, all 32 of which were now finished or nearing completion, to be increased from 1.5 to 3.5 metres. (This was no sinecure as it entailed the temporary removal of the 50-tonne armoured turrets from the deck of the bunkers in order to add

STADT MERZIG

Above: The original armoured turrets remain on its roof. The two large ones are 20P7 machine-gun turrets with six firing apertures, the smaller one in the middle being a Kleinstglocke 90P9 — an infantry observation turret. Right: The inside roofs of the 20P7 turrets still feature the numbered and coloured segments indicating observation and firing arcs for each of the six firing apertures.

The only B-Werk not blown up by the French Army after the war, it was patiently dug out and restored by members of the Merzig branch of the Bundeswehr-Reservisten-Kameradschaft (Army Reserve Veterans Association) from 1997 onwards. Put on the protected list and maintained by the Merzig-Besseringen 36

municipality since 2002, it can now be visited on Sundays and bank holidays from April to September. The fort is located at the southern end of Besseringen, tucked away behind a large car dealership at the junction of the B51 and the access road to the Strasse zur Ell.

SINZ

TETTINGEN

BESSERINGEN

BIETZEN

DÜPPENWEILER

DILLINGEN

Reproduced from Michelin Sheet No. 242

The section along the Saar river north of Saarlautern (Saarlouis in French) was among the strongest of the entire Siegfried Line. command and the Inspekteur der Westbefestigungen was replaced by the Höhere Pionier-Offizier für die Landesbefestigung West (Higher Engineer Officer for the Fortifica-

tion of Territory in the West), soon replaced in turn by the General der Pioniere bei der Heeresgruppe C (Commanding General of Engineers at Heeresgruppe C).

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with two armies, the 1. Armee under General von Witzleben and the 7. Armee under General der Artillerie Friedrich Dollmann. The Organisation Todt was put under Army

Left: At the village of Bietzen, a Limes-Regelbau 10a has been preserved and made into a bunker museum. A troop shelter with attached machine-gun compartment, it could accommodate 14 men. With 1,536 built, it was the second-most-common type of bunker of the Westwall. This one was built in 1939 and had roof and walls two metres thick. Positioned on the slope overlooking the Saar river valley, it lies somewhat hidden away in a cul-de-sac off Zum Mühlengrund below the village church.

Right: Another Limes-Regelbau 10a turned into a Westwall museum lies five kilometres further east, right along the L346 (Dieffler Strasse) at the western entrance to the village of Düppenweiler. The machine-gun compartment of this type had two embrasures. This particular bunker, No. 833, was built in 1938 and therefore had the old roof and wall thickness of 1.5 metres (from December of that year all bunkers of B strength were to have two metres of concrete). It was restored by the local historical association and opened to the public in 1996. 37

REGELBAU 120b

8

24

11

25

33

31 32

US OFFICIAL HISTORY

20

On December 6, 1944, the US 90th Division made an assault crossing over the Saar river opposite Dillingen. The town was a strongpoint in the Westwall and the residential part closest to the river, Pachten, was studded with pillboxes. In two weeks of grim fighting, the 90th Division captured many of these,

War) continued, their troops were available as extra labour force to lay minefields, help complete the works, erect barbed-wire obstacles, refine camouflage, etc. On September 29, the fortress engineers issued a new list of Regelbauten — their fourth since 1936. (Introduced just four weeks after the outbreak of war, they were also referred to as Kriegs-Regelbauten — wartime types.) Numbered in the 500 series

(Nos. 501 to 518), the main characteristics of its bunkers were their simplified form and a further reduction in volume of building materials needed for each work. New compared to all the earlier lists was that this one included Regelbauten for field howitzers. Another peculiarity was that it contained no standard model for bunkers with an armoured turret, only Sonder-Konstruktionen (special designs).

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On September 25, von Leeb issued his orders for the continued work on the line. Most of this would be devoted to completing and deepening already existing installations, particularly around Saarbrücken and further east. As Fritz Todt had agreed with Hitler, a workforce of 60,000 men would be made available. The fact that regular infantry divisions now manned the Westwall installations meant that, as long as the ‘Sitzkrieg’ (Phoney

carving out a good bridgehead into Dillingen . . . only to receive orders to abandon the hard-won ground two weeks later! This was due to the division being needed to help stave off the German counter-offensive in the Ardennes further north. Many of the bunkers at Dillingen survive intact.

In the grounds of what is today the municipal sports ground on In der Lach stands Bunker No. 8, a pillbox featuring a 20P7 machine-gun turret with six firing apertures, its 295mm-thick cupola pock-marked with shell impacts. The latter were not suffered during actual combat but as a result of test-firings carried out by the 90th Division during their two-week tenure of the Dillingen bridgehead. 38

Just a little south of there, close to the junction of In der Lach and Fischerstrasse, stands Bunker No. 11. A Regelbau 107b pillbox for 12 men, it had two machine guns giving flanking fire to north and south, thus holding two large stretches of the riverbank in its cross-fire. It shows clear damage from the fighting in December 1944. There were 139 pillboxes of this type in the Westwall.

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FINAL WORK ON THE WESTWALL (January-June 1940) The year 1940 saw the construction of three separate extensions of the line, known respectively as the Geldern-Stellung, the Orscholz-Riegel and the Spichern-Stellung. With the outbreak of war in September 1939, the German High Command had to consider the possibility that the opposing armies would attack through Belgium and Holland and circumvent the Westwall to the north. To prevent this, a decision was taken to extend the line further north, from Brüggen via Geldern and Goch and through the Reichswald forest to the banks of the Rhine at Rindern near Kleve. Known as the Geldern-Stellung, the extension was originally to consist of 434 bunkers (250 troop shelters, 150 pillboxes, ten machine-gun bunkers with armoured turrets, two artillery observation posts and 22 regimental and battalion command posts). To oversee the new task, two Festungs-Pionier-Stäbe (Nos. 27 and 28) were transferred from eastern Germany and redeployed in the West under Festungs-Inspektion IX in early September 1939, being stationed at Geldern and Goch respectively. (This increased the total number of such staffs in western Germany to 16.)

Further away from the river, in the grounds of the Realschule secondary school along Franz-Meguin-Strasse, remains yet another pillbox with a 20P7 armoured turret, No. 32.

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The dearth of concrete and steel continued to handicap the progress of building. On December 20, the shortages were such that the OKH was forced to issue an order that all sites where the reinforced concrete had not yet gone above floor level were to halt construction. Exempt from this order were only artillery observation posts, gun casemates and a few other important works.

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Above: Another half kilometre further south, in the children’s playground along Annastrasse, stands Bunker No. 20. It is a Regelbau 114b SK (Sonderkonstruktion) in Baustärke A, in other words a pillbox of 3,5-metre strength with an armoured machine-gun turret with six firing apertures crewed by 12 men. In all, 42 of this type were built in the Westwall. In 1944 this bunker stood in open ground, with an open field of fire towards the river. Completely restored by the local Verein Projekt Westwall historical association, it was opened as a Westwall Museum in 2008. It is open every second and third Sunday from April to October.

A further 300 metres down the road, on the corner of Franz-Meguin-Strasse and Rosen-Strasse, stands Bunker No. 31, a machine-gun bunker. 39

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Further north along Berckheim-Strasse, beyond the railway station and close to another road viaduct, survive two more pillboxes, Nos. 24 and 25. This is No. 24.

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Just behind these bunkers, the railway line and Dillingen station shunting yards formed a second line of defence and just over the viaduct on Brücken-Strasse, built into the embankment, is pillbox No. 33. The shell damage and bullet marks are evidence of the heavy fighting that occurred here in December 1944.

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Left: An American 75mm HE shell remains embedded in the northern wall of No. 25 (right).

On the hill overlooking Dillingen from the north is a Regelbau 120b, an artillery observation post bunker with a 441P01 armoured turret crewed by eight men. It lies hidden away in the trees beside the town’s Ehrenmal (war memorial), 40

which can be reached by taking Nordallee right up to its end, and then taking the walking trail leading into the woods to the right. In all, 96 OP bunkers of this type were built in the Westwall.

4 7 6

5 1

8

3

2

Reproduced from Michelin Sheet No. 242

In October 1939 Hitler decreed that the city of Saarbrücken — which, like Aachen, had until then been left forward of the Westwall — was now to be included in it. This unleashed the so-called

the sector on December 24, the commander of Infanterie-Regiment 202 expressed his desire to construct a troop shelter west of Spichern, and this drew the Führer’s attention to it. Within a day, Fritz Todt had prepared a plan for the new line, which comprised a series of bunkers starting immediately south of Saarbrücken and running in a 15-kilometre-wide arc across the German-French frontier via Spichern and Stiring-Wendel to Petite-Rosselle. The order to start building was given on January 11 and the line was completed in the spring.

By May 1940, the Westwall consisted of 11,820 infantry bunkers, 1,192 anti-tank gun positions, 2,673 artillery sites, 1,544 installations of the LVZ West and 32 B-Werke — a grand total of 17,261 structures. Of these, 82 per cent had been built in strength categories B1 and B-alt (1 and 1.5 metres), 11 per cent in strength B-neu (2 metres), three per cent in C (60 centimetres), two per cent in D (30 centimetres) and also a mere two per cent in the strongest category A (3.5 metres). A total of 691 armoured turrets, of both threeand six-aperture type, had been installed.

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Of the 434 planned works, only 142 were actually completed by the spring of 1940 — eight Regelbau types 107 (pillboxes with two machine guns) and 134 types 102v (troop shelters for 27 men) — forming a thin single belt of scattered bunkers backing up natural obstacles. The Orscholz-Riegel was a blocking line designed to defend a piece of German territory that lay between the Moselle and Saar rivers but forward of the main Westwall line along these same rivers. Known as the Moselle-Saar Triangle, the area was considered vital enough to be included in the defences. Plans for it had existed since early 1939, a survey of its proposed trace having already been carried out in January-February of that year, but due to shortages of building materials its construction did not begin until 1940. As finally decided, the line ran from Trier southwards along the Moselle to Wiesnennig, then eastwards via Tettingen and Oberleuken to Orscholz, where it joined the main line along the Saar. Its main part was the 12-kilometre stretch between Wiesnennig and Orscholz. In all, the line included 75 bunkers and 8,5 kilometres of dragon’s teeth. Work on the line progressed well and was completed in the spring. The Spichern-Stellung was unique in that it was a section of the Westwall partly constructed on French territory. In early November 1939, the French High Command decided to evacuate their troops from the socalled Spichern Heights, the high ground on the border just south of Saarbrücken. This move gave German commanders the unexpected opportunity to improve their defences by occupying the French heights (which, incidentally, had been the site of an important French victory in the FrancoPrussian war of 1870). When Hitler visited

Aachen-Saar-Bauprogramm and within the space of a few months numerous fortifications were constructed in the narrow strip of land between Saarbrücken and the German-French frontier.

One of these was an anti-tank obstacle at the southern suburb of Sankt-Arnual ([1] on the map). A 700-metre-long stretch remains hidden under trees and bushes on the southern slope of the Petersberg, between Harth-Strasse and the Verlängerte JuliusKiefer-Strasse. 41

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It is ironic that one of the very best-preserved sectors of the Siegfried Line is not situated in Germany but — believe it or not — in France! This came about because in November 1939 the French High Command decided to abandon the Spichern Heights [2], a piece of high ground immediately south of Saarbrücken, judging it safer to pull their forces back to the Maginot Line. Seizing the opportunity, the Germans lost no time in occupying the high ground and reinforcing it with a line of bunkers and pill-

boxes. As these were on French territory, the French Army saw no need to demolish them after the war, hence they are now among the most-intact bunkers of the entire Westwall. At the entrance of Spichern village, near the sports ground, is ‘Wotan’, a Regelbau 505 casemate for a 3.7cm anti-tank gun crewed by six men. In 1944-45 the bunker’s interior was adapted to enable it to hold a 7.5cm gun. Only 12 bunkers of this type were built in the whole Westwall and this is the only one to survive.

and finished with complete German victory six weeks later, made further work on the Westwall seem superfluous. Already on June 28, six days after France had signed the Armistice, the OKH issued a directive ordering the end of all construction work on the Westwall. Bunkers on the verge of concretepouring were to be completed but those in the early stages of erection were to be halted, their sites cleared and back-filled. Com-

pleted bunkers and installations were to be moth-balled, i.e. closed up, and all movable equipment (machine guns, optical instruments, etc) removed and safely stored in engineer parks to the rear. Earthworks and trenches were to be filled in, minefields cleared and wire obstacles taken down. Lines of dragon’s teeth could not be dismantled but in many places low wooden viaducts were built over them to facilitate local traffic.

An American M24 Chaffee stands outside to commemorate the men of the US 70th Infantry Division who fought here in the winter of 1944-45. A gift from the division’s veterans association, it was dedicated in May 1997.

Walking down the path that leads into the forest from ‘Wotan’ one finds numerous other Westwall bunkers. This is a Regelbau 509a, an artillery observation post bunker for six men. It did not have the observation cupola that was usual for such bunkers. Instead its roof was covered with a 7P7 armoured embrasure shield, the observer putting a scissors binoculars through its aperture. There were 87 bunkers of this type in the Westwall.

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The line was far from complete but, even if its strength had been mainly propagandistic, it had served its purpose: by helping to discourage the western Allies to attack Germany, it had allowed Hitler to invade Czechoslovakia and then Poland without being attacked from the rear and confronted with a war on two fronts. The German invasion of the Low Countries and France, which started on May 10

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Above: A little further on stands a Regelbau 503, a large machine-gun bunker built to house 18 men. For observation it

did not have a cupola but a periscope. Below: Another Regelbau 503 can be seen nearby. The Westwall had 60 of them.

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DERELICTION AND DISMANTELING (1940-44) For the next four years, the Westwall languished in a kind of sleep. All bunkers, especially the costly B-Werke, were off limits and carefully guarded. As time progressed, the military increasingly handed over responsibility of guarding and maintaining many a bunker to local caretakers, often a party official or the private landowner. From 1942 onwards, as the Allied bomber offensive grew in intensity, numerous bunkers and underground installations were released for use as air raid shelters for the local civilian population. Especially the inhabitants of Saarbrücken profited from the over 200 Westwall bunkers near the city. However, after Hitler ordained the building of the Atlantikwall — the new defence line along the North Sea and Atlantic shores from Norway to the south of France — on August 25, 1942, the Westwall was gradually stripped of its weapons (especially heavy artillery), armour and equipment.

The woods hold several Regelbauten 51a. These were small troop shelters for six men having two entrances facing each other, allowing a trench to run right through it.

There is also a Regelbau 102v, a large troop shelter for 30 men. It can be found on the steep slope dropping down to Saarbrücken along the D32c. 43

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Bunker No. 315, a short distance further west along Stumm-Strasse, is also a Regelbau 108b. Its only difference with No. 316 is that it had the periscope that was standard for this type installed whereas No. 316 for some reason never had this means of observation.

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THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN (1944-45) With the Allied invasion of western Europe on June 6, 1944, and especially after the Allied break-out from the Normandy bridgehead in August, the Westwall gained a second life. Already on July 31, the day of the American breakthrough at Avrances, Hitler gave preliminary orders for re-instating and re-arming the line. On August 16, the three Wehrkreise (Army Districts) in western Germany — Wehrkreis VI in Munster, XII in Wiesbaden and V in Stuttgart — were instructed to re-establish the fortifications. Four days later, on the 20th, Hitler issued a decree for a levy of ‘people’s labour’ to restore and improve the line. Then on the 24th, as his defeated armies were streaming back in chaos through northern France, he issued an order to set up a new defensive line in the west, combining the Westwall with a new line to be set up along the canals in northern Belgium and incorporating the fortresses of Metz and the installations of the Maginot Line in the south. Finally, on August 31, he ordered the complete remobilisation of the Westwall. However, the Westwall in September 1944 was something of a Potemkin village, a fouryear-old derelict. Many bunkers were filled with beetroots or had farm equipment stored in them. Others had flooded. In numerous cases embrasure shields and vision slits had rusted shut; fields of fire had grown thick with trees and bushes. There were no mines, no barbed wire, few communications lines, and no fortress weapons. Not only that, but many types of bunker were by now outdated

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Right: On the south-eastern outskirts of Saarbrücken, between the B40 (Mainzer Strasse) and B51 (Brebacher Landstrasse), lies the Halberg hill ([3] on the map on page 41). Nestled at the foot of its southern slope, hidden among the trees along Stumm-Strasse, are four intact bunkers built in 1939 under the Limes programme. There were actually no less than 12 bunkers along a distance of less than a kilometre on this slope but the German authorities saw fit to bury eight of them under earth in 1984 and 1994. Bunker No. 316 ‘Monplaisir’, a Regelbau 108b machine-gun pillbox for 13 men, was used as a company command post. Painstakingly restored by Jörg Fuhrmeister of the Interfest Association in 1986-2001, complete with interior fittings and equipment, it can be visited on appointment.

The other two bunkers that survive along this stretch of the Halberg, Nos. 313 and 314, are also both Regelbauten 108b. This is No. 314. Elsewhere on the hill are six more bunkers, four of which were buried under soil in 1984 and 1994. 44

and unsuited to modern war. The smaller works could not accommodate the standard 1942 model machine gun because embrasures had been constructed for the 1908/15 or 1934 model. Anti-tank gun casemates had been designed for the 3.7cm or 4.7cm PaK guns but were unable to fit in the larger 7.5cm guns that had been developed since. The Westwall in September 1944 was formidable primarily on the basis of an old, unearned reputation. The only positive thing for the Germans was that four years of neglect, and the growth of grass and foliage, had given the works a realistic camouflage, making it difficult for Allied aerial reconnaissance to pick them up. Also, in the minds of the Allied generals and soldiers, still influenced by Germany’s pre-war propaganda, the ‘Siegfried Line’ had maintained its exaggerated, almost mythical, strength. On September 1 an order went out for what was called the ‘Volksangebot’ (people’s offer): the mass mobilisation of ordinary civilians to help build field fortifications. Organised by the Gauleiters of the threatened regions (Baden-Elsass, Westmark, Moselland, Cologne-Aachen, Düsseldorf and Essen), thousands of people — mostly old men and Hitlerjugend teenagers, sometimes women too — were assembled,

US OFFICIAL HISTORY

In March 1945 the US Seventh Army broke through the Siegfried Line on a wide front between Saarbrücken and Wissembourg. marched off and put to work in a last-minute effort to stem the enemy assault on the Reich. In some places work started on the 3rd, in others on the 4th, but by September 8, 248,300 people were at work. Using nothing more than picks and shovels and wheelbarrows, they dug many kilometres of anti-tank ditches and trenches. Though well-intentioned, much of the work was carried out in a chaotic and uncoordinated way. Often there were conflicting orders from Party officials on the one hand and local military commanders on the other. Some anti-tank ditches were sited in tactically unsound locations. Yet the digging continued, the German workforce in some cases being reinforced with Italian POWs or rounded-up French, Luxembourg or Dutch civilians. On September 11, the Oberbefehlshaber West (OB West — German Supreme Commander in the West), Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt, assumed command of the Westwall and all troops manning it. These included the reserve units available from the three Wehrkreise along the frontier, the eight Luftwaffe fortress battalions that had begun to man the Westwall bunkers on September 8, and the battered and exhausted divisions and stray units that were making it back from France. That same day, September 11, von Rundstedt issued an order to Gauleiter Josef Grohé of Gau Köln-Aachen and Gauleiter

Gustav Simon of Gau Moselland for the general evacuation of the ‘Red Zone’ — the tenkilometre-wide band of the main battle line — along their sections of the frontier. For the second time in this war, the inhabitants of the border regions had to move to the interior.

The evacuations put an end to the civilians digging field fortifications in these areas, but elsewhere the work continued unremittingly. For example, in the Saarbrücken area there were still 147,000 civilians toiling on fieldworks in October.

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Right: Five kilometres north-east of Saarbrücken, at the village of Rentrisch [4], a so-called B-Kleinstwerk survives. This was a small variant of the strong B-Werke forts. Built in 1938, it features three armoured turrets: a 51-tonne 20P7 machine-gun turret with six firing apertures (at rear), a 16tonne 407P9 turret with three apertures (in front), and a 5.3-tonne 90P9 infantry observation cupola (in the middle). Comprising 13 rooms, including a 15-metre-long subterranean gallery to the entrance at rear, it was used as a company command post. The bunker stands on the slope above the village, at the end of Sebastian-KurtzStrasse, perched in between a kindergarten and the municipal sports ground. 45

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To his elation and surprise, Karel found the same bunker still standing in an orchard behind the village main street. It is a Limes-Regelbau 10, a troop shelter for 15 men with attached machine-gun compartment — the most-common type in the Westwall. The dragon’s teeth seen in the wartime picture have all been removed but Karel found the foundations still in place, hidden under brushwood on the far side of the village street. them. Hundreds of small one-man pillboxes were built (of Italian design, the Germans called them Ringstände, or Koch-Bunker. The Allies knew them as Tobruk bunkers.)

A novelty was the introduction of so-called Panther-Türme, revolving turrets from PzKpfw V Panther tanks armed with the powerful 7.5cm gun and mounted on either a

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On September 13, troops of the US 3rd Armored Division achieved a first penetration in strength of the Westwall at Roetgen, south of Aachen (see After the Battle No. 42), followed a day later by another sizable indent into the line by the US 5th Armored Division at Wallendorf in the Schnee Eifel further south. This was the beginning of a bitter campaign along the entire length of the Westwall — or Siegfried Line as the Allies called it — that would last for seven months, interrupted only by the German Ardennes Offensive from mid-December to mid-January. There would be heavy and costly fighting in many sectors: on both sides of Aachen in October (see After the Battle No. 42); in the Hürtgenwald forest from September to December (see After the Battle No. 71); at Geilenkirchen in November (see After the Battle No. 140); at the Orscholz-Riegel from November to February; along the Saar river in December; in the Reichswald forest in February (see After the Battle No. 159); in the Saar-Palatinate Triangle in February and March, and at many other places along the 630-kilometre line. As the German army slowly recovered from the staggering setbacks suffered in France and Belgium, the framework for restoring the Westwall was put on a more firm footing. A special staff known as the Oberkommando Festungsbereich West (Supreme Command of Fortifications in the West) under General der Pioniere Walter Kuntze, was made responsible for all matters regarding fortifications. In co-operation with the army groups and armies at the front, it was to plan all efforts, assign material and transport, give out orders to the Organisation Todt and Reichsarbeitsdienst regarding the workforce needed, etc. On a lower level, put in charge of sectors of the front, were five Festungs-Pionier-Kommandeure (Fortress Engineer Commanders) with 20 subordinate Festungs-Pionier-Stäbe. Throughout the autumn and winter, the army engineers and Organisation Todt worked on putting the bunker line back in working condition and strengthening the line with additional bunkers. Gun casemates were hollowed out on the interior side so that 7.5cm anti-tank guns could be fitted into

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Right: Before the Westwall was moved forward to run in front of Saarbrücken in 1939-40, the line’s main band of fortifications passed north of the city, running quite a distance away from the border with France. This bunker overlooking a line of dragon’s teeth at the village of Heckendalheim [5], north-east of Saarbrücken and ten kilometres distant from the frontier, was pictured in March 1945, after the US 63rd Division had breached the line here.

Left: Where the dragon’s teeth hit the street, a Panzermauer (anti-tank wall) took over, running for 325 metres along the entire length of the village. Karel was pleasantly surprised to 46

find a small information panel placed against the wall (seen on the right) explaining its history and purpose. Right: The panel’s map well illustrates the density of bunkers in this sector.

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The 63rd Division, part of the XXI Corps of the US Seventh Army, attacked on March 15, 1945 and by the 18th had breached the Siegfried Line at several places. On March 20, Signal Corps photographer 2nd Lieutenant Jacob Harris

pictured men of Company A of the division’s 255th Infantry climbing over the dragon’s teeth near the village of Oberwürzbach [6]. Note the pillbox on the slope in the distance (just to the right of the electricity post).

concrete or steel sub-base. However of the 96 turret positions that were planned only a few dozen were completed in time to be used in battle. As the Allied forces wrestled their way through the dragon’s teeth and took on the pillboxes they developed ways and practices to deal with them. Representative of this is an excerpt from an after-action report by the US 90th Infantry Division compiled in December 1944:

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Right: The picture was taken along the road from Manderbachtal to Oberwürzbach, just at the point where it starts dropping into the steep valley of the Würzbach. As so often, the dragon’s teeth here have been demolished but careful inspection on either side of the road revealed their foundations in the undergrowth. In order to get a clear view, Karel took his comparison from just in front of the wood.

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‘While the successful attack against any pillbox must be considered as a separate problem, certain standard procedures do exist. The size of the attacking force will vary, dependent on terrain and the size of the pillbox to be taken. The assault group should be composed of infantry with automatic weapons and bazookas, engineers with satchel charges, and a self-propelled gun. Left: Eight kilometres further east, at Blieskastel [7], stands a Regelbau B1-23 pillbox. Built in 1937 under the PionierProgramm, it features a 26-tonne 61P8 machine-gun turret with three apertures. Armed with two MG34 machine guns, it was operated by a crew of five. The pillbox is situated at the eastern exit of Blieskastel-Lautzkirchen, perched six metres above the L111 (Sankt-Ingberter Strasse) on the northern slope. In all, there were four such bunkers built along this road, sited to cover a water-filled anti-tank ditch. This one has been meticulously restored by Jörg Fuhrmeister and can be visited on appointment. 47

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on March 18. This is the spot where the 2nd Battalion of the division’s 157th Infantry breached the line.

At this location the swathe of concrete has been thoroughly cleared away and it was only because Karel carried maps showing where the dragon’s teeth ran that he achieved this comparison.

The view is looking south-west from the western end of the village. The photographer stood on the edge of a pillbox, today only recognisable as a mound of earth in someone’s back garden.

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The US 45th Infantry Division broke through the Siegfried Line at Hengstbach [8], eight kilometres east of Blieskastel,

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POST-WAR DESTRUCTION In the years since 1945, the Westwall has been systematically and thoroughly destroyed to such an extent that today only a smattering remains. The destruction occurred in several distinct phases. The first phase already took place in 1944-45, during and in the immediate wake of the fighting. As soon as a section of the line had been pierced by an Allied unit, combat engineers moved in and blew up the captured bunkers with dynamite and TNT. Steel doors were welded shut or entrances and embrasures closed by bulldozing them over with earth. All this was done in case the enemy should re-capture a bunker and use it to resume the fight. In this way hundreds of bunkers were destroyed or buried under soil. The second phase began on December 6, 1945, when SHAEF Directive No. 22 ordered the destruction of all fortifications and military installations on the territory of the German Reich. As two-thirds of the

In the village of Niedersimten, two kilometres south of Pirmasens in the Palatinate (see the map on page 45), is the largest subterranean tunnel complex of the Westwall. Known as the Festungswerk Gerstfeldhöhe, it was to be the anchor of the defence system in this sector, its tunnels on two levels connecting with other strongpoints such as the B-Werk Obersimten. Construction was begun in 1938 and by the time it was halted in 1941, nearly one and a half kilometre of the planned 13 kilometres of galleries had been completed. Today it is another Westwall museum, open on Saturdays and Sundays from April to October and by appointment. Westwall lay in the French Zone of Occupation, the job of eliminating it was mainly carried out by the French Army, the northern third being the responsibility of the British. The French dismantled the line in a threestage operation. First, starting in March 1946, German prisoners of war and convicted

French collaborators were put to work clearing minefields and removing any ordnance left. Then, from August, special bunker clearing squads removed all armoured cupolas, embrasure shields and other interior equipment from the bunkers, shipping them to France as scrap metal. Finally, the French

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Usually, four engineers is sufficient to place and detonate the satchel charges, under covering fire of the infantry and the SP gun. For the jump-off, the gun should begin firing on all known and observed embrasures. This will greatly reduce the hazard of hostile smallarms fire. Speed is essential in an operation of this type, because there is always the threat of mortar or artillery fire which the Germans will call down on their emplacement to break up the attack. As the assault group moves forward, the infantry will continue to neutralise any resistance from the outside of the box and also aid in “buttoning-up”, already begun by the SP. Upon containing the enemy inside the pillbox, engineers will move forward, and place and detonate the satchel charges. Once this is accomplished there is little “moppingup” to be done.’ By March 20, 1945, with the line broken along virtually its entire length, the Germans pulled back behind the Rhine. The Siegfried Line campaign was over.

Set up beside the main tunnel entrance is a Panther-Turm. A total of 96 of these tank turrets in fixed position were planned to reinforce the Westwall in 1944-45, but very few were actually ready in time for combat. 49

In the town of Bad Bergzabern remains an artillery battery consisting of Regelbau 516 gun casemates. Six of such four-gun batteries were included in the Westwall, and this is the only surviving example. Built in the spring of 1940, each casemate could house a field gun or howitzer crewed by 12-15 men. Casemate No. 1 was demolished in 1994 but the three others remain intact. Two of them have been painstakingly restored by Johann Fuchsgruber and his wife and been made into a very good Westwall museum, open every Sunday and all bank holidays from April to October, also by appointment. The museum is located on Kurfürstenstrasse on the northern edge of town.

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sappers began a systematic demolition of the bunkers and anti-tank obstacles, blowing them up with dynamite or surplus bombs and grenades. By the end of 1946 they had already destroyed 4,600 bunkers and removed 64 kilometres of dragon’s teeth. However, many of the demolitions caused considerable collateral damage to homes, buildings and other private property in the vicinity. In the summer of 1947 protest and demonstrations erupted among the civilian population of the Saarland region. By August 1948 they had risen to such a crescendo that Colonel Gilbert Grandval, the French High Commissioner for the Saarland, felt forced to order a halt to the demolitions, which was granted on September 1. By then, out of a total of 4,100 bunkers in the Saarland, they had destroyed 3,228. In addition they had demolished 36 kilometres of dragon’s teeth, 5.2 kilometres of anti-tank wall and filled in 95 kilometres of anti-tank ditch. The demolitions in the other French-occupied provinces — Rheinland-Pfalz and Baden-Württemberg — continued until 1950, one year after the founding of the German Federal Republic. In British-occupied Nordrhein-Westfalen the demolitions continued until 1950 as well. For the next six years the remains of the line were left as they were. As Germany concentrated on rebuilding the country, the broken heaps of blown pillboxes and lines of dragon’s teeth slowly disappeared under bushes and budding trees. Farmers and foresters got used to working around them, many a landowner appropriating intact

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Right: The so-called Wissembourg Gap, the ten-kilometre-wide strip of open land between the hilly forests of the Palatinate and the Bienwald forest bordering on the Rhine, was the traditional gateway for French armies invading Germany, so it was no wonder that this became one of the most-strongly fortified sectors of the whole Westwall. The Germans called it the Otterbach-Abschnitt, after the creek that ran across it. Illustrative of the importance given to this zone was that no less than 14 of the 32 B-Werke, the Westwall’s strongest works, were built here. None of these survive today but there are numerous other vestiges of the fortifications still in place. In recent years, the tourist authorities of the Bad Bergzabern region have made a huge effort to make these better and more-easily accessible to visitors. They have done so by devising several walking routes, placing explanatory panels at bunkers and other sites, and issuing good maps and brochures.

One of the sites documented by the tourist authorities is a socalled ‘nasser Panzergraben’ (water-filled anti-tank ditch) that stretched for 1.6 kilometre to the west of the village of NiederOtterbach. It comprised a series of six basins linked to each 50

other and fed by the Otterbach stream. Two of the information panels stand where the dragon’s teeth pass over the connecting channel between one basin and the next. It can be reached by a path leading south from the K25.

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Left: The village of Steinfeld, two kilometres further south, was another strong point in the Otterbach position. The dragon’s teeth ran just past the settlement (connecting to another stretch of nasser Panzergraben that covered the gap with the Bienwald for-

erase as much as possible of the Westwall. There were definitely good economic, agricultural and infra-structural reasons for this, but there was also always the underlying motive of wanting to get rid of what was seen as an ugly reminder of an unsavoury recent past.

On June 13, 1956, the German Federal Court laid down that all remains of the former Westwall, whether intact or destroyed, whether located on public or on private land, were the property of the Federal Government. This meant that the government was also responsible for the safety of the sites.

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bunkers for use for storage or as a pigsty. None of the sites were cordoned off and adventurous children enjoyed climbing the ruins, or exploring the interiors of pillboxes overlooked or left intact. However, the new West German Federal Republic was determined to remove and

est) and inside the village were no less than 16 bunkers. Today, a signposted Westwall Trail leads visitors on a two-kilometre circuit through the village past a number of Westwall sites, including the buried remains of a large Regelbau 114b pillbox (right).

prevent armoured vehicles from passing over it. Right: The special construction remains beside the platform of Steinfeld railway station.

Along Alte Landstrasse stood a Limes-Regelbau 18, a casemate for a 7.5cm FK16 field gun. The bunker had been camouflaged to look like a tobacco drying shed, complete with strings of tobacco hanging on the outside wall.

The casemate was demolished after the war and all that remains to be seen today is an overgrown plot. In all, 12 of the 16 bunkers constructed at Steinfeld were disguised to look like ordinary buildings.

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Left: On the east side of the village, running for 390 metres at right angle to the railway, was yet another ‘wet’ anti-tank ditch. The controlling lock at its southern end was fortified to

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The bunker (and another one that stood a few metres away, covering the southern approach road) was blown up by the French Army in January 1948, the remains being removed by the villagers in 1955-56. Today a small house has taken its place. Germany’s historical heritage. Interest was first kindled by historians, archaeologists and fortification enthusiasts, before being slowly picked up by official agencies. Of prime importance was the role of the Rheinisches Landesamt für Bodendenkmalpflege (Rhineland State Bureau for Topographical Monuments) which embraced the idea of preserving what little remained of the Westwall. It was due to their efforts that, starting in 1979,

nearly all of the few surviving remnants of the Westwall in their region were put on the protected list. Unexpected support came from ecologists and environmentalists who pointed out that the forgotten line of fortifications had developed a rich and unique flora and fauna, ranging from rare weeds and plants flourishing among the dragon’s teeth to bats finding refuge in the bunkers.

Above: Closing off the passage through the dragon’s teeth on Hauptstrasse at the western end of the village was a Sperrschranke barrier and a large number of Czech hedgehogs. Right: All have been cleared away but this is the same spot today. 52

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In 1957 the Federal Government began supplying the four border provinces with funds to undertake the removal of the Westwall. Thus began a slow but systematic campaign of destruction. Using explosives, heavy demolition machinery and drills, countless bunkers and long stretches of dragon’s teeth were broken up. In most cases the ragged chunks of concrete were left in place and simply buried under soil; less often, the debris was transported away to be pulverised and re-used for hardcore. Removing structures made of reinforced concrete is technically difficult, time-consuming and very costly, and the authorities realised from the beginning that it would be impossible to erase every bit of concrete. That was the reason that numerous installations were just covered with earth. In cases where rain washed such structures free, contractors would often be called back to carry out more work, either to break it up or recover it with earth. Lacking sufficient funds to clear away everything, many sites were simply designated a ‘dangerous site’, cordoned off with barbed wire and wiremesh and proclaimed off limits, thus at least removing them from public view. Dragon’s teeth were planted with fir trees so as to blend them into the landscape. From 1957 until 1975 the Federal Government spent a total of 35 million DM on the removal of Westwall remains, destroying another 6,000 bunkers and 70 kilometres of dragon’s teeth. Thus the Siegfried Line slowly lapsed into oblivion. It was not until the late 1970s that awareness sprang up of the Westwall’s historical and architectural importance and a realisation that, like it or not, they formed part of

were 522 pillboxes of this type in the Westwall. Right: Sited to cover the western entrance to the village, this is how it looked in 1945, after the American capture of Steinfeld. The war left 90 per cent of the village destroyed.

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Left: At the main village crossroads, right below the St Lodegar Church, stood a Limes-Regelbau 1 machine-gun bunker that was camouflaged to look like a fire-brigade equipment storage building, complete with bell tower. Crewed by five men, there

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teeth and conquer the village. On April 4, Signal Corps photographer Sergeant Robert G. Heller pictured the anti-tank line and the wrecked houses of Steinfeld beyond. Below: The very same blocks remain behind the rebuilt houses along Bahnhofsstrasse at the southern end of the village. The Höckerlinie in the Otterbach sector was a special variant of the 1938 version, four rows being added to the original four, making for an eightrow, 21-metre-wide obstacle.

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Above: The Otterbach position was first attacked by the US Seventh Army in mid-December 1944 and, to support the assault, Steinfeld was bombed by B-26s of the US IX Tactical Air Command on the 17th. However, the ground attack was halted on December 20 due to the outbreak of the Ardennes offensive and it was not resumed until the spring of 1945. Attacking on March 20, the US 14th Armoured Division needed three days of stiff fighting to blast a path through the dragon’s

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troops and vehicles of the ‘Texas Division’ passing through the Höckerlinie on their way to Bergzabern. Note that the barrier that closed the road has been demolished — the pillar with the sawn-off post can be seen on the right-hand side of the road.

The wartime caption gave no clue as to the location, so Karel was thrilled to find the spot on the L38 just north of Ober-Otterbach.

How many motorists would realise that this winding stretch of the Bergzabern road was once a heavily fortified position.

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Attacking through the Wissembourg Gap, after a three-day slugging match against the thick belt of pillboxes, the US 36th Infantry Division breached the Siegfried Line on March 22, 1945. War photographer Jim Pringle of Associated Press pictured

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Left: The anti-tank obstacle that blocked the road at OberOtterbach was the strongest variation of Höckerlinie built along the entire Westwall: a buttressed concrete wall backed

huge sightseeing industry that has developed over the remains of the Atlantikwall in Normandy and elsewhere, and realising the economic gains that can be had, several tourist bureaus in the border regions have set up walking trails, complete with maps, brochures, on-site information panels and websites. However, the campaign of erasing the Siegfried Line has never completely stopped. Even today individual bunkers and lengths of dragon’s teeth are being removed. In most cases there is a clear and sensible economic

reason — to make way for some housing development or shopping centre or to allow widening of a road. However, there are also still cases of bunkers being cleared away in inaccessible forests, at great expense and for no apparent good reason. Today, of the around 18,000 installations of the Westwall only about 850 survive intact. The greater majority of these, about 600, are located in the Saarland. In Nordrhein-Westfalen, out of some 2,750 installations, a mere 35 (or little more than one per cent) are all that is left of the Siegfried Line.

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Since the early 1980s there has been a growth of research on the Siegfried Line. Over the years, a small but dedicated number of private individuals and voluntary associations have acquired Siegfried Line bunkers, spending years of work, and often considerable sums of money, on patiently uncovering and restoring them. Several of these installations are now Westwall museums and can be visited. In recent years, local authorities in the German border regions have realised the tourism potential of the Westwall. Seeing the

up by eight rows of dragon’s teeth. Right: Karel found the comparison just west of the main road. Where once there was concrete, now lies the village football field.

As the ‘Westwallweg’ sign in the comparison on the opposite page indicates, a road branches off here into the woods. This leads to one of the starting points of a most-interesting Westwall walking path through the eastern fringe of the Palatinate Forest. It takes visitors past a dozen bunkers, all of them blown up, but each heap of ruined concrete is explained by

excellent information panels. All these bunkers saw heavy fighting in December 1944 when the US 103rd Division tried to penetrate this part of the Otterbach-Stellung, and again in March 1945, when the 36th Division resumed the offensive. These are the remains of two of the Regelbau 10 bunkers that can be seen along the trail. 55