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The Atlantic Wall (German: Atlantikwall) was an extensive system of coastal defences and fortifications built by Nazi Germany between 1942 and 1944 along the coast of continental Europe and Scandinavia as a defence against an anticipated Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe from the United Kingdom, during World War II.
German fortresses (German: Festungen or Fester Platz, lit. ' fixed place '; called pockets by the Allies) during World War II were bridgeheads, cities, islands and towns designated by Adolf Hitler as areas that were to be fortified and stocked with food and ammunition in order to hold out against Allied offensives.
The Channel Islands were amongst the most heavily fortified parts of the Atlantic Wall, particularly Alderney which is the closest to France. On 20 October 1941 Hitler signed a directive, against the advice of Commander-in-Chief von Witzleben, to turn the Channel Islands into an "impregnable
There were as many as 400,000 German troops in Norway during the occupation, a large proportion of whom were dedicated to the defense of this northern flank of the Atlantic Wall. The scope of Festung Norwegen originally included the entire coastal perimeter of Norway, from the Oslofjord around the southern coast to the border with the Soviet Union.
In World War II, the Atlantic pockets were locations along the coasts of the Netherlands, Belgium, and France chosen as strongholds by the occupying German forces, to be defended as long as possible against land attack by the Allies. The locations are known in German as Atlantikfestungen (lit. "Atlantic strongholds") but are known in English as ...
Adolf Hitler placed Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in charge of developing fortifications all along Hitler's proclaimed Atlantic Wall in anticipation of landings in France. The Allies failed to accomplish their objectives for the first day, but gained a tenuous foothold that they gradually expanded when they captured the port at Cherbourg on 26 ...
Beside, on March 9, 1939, Hitler commissioned the head of the NSDAP's Office for Colonial Policy, Franz Ritter von Epp, to re-stablish a Reich Colonial Office to the management of the colonies in Africa, which would later become a Reich Colonial Ministry that would be located in the Neuer Marstall under Hitler's order in March 1941.
The construction of new buildings served other purposes beyond reaffirming Nazi ideology. In Flossenbürg and elsewhere, the Schutzstaffel built forced-labor camps where prisoners of the Third Reich were forced to mine stone and make bricks, much of which went directly to Albert Speer for use in his rebuilding of Berlin and other projects in Germany.