The defences

The Allied invaders faced the formidable obstacles of an amphibious landing against well-designed and long-prepared fortifications: the Atlantic Wall. This was essentially a string of concrete and steel fortifications stretching along nearly 3,000 miles of European coastline. It was designed specifically to enable the defenders to throw any attacking force back into the sea.

The wall represented how far German tactics had changed during the course of the war. Instead of relying on flexible lines with defences in depth, combined with ruthless counter attacks on any breaches of the line, the German defences depended on static fortifications and the ability to defeat the attackers on the beaches.

The Atlantic Wall defences were made up of beach obstacles designed to hinder landing craft, infantry and vehicles, minefields, barbed wire and 'killing zones', where sectors of the beach were pre-sighted with weapons firing from the shore and further inland. The concrete bunkers placed at frequent intervals along the wall followed various designs depending on their purpose. These ranged from small open weapons pits and machine gun positions to massive command bunkers and artillery encasements or casemates.

If a soldier managed to get off the beach he was faced with the static bunkers, which were placed so that they covered each other with their weapons. This made breaching the wall and attacking individual strongholds extremely difficult. The chances of survival for the first waves of attacking infantry were very limited.

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