** German Industrial Effort: Concentration on the War in the West West Wall








German Industrial Effort Concentration on the West: The West Wall


Figure 1.--Hitler largely ignored Germany's Western defenses before the outbreak of Wiorld War II, but suddenly as plans for war coalessed in his mind, he realized that if he moved against Austia, Czechoslovakia, and Poland that he better have some level of defensive barrier bin the West. The West Wall eas an expansion and extension of the Wotkd WarvI Siegfried Line. It would be overseen by Fritz Todt and would priove to be the largest construction project in German history, cionsuming hugevquantitoies of buolding material, including steel and requiring a massive diversion of labor.

The West Wall was the largest construction project in German history. It is one of the many examples of industrial and material resources beung used to fight the war in the West and not the East, in this case preopartiions fior the War. The Allies called in the Siegfried Line. It was a German defensive line built opposite the French Maginot Line. It was not as elaborate as the Maginot Line, but and featured more than 18,000 bunkers, tunnels, and tank traps. Unlike the Maginot Line, it did not end at the Belgian border, but continued along the Dutch border to Kleve where the West Wall joins up with the Rhine River. Most of the West Wall and the most elaborate fortifications were built west of the Rhine. The Wall stretched more than 630 km (390 mi) from Kleve south to Weil am Rhein on the border with Switzerland. Very little work to militarize Germany's western border was done until Hitler made the commitment to war. His first targets was Czechoslovakia and Poland in the East. He realized that if he was to commit the Wehrmacht in the East that western Germany woild be vulnerable. So he launched a crash profram to build the West Wall before launching the War. It proved to be a massive effort. e are not sure yet how it compared to the Atlantic Wall built during the War. It did not involve slave labor like the Atlanic Wall, but did involve conscript German labor. It was a crash program completed in a little over a yera just before the War. Working conditions were poor and very little heavy equioment was available. Enormous quantities of concrete, timber, and steel were used to build the West Wall. The French after Hitler and Stalin launched the War by invading Poland did not attack the West Wall (1939-40). As a result, when the Germans began building the Atlantic Wall, they moved much of the artillery (1942-44). After D-Day and the collapse of German forces in France, Hitler ordered another crash effort to reactivate and rearm the West Wall (August 24, 1944). [McNab] Some 20,000 forced labourers and members of the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labour Service), largely 14-16-year-old boys, did their best to re-equip the West Wall to preoare for the massive Allied armies headed toward wesrern borders of the Reich. Nothing like this existed in the East. Local civilans were conscripted to dig anti-tank ditches. Unklike the 1939-40 period, there was instense fighting along the West Wall as mostly American armies began approching the borders of the Reuich (Seoptember 1944). The Allies finally began breaking through these defenses in force and moving toward the Rhine (January-February 1945).

Sources

McNab, Chris. (20 March 2014). Hitler’s Fortresses: German Fortifications and Defences 1939–45 (Bloomsbury Publishing: 2014).







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Created: 1:59 AM 1/14/2021
Last updated: 2:00 AM 1/14/2021