The Atlantic Wall Museum is housed within an old German bunker – a huge one, about 18 metres of reinforced concrete going straight up, and the location of German headquarters at the entrance to the River Orne.  The German forces in the bunker holed up here machine gunning everything that came close and keeping the invading forces at more than arms length until the D-Day +3 when four Allied soldiers took four hours to blow the door off and the garrison of two officers and fifty men gave themselves up.  And this bunker is just an example of what the wall, called the Atlantikwall by the Germans, was about.  The museum tells the impressive story of it, from its construction along the coasts of Belgium, France and the Netherlands facing the English Channel, to its refortification by Rommel – by the time of the Allied invasion it had six million mines affixed along it, strings of reinforced pillboxes along the beaches, underwater obstacles and rows of light artillery. 

Inside there are reconstructed quarters and artefacts, including a 18mm flak gun, and a German rangefinder and a ladder up to the roof for impressive views out to the channel, and outside there are some reconstructed landing craft, including some used in the film 'Saving Private Ryan', and a one tonne German flying bomb like the ones used on London during the Blitz.  

Atlantic Wall Museum Website.

Written by  Toby Bright.

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