THE ATLANTIC WALL: a gigantic fortification, built on the coasts of Occupied Europe for the most decisive battle of World War Two: the Landing of Allied Forces.

From Norway to France, they were hundreds of thousands German soldiers who daily lived in the bunkers, waiting for the frightening “Invasion”! In many places, these soldiers decorated their bunkers, by drawing or painting on the walls.

 Sixty years after the end of war, the deserted and dark bunkers, emptied of all their equipment, hardly recreate the image of this disappeared life. Only murals remain, which still decorate the walls obstinately. They make the bunkers speak, they give them a meaning, they are their memory.

 As the fortification itself, this memory is fragmented: it is only after having visited several hundreds of bunkers that we may realize the sheer scale of these unknown and considerable pictorial works.

This book presents for the first time the murals of Atlantic Wall as a comprehensive overview. This collection is not a geographical inventory: it proposes a thematic approach, which seemed the most appropriate way to discover these various works.

 As the Atlantic Wall itself, murals inexorably disappear. Fragile, some of them hardly resist the test of time, dampness and moisture being dreadful. Others disappear under graffiti, or are deliberately destroyed for obscure reasons. Those which reach us intact are increasingly rare...

 It was high time to present them before their inescapable disappearance. This book has two ambitions : fixing this short-lived memory, and modestly contributing to the knowledge of this terrible time of war, and this at time of the 60th anniversary of the Normandy Landing, celebrated for the first time with the former enemies under the same Peace banner.

Any murals ? Click on the picture below !