The Defence of Places: Fortification as Architecture [part 2]

Author(s): Paul Hirst

Source: AA Files , Autumn 1997, No. 34 (Autumn 1997), pp. 6-17
Published by: Architectural Association School of Architecture

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/29544065

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The Defence of Places:
Fortification as Architecture

Paul Hirst
SIEGEWORKS - A PROVISIONAL AND ANTI-ARCHITECTURE The attack and defence of places was a central com?
ponent of early modern warfare. Without sieges, places
The fortress has been ignored by modern mainstream could not be captured and territory could not be held.
architectural history and theory. One explanation for this Thus the battle of Rocroi (1643), where the French
is that architects no longer build fortresses; their construc? smashed the Spanish Army of Flanders, was as decisive a
tion had become the province of the military engineer by victory as one could expect. Except that it did not end the
the mid-seventeenth century. However, such a fate has not war. As Geoffrey Parker comments, 'Although defeated in
befallen other structures which are no longer common to battle, the Army of Flanders still controlled numerous
architectural practice, for example Gothic cathedrals or fortified towns, each of which had to be starved into
Palladian villas. In an interesting and thought-provoking surrender.'3 Spain did not make peace with France until
book, Buildings and Power, Thomas A. Markus analyses 1659
building types in terms of their specific uses, their social The art of besieging a defended place had always been
context and the discourses that surround them.1 Fortifi? difficult; it was made even more so by artillery forti?
cations are not included. Yet the nineteenth century, the fications and the trace italienne. Cannon had to be brought
period on which he focuses, was an age of extensive close to the walls to effect a decisive breach, bombardment
change in the design of fortresses, as in so many other might begin at three hundred metres but was seldom
types of large-scale building. Moreover, the fortress is of all effective unless it could be brought within a hundred
buildings the one that most obviously embodies political metres. As a consequence the guns and gunners were
power and social control;, which were radically trans? vulnerable both to enemy fire from the fortress and to
formed in that period. Architecture has become a pacific sorties by the besieged. The besiegers had to behave as if
profession. War is literally out of sight, and therefore out they themselves were besieged and to erect fortifications
of mind. that were often as elaborate, if temporary, as those they
If the artillery fortress as a permanent structure has confronted. Sieges thus involved an immense amount of
been neglected in architectural history, its uses in war digging, and created ephemeral structures which are
receive even less attention. Indeed, the coverage of fascinating in their own right but have been ignored by
fortifications in most military history up to the last couple architectural historians.
of decades is somewhat patchy. During the period Disposable architecture is not just an invention of the
1500-1800 the siege was the dominant form of warfare, 1960s. Consider, for example, the plan of the Turkish
and sieges outnumbered battles by a factor of ten to one. trenches in the siege of Vienna in 1683 (Fig. i).4 As con?
Yet the attention that military historians have devoted to structions they are as remarkable and inventive as any?
battles rather than to sieges is of a reverse order. Battles, of thing designed by Archigram and yet just as throw-away as
course, are dramatic and finite, and they are apparently the latter's 'walking cities'. These trenches have vanished
easy to narrate.2 Sieges, by contrast, are mostly protracted, beneath suburban Vienna, but often, in aerial photographs
episodic in their conflicts, and often unsuccessful in of older towns that have not grown much beyond their
outcome. For military historians of the traditional type, original walls, similar works can be seen as lighter patches
following the early nineteenth-century German military in the soil.5 However, the main sources today for such
thinker Carl von Clausewitz, battles are the decisive form siegeworks are military textbooks of the period and en?
of war, and sieges are merely local actions which are gravings illustrating sieges (Fig. 2). The spider's web of
inherently indecisive. This view is profoundly inaccurate earthworks reaching towards the ramparts and menacing
and anachronistic, projecting backwards modern ideas them obviously caught the imagination of contemporaries,
about war into a very different military system. who were eager to record them before they vanished. The

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 1. Plan of the Turkish trenches
during the siege of Vienna of 1684,
from Les Forces de I'Europe, by
N.deFer(1695).

2. The siege of Turin of 1640, from . The siege of s'Hertogenbosch

Merian's Topographia Gallicae (1644). v rhich took place during 1 May to
The citadel is being held by a French 14 September 1629. Troops numbering
garrison, 12,000 rebel Piedmontese 28,000 were deployed to establish
under Prince Thomas of Savoy are s iege-lines that were eleven hours in
holding the town walls; and these in turn c ircumference and included six
are surrounded by 10,000 French troops ?ntrenched camps, nine bastioned
led by Count Harcourt. At the bottom f)rts, and twelve hornworks.
left-hand corner a force of 18,000
Spaniards as well as rebel Piedmontese,
under the command of the Marquis of
Leganes, the Spanish governor of Milan,
have emerged, and are shooting food
filled mortar bombs to their allies in the
town.

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fortress besieged thus generated a temporary structure as was therefore great. But it was unusual for a fortress to be
elaborate and as costly in human effort as the fortress itself carried by storm. Methodical sieges became the norm
(Fig- 3) when the resources to conduct them were widely available:
Until the late sixteenth century guns were relatively larger armies, more secure finances, more guns. Engineers
scarce. Fortifications were often able to survive battery by such as Coehoorn and Vauban were then able to devise
guns, and sieges were of a very long duration.6 In most systematic siege techniques. Both used the spade more
cases the besiegers' logistics could hardly cope, and they than any military implement, relying on vast amounts of
had to dig in, and hope to shelter and feed themselves as digging to bring guns to the walls in as short a time as
best they could. The place to be besieged had to be com? possible (in Vauban's case twenty-one days after opening
pletely encircled to prevent sorties by the besieged forces the first trench).8 More resources allowed for more
to obtain supplies or to link up with a relieving force. The method, and far shorter and more decisive sieges.
besiegers had also to be protected in the rear, because they Just as with the evolution of the bastion, discussed in
were exceedingly vulnerable to attack by a relieving force. the first part of this article, we should not view siege
In 1683 the Turks were caught before Vienna by the technique teleologically, as if soldiers of the earlier period
relieving Polish army and scattered. Their trenches were were simply less able and less observant than Vauban, and
elaborate but they faced only one way, leaving their camps failed to hit on his 'solution'. Their choices as besiegers
vulnerable. were frequently highly circumscribed.
A prolonged siege thus required even more complex Inevitably, in the siege of most defended places, enemy
fortification works by the attackers than was strictly neces? soldiers and local civilians came into contact with each
sary to effect a breach. Under the prevailing codes of war other. European societies in the early modern period were
only one bastion needed to be penetrated to make the concerned to regulate their affairs by legal means,
fortress technically liable to surrender. To do so required especially in the relations between friend and foe, between
an elaborate network of saps (trenches zig-zagging towards conquering states and subject peoples. War was governed
the walls), parallels (lines of trenches facing the walls which by rules, and these were abided by perhaps more fre?
served for both communication and secure assembly points quently than are the laws of war today. The customs and
for an assault), and fortified gun batteries giving off from laws of war also conditioned the way in which both
the parallels. All these trenches were elaborately revetted soldiers and civilians related to the fortress symbolically.
with planks and wattle panels, and the parapets were re? They were part of the way combatants and non-com?
inforced by gabions, wicker-work baskets filled with earth. batants understood war and their place in it.
This in itself required digging enough. Often, com? War was a normal part of human affairs and thus part
manders were uncertain as to how long a place could last. of natural law - that is, the common understanding of the
If they did expect to sit it out, they were obliged to create basic rules of conduct that applied to all humanity whether
much more elaborate works. In addition to the front that or not they were subject to the laws of a given state. By the
was to be attacked, the whole place had to be encircled by seventeenth century such rules were well established. For
trenches incorporating, at intervals, strong points that example, the Dutch legal theorist Hugo Grotius wrote of
were known as lines of circumvallation. These temporary them in his De Jure Belli ac Pads (1625).9 He held to the
fortifications were then mirrored on their outer perimeter Roman belief that a combatant defeated in war had for?
by lines of countervallation which served to protect the feited his life, that surrender put one at the mercy of one's
besiegers, should they in turn be besieged. The cost of such captor, who could demand ransom, or enslave the captive.
works was enormous and they could be justified only if the As applied to sieges, the laws of war were clear and
place in question was pivotal. Prolonged sieges were commonly accepted. The besiegers would formally call
unpopular: they caused the investing forces to spend long upon the besieged to surrender. If they did so, the civilians
periods in damp trenches, often without adequate food or became the subjects of the besieger's state, and their lives
shelter. Besieging armies often had to suffer the ravages of and property would be guaranteed, subject to legitimate
disease, or mutinied for lack of food or pay.7 The reasons exactions and billeting. This explains why many com?
that armies could not keep in the field were the self-same mercial towns in the Low Countries submitted to the
ones that made a long siege difficult to contemplate. Spaniards in the sixteenth century; otherwise they would
Well into the seventeenth century most states lacked the have been treated as rebels against the Crown. Once a
means to conduct a siege 'scientifically'. Armies were com? practicable breach (that is, a hole in the walls that could be
posed of mercenary forces raised by military contractors stormed) had been opened, the besiegers could legitimately
(Spain's army was for long the exception). The availability require the garrison to surrender. The defenders, having
of manpower for digging was often limited to the summer defended the place honourably, could leave with their
season before the harvest. The fiscal base of most states colours and arms, and were given free passage on the
was fragile. Cannon were in limited supply. The temp? understanding that they took no further part in the
tation to try to settle a siege quickly by battery and storm conflict. If they refused the offer of honourable capitu

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lation and continued a defence, their lives and goods were
forfeit if the fortress was subsequently stormed, and they
were at the mercy of the victors. After a bloody assault, the
victors were seldom merciful, and in any case officers
could hardly control their troops once they were loose in
the town. The prospect of plunder was one of the few
incentives for soldiers who had been called upon to risk
their lives in storming a breach.
In the case of a siege, citizens of fortified places were
subject to military law. They had the consolation of being
within the walls, and therefore protected from the exac?
tions and abuses of the besieging army outside. However,
besieged citizens were expected to provide for themselves
in the main, and if food ran out, or prices rose beyond the
pockets of the poor, they starved. Governors had
4. Engraving depicting the siege of M?nster by the German princes, 1657.
draconian powers. During the siege of Siena in 1554-5, the
French garrison commander Blaise de Monluc turned out
four thousand of the civilian population as 'useless mouths' entrenched in temporary fortifications could hold out
at the end of February 1555. Monluc confessed in his against powerful forces and heavy bombardment. Vicks
memoirs: 'These poor folk made their way towards the burg was besieged for 213 days by vastly superior forces
enemy, who merely chased them back to us . . . But we and surrendered only when food and ammunition began
remained firm, and the agony lasted for eight days. The to run out. The same occurred in 1877 when a small, ill
refugees had only grass to eat, and more than half of them equipped Turkish force defended the village of Plevna in
died, for the enemy helped to kill them off and very few Bulgaria against the Russian army for 142 days and even?
managed to escape.'10 tually had to be starved into surrender.
Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century warfare was quite Sir George Sydenham-Clarke in the first edition of his
as horrible in its own way as anything in the twentieth - textbook on fortification in 1890 drew the obvious lesson
allowing for the greater resources and greater techno? from such examples: permanent fortifications were largely
logical killing power of today. The impact of a siege was obsolete and at best an expensive luxury.13 At Port Arthur
felt not only within the walls. Not for nothing was the in 1904-5 the Japanese suffered at least 60,000 casualties in
army official charged with raising contributions from the storming the Russian fortress in successive bloody assaults.
occupied populations in the German lands called the Attacks in the open in daylight by large formations had
Brandmeister. Towards the end of the siege of Siena, an been made all but suicidal by the repeating rifle and the
observer commented, for ten miles around the city 'there machine gun. The lethal zone across which armies had to
was not a wall standing, while the country was infested advance in order to take a position was now about a
with dogs devouring the corpses'." kilometre in length.
What citizens feared above all was a general bombard? The Polish banker and amateur strategist Ivan S. Bloch
ment. By the mid-seventeenth century, mortars could lob argued in the 1890s that repeating rifles and machine guns
explosive or incendiary shells over the walls and into the had made warfare counter-productive: 'Between the com?
interior of the fortress or city, but such an attack could batants will always be an impassable zone of fire deadly in
only succeed if the civilian population was able to force the equal degree to both the foes.' Moreover, he wrote,
governor to surrender and open the gates (Fig. 4). Bom? 'everybody will be entrenched in the next war. It will be a
bardment was therefore widely regarded as a brutal and great war of entrenchments. The spade will be as in?
generally unjustified assault upon civilians. The Swiss jurist dispensable to a soldier as his rifle.'14
Emerich Vattel claimed in 1773 that 'it is only in cases of In 1914 the German army effortlessly destroyed the
the last extremity, and with reluctance, that good princes Belgian fortresses, but subsequently it could not prevail
exert a right of so rigorous a nature'.12 Nevertheless, it took against the improvised defensive positions of the English
place even in the apparently restrained eighteenth century. and the French. By October these had been fixed in a line
In 1747 the French bombarded and then pillaged Bergen from Dunkirk to the Swiss border, confronted by a similar
op-Zoom. system of German trenches. It was to remain thus for four
By the 1880s rifles could fire ten times faster and about years. These 'new' trench systems were simply variants of
ten times further than the muskets of the Napoleonic wars. the saps and parallels of the old siegeworks. Over time
In consequence, the trenches which had long been em? they became more and more elaborate, and concrete
ployed for besieging the classical artillery fortress assumed bunkers began to appear, serving as the core of the
a new role. The American Civil War proved that infantry strong-points. Essentially, a sixteenth-century technology

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had been adapted to the demands of industrialized
warfare.
What was different, above all, was the numbers of
soldiers at the front. Modern industrial societies were
productive enough to release large numbers of men for
warfare. By contrast, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth
century the ratio of soldiers to the overall population was
low. The new mass armies in Western Europe were also
relatively well fed, well supplied and well cared for.
Conditions in which whole armies would have starved or
been exterminated by epidemics in the seventeenth
century were tolerated for the better part of four years by
most of the armies of the First World War. Given the
modern industrial system, productive capacity and logistics
were decisive in warfare, not the type of weapons that 5. Maginot Line bunker with casemates at Hochwald West in northeastern
France, 1935.
were used - the improved rifled muskets of the American
Civil War were quite capable of producing a long stale?
mate in which the Army of Northern Virginia held out could only be done by creating strong continuous linear
against the forces of the industrializing northern states. fortifications on the most vulnerable frontiers. The im?
By 1914 the 'place' to be defended was no longer a city, provised linear defences of the recent war had proved
but a country. In one sense France was besieged by the remarkably strong. Germany had in the end surrendered
Germans, but in another it was the Allies who were forced because of the consequences of a long total war: the heavy
to attack in order to evict the occupiers. No matter how casualties of a war of attrition on the battlefields, and the
many millions of shells were fired at them, trench systems civilian hunger that was caused by the economic misman?
proved almost invulnerable. In Flanders heavy shelling agement of the military and the Allied blockade.
destroyed the natural drainage and made forward progress In a real sense the loser in 1918 was France, with its
by the Allies all but impossible. Casualties were enormous: economy exhausted and its manpower depleted. When
50,000 British soldiers became casualties on the first day of Germany chose to reassert itself, its productive power was
the Battle of the Somme in 1916.15 Concrete bunkers and much larger, and there were some seventy million
machine guns made it relatively easy for defenders to hold Germans to forty million French. Owing to a sudden drop
the front line. Machine guns were not miracle weapons, in the number of French conscripts available, Germany
they just thinned out the firing-line so that fewer defenders enjoyed its greatest advantage by the mid 1930s.16 The
were exposed to enemy artillery. The trench system, a French were convinced that the new technologies made a
design solution of sixteenth-century siegecraft, easy to surprise attack more likely. Tanks, aeroplanes and motor?
implement with simple tools and unskilled labour, proved ized vehicles could facilitate a sudden coup before French
resistant to hundreds of thousands of high-explosive shells reserves were able to be mobilized. The experience of
falling on a relatively few square miles. The building of Verdun had shown that deep concrete works could save
trenches had been absorbed into the traditions and lives, and that protected communications were essential.
routines of practical military procedure, and the digging of Verdun's lifeline, the Voie Sacre, had been under constant
them was not unlike the unskilled labour with which most artillery fire. The French reoccupation of Alsace-Lorraine
of the soldiers were familiar in civilian life, whether on provided valuable technical lessons drawn from the
farms, on building sites or in factories. The shapes were German fortifications built in the 1910-14 period. The new
those which had been determined by Renaissance German defences at Mutzig, Metz and Thionville were
intellectuals for the stone fortress, and then imitated for actually very different from the classic ring fortress com?
the earthworks of siege engineers. Four hundred years posed of detached works with a regular trace - the former
later they were still in use, but their architectural origins were based on the Feste, or 'fortified group', principle. A
were virtually forgotten. Feste consisted of irregular groupings of detached artillery
and infantry blocks, mutually supporting and adapted to
BUNKERS - NATIONAL STYLES IN THE ARCHITECTURE the local terrain. Well-concealed and linked by tunnels,
OF AGGRESSION this new system was much more difficult to identify and
bombard.
By the end of the First World War the defence of places The French decided to screen their frontier with Ger?
had come to mean one thing: the only 'place' that could be many in the 1920s, well before Hider. The objective was to
defended against the new weapons - long-range guns, prevent a sudden attack, and to allow time for French
aeroplanes and tanks - was the national territory. This reserves to mobilize. The army would then be able to

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 This content downloaded from
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reinforce the fortifications, but the defences would also Poland to succeed. In this case mobile warfare and forti?
allow for a substantial mobile force that could come to the fications were not in opposition; both the Germans and the
aid of Belgium. The French were determined not to repeat French saw them as complementary in their strategies.
the experience of 1914, when they had suffered huge Tanks were still relatively weak: they were small and easily
casualties in attacking the German defences in Alsace checked by ditches and barriers, and, armoured with a
Lorraine, leaving them with inadequate forces to counter thickness of at the most thirty millimetres but more usually
the German invasion of Belgium. These new fortifications, fourteen millimetres or less, they were highly vulnerable to
called the Maginot Line, were therefore not strategically light anti-tank guns. Aircraft were useless against well
irrational (Fig. 5). concealed bunkers with 1.5 metres of reinforced concrete
In fact the new mobile warfare made possible by tanks cover. The Westwall was a vast propaganda success. Ger?
and trucks did require fortifications to check it. Indeed the man newsreels, photographs and articles portrayed it as
blitzkrieg was invented in the 1930s for the purpose of much more extensive and powerful than it really was.
breaking through, before the enemy could marshal re? They included photographs of deep tunnels that were
serves. The greatest armoured battle of the Second World actually taken in the Czech frontier defences which the
War, at Kursk in 1943, revolved around dense fortified Germans occupied in 1938. In fact there were no deep
belts on the Russian side. The Maginot Line was unique - works, for the Westwall was no more than a network of
an attempt to create a permanent defence system in peace? small bunkers on the surface. Its distinctive feature was the
time that could defend a frontier along its length. No 'dragon's teeth' anti-tank obstacles, concrete sectional
previous linear defence had ever had so ambitious an aim pillars that marched over hill and dale like the classic
or the means to carry it out. The Dutch Water Lines of the Chinese walls north of Beijing. As the French were
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were national re? deterred from attacking in support of Poland in 1939, the
doubts, lines of fortified towns along waterways, designed Westwall, both real and imaginary, proved effective.19
to exclude the enemy from the inner core of the country. In 1940 the Germans had reached the coast of the
The Roman limes and Hadrian's Wall were border control English Channel, and Britain was faced with the threat of
systems, designed to exclude barbarian 'economic invasion. There was a flurry of improvised building of
migrants' and to channel major incursions. The various defensive works (Figs. 7, 8, 9). Most of the bunkers were
Chinese systems were likewise designed to exclude and poorly sited, poorly built, and even poorer in design. In
control barbarian nomads, principally in the Ordos desert effect they were death traps. Even the General Head?
region north of Beijing. They too were more a barrier than quarters' defence line systems back from the coast were
a true system of linear fortification. The venerable 'Great nowhere near French or German standards for small
Wall of China', a continuous system existing for thousands works, let alone large complexes. The defences of both the
of years, is a myth. There never was one linear system, but French and the Germans had benefited from uniform
a hodge-podge of local defences, and the works extant design, direction and supervision by competent central
today are mostly creations of the sixteenth century.17 organizations led by able engineers - CORF (Commission
The Maginot Line was an immense achievement. It d'Organisation des Regions Fortifies) and the Organisation
included underground power stations, air-conditioning, Todt, respectively. The English bunkers, when they did
underground railways, highly mechanized systems, and an not look like public lavatories gone astray, were got up in
extensive network of deep tunnels (Fig. 6). There was, droll camouflage as carousels, railway wagons, etc. They
however, a considerable contrast between the engineering appear to have been more of a displacement activity than
scale and expense of the works, and their fighting power, a rational form of defence, and it is hard to imagine that
which was modest. The total number of guns of 75 mm. they were built by a people seriously fearing an invasion.
and above in the defences from Luxembourg to the Swiss By 1942 it was obvious to the Germans that they faced a
frontier was only 344, and their maximum range was serious threat of invasion from the west. Their response
under ten kilometres.18 In 1940 the Line was held until the was the Atlantic Wall, the most ambitious scheme of forti?
French armies, outflanked by a thrust through the fication ever undertaken.20 It was to run from the North
Ardennes, were forced to surrender. Thus, although it had Cape to the Spanish border. Its construction was partly
been designed with 1918 in mind, the Line, suitably entrusted to naval engineers for the most elaborate naval
supplemented by the field army, proved adequate as a gun emplacements, but mainly to the Organisation Todt.
barrier. Likewise, in 1944 the Americans found the old In Fritz Todt and Albert Speer, the OT had at its head
German fortifications at Metz - which the French had a leading civil engineer and a competent, if grandiose and
incorporated into the reserve portion of the line - a unimaginative, architect. Xaver Dorsch was Director
formidable obstacle. throughout, and with Todt a sometime member of the
In the 1930s the Germans decided to create their own Sager and W?rner civil engineering practice in Munich.
linear system, the Westwall. Its purpose was to contain any Thus Atlantic Wall was built to high civilian design and
French offensive long enough for a blitzkrieg attack on construction standards, and supervised by the leading

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experts in poured concrete. Far from being an improvised
military field fortification, the Wall was the grandest of
grands projets, and can be considered as possessing great
architectural merit in the detailed design and siting of its
fortifications and bunkers.
Nevertheless, the Wall proved a failure. But the OT
and Speer were not to blame for this. Had the hundreds of
thousands of tons of concrete and many heavy guns that
were used on the fortifications in Norway (principally at
Narvik) and in the Channel Islands been sited in
Normandy, and had the divisions wasted in Norway
(twelve divisions formed the garrison there, as many as
from the bay of the Seine to Bordeaux) been posted on
that coast, the Allied invasion might well have failed. The
commander of the defences, Erwin Rommel, a Panzer 7. Square brick pill-box at Bisley, by Century Range, c.1941.
general, realized that their only chance was to try to beat
the Allies at the water's edge and prevent their gaining a
foothold. His reasoning was simple: not only was three ^{}L4'- - -
quarters of the German army in Russia, but an even larger
proportion of what was left of the Luftwaffe was either on
the Eastern Front or defending the Reich from Allied
bombers. On 6 June 1944 the Luftwaffe managed about
two-hundred sorties, as against several thousands by the
Allies, in the area of the invasion. Logic would have
indicated that the Allies could land only within fighter
range of England, in Normandy or the Pas de Calais -
other defences would have been a waste of time. Once
Allied air power was established on the Continent the
German armies would be unable to move. Logic, however,
was in short supply. Hitler dictated strategic priorities, and
German engineering brilliance and tactical skill could not
8. Pill-box disguised as a removals van.
compensate for the misallocation of resources. As Paul
Virilio points out, the German need to stand on the
defensive on the Atlantic coast was a direct consequence of
their expansionary drive. They had conquered France, but r. - :

were forced to keep the vast bulk of their armies fighting

deep inside Eastern Europe.21 Thus concrete had to com?
pensate for weakness, to shelter forces that were unable to
complete their task without this defensive cover.
The scale of the works remains breathtaking, and so too
does the beauty of many of the structures. Particularly
remarkable are the coastal observation towers, which com?
bine starkness with a fluid grace. The fact that they were
built to defend an evil regime matters, but does not negate
their aesthetic qualities. Paul Virilio in his Bunker
Archaeology (the first version of which was published in
1967) was among the first to appreciate these forms.22
Keith Mallory and Arvid Ottar's The Architecture of 9. One of the forts in the Thames estuary, which covered gaps in the anti-aircraft
defences. These forts were towed into position and sunk on the seabed.
Aggression of 1973 was clearly inspired by Virilio but is a
much wider historical survey, ranging over the whole field
of twentieth-century military building.23
The Atlantic Wall included bunkers of diverse shapes
and functions - gun casemates of varying sizes, shelters,
observation posts, etc. (Fig. 10). Closely associated with it
were the massive bomb-proof submarine bases at Brest,

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10. Elements of the Atlantic Wall
defences, built c.1942 : Radar and
observation tower at L'Ancress,
Guernsey; observation points at
Jerbour Point, Guernsey; and gun
emplacement at La Creche, near
Boulogne.

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Lorient, Saint-Nazaire, etc. (Fig. n). Much of this remains,
and increasingly the architectural merit of these structures
is being recognized. Often bunkers have been compared to
the work of Le Corbusier or to Brutalism - Mallory and
Ottar include photographs of the Hayward Gallery in their
book. There is, however, a more obvious and striking
parallel, that of German Expressionism, and in particular
the work of Erich Mendelsohn. If we compare his sketches
for the Einsteint?rm, for high-rise buildings, or for the new
town on Mt Carmel, the similarities are remarkable. The
Einsteint?rm itself could almost, on its hilly site and in
misty weather, be on the edge of the Atlantic rather than
in a science park outside Potsdam.24
By 1944 the Reich itself needed fortifying. The Ger?
mans built on a scale and with a degree of monumentality
and permanence that seem quite out of keeping with a 11. Submarine pen at Bordeaux, built 1941.

nation on the verge of defeat. Large 'flak towers' (Fig. 12)

and massive air-raid shelters were common in major cities fications fades away; with it the essence of surface entrenchment
like Berlin, Hamburg and Vienna. In the countryside the systems will disappear.28
SS built underground factories of considerable size, the A bunker is a bunker is a bunker. This would seem
construction of which entailed shifting huge quantities of obvious, and entirely consistent with Virilio's conception
earth and rock.25 England never built on this scale. Air? of the bunker as a monolith, yet it is a curiously short?
raid shelters were haphazard and mostly flimsy, and were sighted view for someone who took the photographs in
savagely criticized by Ove Arup for the inadequate protec? Bunker Archaeology. They show a wonderful eye for the
tion they provided and the lack of engineering analysis of architectural features of the Atlantic Wall bunkers, above
the problem.26 The English heavy batteries at Dover were all their relation to site, and the combination of monu
thrown together and covered with corrugated iron, mentality and fluidity. Virilio's view is inaccurate because,
whereas the Nazi batteries at Sangatte were buried in vast rather than in spite, of the fact that bunkers rely for their
concrete shelters and protected with heavy steel revolving strength and solidity on mass concrete. When set, concrete
shields. The English were both pragmatic and convinced is monolithic and massive. But when poured it is a fluid
that the war was temporary, while the Germans believed and plastic medium, making possible a whole variety of
that war was an integral feature of the new Reich, and its shapes. Despite the high skills in concrete construction of
structures should reflect this with permanence and dignity. both French and German engineers, the bunkers they built
The inventiveness of the English lay in their ability to devise are very different in their forms. Indeed, it was those very
unorthodox engineering solutions such as the sea forts pro? skills that made possible design approaches that were fluid
viding anti-aircraft defences to cover gaps like those in the and coherent, but different. The English bunkers avoid the
Thames and Mersey estuaries, and in the prefabricated possibilities of the medium, using concrete in a utilitarian
floating Mulberry Harbours for the Normandy Invasion.27 and unimaginative way ? as if it were rigid to begin with,
Thus, quite different 'national styles' may be reflected in or they are entirely whimsical, dressed in camouflage as if
responses to war. The English could be described as utili? they were something else.
tarian, committed to the careful use of resources, for the Bunkers differ in the way their mass is handled, and in
duration of the conflict only. The Germans built as if they their relationship to the surrounding landscape. This
were constructing the monuments of a thousand-year Reich relationship can change dramatically if, for example, they
- monuments which are central to their culture. But can are uncovered by the erosion of sand dunes. Their effect
there be a national style in the building of bunkers? Paul may be enhanced, revealing the mass hitherto concealed,
Virilio characterizes the bunker as a monolith, and argues or they may appear absurd, like an oversized beached
that all such concrete masses are essentially the same: turtle. As Virilio argues, bunkers are not founded - they
do not stand on foundations. Their own mass serves as
When we show interest in ancient armour, the ornaments and fig?
their foundations, often with an 'apron' of concrete at the
ures indicate clearly the origin and style - Italian, French, etc. - but
bottom to prevent bombs or shells dislodging them from
here hardly anything survives of this form of identification, the omni?
potence of arms volatilized what was left of aesthetic will. If a few
the terrain. Most bunkers are built or dug into the terrain
details still allow French fortifications to be distinguished from Ger?
as far as is consistent with their functions. Thus, in a way,
man ones, this concerns only problems of implementation, of the Mougin's fort (mentioned in the first part of this article),
influence of different types of plans in one country as opposed to for all its unpracticality, anticipates the logical tendency of
another for a short time yet. With the bunker the diversity of forti fortifications based on mass concrete, as it is an entirely

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 tioned above, because essentially they are 'out of place'.
But that does not make them ruins, just useless and
incongruous.
There are some exceptions. Bunkers which have lost
key features - for example casemates with gaping holes
where their shielded artillery was - often look old and
forlorn. Sometimes, depending on size and site, their
character may change. Virilio remarks of bunkers on the
Atlantic Wall which had a 'Todt front' that, minus their
guns, they can be compared to Aztec or Egyptian temples.
The objective of the Todt front with its stepped sides and a
concrete cap over the embrasure was to protect the em?
brasure against bombs and oblique shell hits. These
features, originally functional, become monumental and
decorative, seeming to enhance the entrance; the gap
where the shield should be now looks like the entrance to a
subterranean chamber.
In arguing that bunkers are unlikely to become ruins I
am not claiming that they are uninteresting or merely
functional, but simply that they are not subject to the same
forces of decay and the consequent softening of their
outlines which may make a castle more attractive. The
aesthetic features of bunkers are sui generis, a function of
their form and site, and are not altered by the fact the
building is no longer in use. To cease to function is not
akin to ruin. The ruin carries with it moral as well as
12. Anti-aircraft tower in Vienna, by Friedric Tamms, 1940. aesthetic ideas, but bunkers are not heroic, nor are they
ancient. If they are of architectural interest, it must be
subterranean concrete block. Yet bunkers often had to because of their merit as designs.
reveal themselves - for example the massive casemates for The Nazis were acutely aware of the political uses of
the guns of the Lindemann battery at Sangatte or the huge architecture and the role of monuments in securing and
submarine pens at Lorient, Saint-Nazaire, etc. The latter legitimating the future of the regime. In 1938 Albert Speer,
structures were simply too big to bury, even if this had Hitler's architect at the time, wrote an essay on the theory
been consistent with admitting submarines. They occupy of the value of ruins. In solidly anti-modernist terms he
the space of a city block. They rely for their defence on the argued that 'the structures built with modern techniques
simple bulk of mass concrete, with large burster slabs on [would not be appropriate as the noble ruins of the future]
the roof, and thick retaining walls. The U-boat bases are .... My theory was designed to solve this dilemma.
impressive for their very bulk, but also for the consistency I wanted to give up using modern materials found in
of their treatment. More than any other structure they metallic and concrete constructions. By respecting certain
epitomize the monolithic, and are virtually indestructible. laws of statics, buildings could be constructed that after
The vast majority of artillery fortifications have been thousands of years would clearly resemble Roman
either dug up or ignored. It is difficult to dispose of mass models.'29
concrete, and many of the biggest structures survive simply This is the clearest possible statement of the aesthetics
because in an urban environment their demolition would of Nazism. Speer had designed the Party assembly com?
also be noisy and inconvenient. But this does not mean plex at Nuremberg as a setting for politics as theatre. This
that bunkers will become 'ruins'. They remind us of a war aesthetic was, in Carl Schmitt's terms, a form of 'political
that was far from heroic. As Virilio says, most people find romanticism' promoting in the contemporary participant
them sinister, almost as if they have an 'aura' of fear and an awareness of the audience.30 Thus things are not done
dictatorship. in and for themselves, but to create an effect. Politics is
Obviously bunkers fall into disuse and disrepair but, aestheticized - which does not mean that the results are
unlike castles, they don't really become ruins. They may beautiful; on the contrary, they are almost guaranteed to
be pitted with shell holes but they retain their form, and be kitsch. Speer conceived of his buildings with their
the damage - far from softening them and rendering them destiny as a ruin incorporated from the start, so that it will
picturesque - makes them look seedy and even more evoke a response in spectators a thousand years hence.
sinister. Uprooted bunkers tend to look absurd, as I men Seeking the monumental, he hopes that posterity will

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admire Nazi architecture because of a political victory that World i4g4~i66o) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), p. 250.
gives it no other choice. A thousand-year Reich is the 11. Simon Pepper and Nicholas Adams, Firearms and Fortifications:
Military Architecture and Siege Warfare in Sixteenth Century Siena
claim of a regime that did not deserve to last for one hour.
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1986), p. 138.
Like the inspiration behind Saddam's monuments in 12. Duffy, Siege Warfare, p. 252.
Baghdad, it relies on ruthlessness and the sheer scale of its 13. George Sydenham Clarke, Fortification: Its Past Achievements, Recent
ambitions in order to secure its aesthetic claims. Developments and Future Progress (Liphook: Beaufort). Reprint of the
For Alberti, monuments are part of the contemporary second edition of 1907.
14. La Guerre Future, cited in Makers of Modern Strategy, edited by P. Paret
city, and do not seek to dominate posterity.31 In recalling
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 512, and I. F. Clarke, Voices
the virtuous deeds of its leading citizens, they provide
Prophesying War 1763-^84 (London: Panther, 1970).
evidence of the greatness of the city, and serve to inspire 15. See the eyewitness accounts in Martin Middlebrook's The First Day on
virtue in its inhabitants. By contrast, Speer's relation to the the Somme (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), and the reconstruction by
future is perverted. His are the aesthetics of a politics John Keegan in The Face of Battle.
which hopes to prevail by power alone, has no true moral 16. Anthony Kemp, The Maginot Line: Myth and Reality (London: Warne,
or cultural claims, and is nihilistic to the core. Its obsession 1981), p. 12. All earlier books on the Maginot Line are controversial.
with the future recalls some of the worst excesses of the 17. See Arthur Waldron, The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
heritage industry today. 18. Kemp, The Maginot Line, p. 37.
Speer never intended that the bunkers on the Atlantic 19. On the Westwall see Keith Mallory and Arvid Ottar, The Architecture
Wall should serve as the monument to Nazi ambitions. His of Aggression (London: Architectural Press, 1973), chapter 6.
own grandiose works were mostly reduced to rubble or 20. Colin Partridge, Hitler's Atlantic Wall (Guernsey: D. I. Publications,
1976).
never even begun. The 'ignoble' materials of mass
21. Paul Virilio, Bunker Archaeology (New York: Princeton Architectural
concrete and cast steel have survived, and they are a better
Press, 1994).
monument than the regime that created them deserves. 22. Paul Virilio, 'Bunker archeologie', Architecture Principe no. 7 (March
1967).
Notes 23. Mallory and Ottar, Architecture of Aggression. This book is historically
very thorough and its architectural judgements are of a very high
1. Thomas A. Markus, Buildings and Power: Freedom and Control in the Origin of
standard. It covers the whole field of military construction, including
Modern Building Types (London: Routledge, 1993). The same is true of
temporary housing, Mulberry Harbours, air-raid shelters, etc.
Nikolaus Pevsner's earlier A History of Building Types (London: Thames
24. Erich Mendelsohn, Complete Works of the Architect (London: Triangle
and Hudson, 1979).
Architectural Publishing, 1992), plates on pp. 45, 78 and 93.
2. John Keegan's The Face of Battle (London: Jonathan Cape, 1976)
25. Some of the tunnels were used to build V2 rockets - see Michael J.
shows how false this assumption is and how difficult it is to take
Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
eyewitness accounts of battles or those of chroniclers at face value.
University Press, 1995).
3. G. Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1367-1659
26. Mallory and Ottar, Architecture of Aggression, chapters 11 and 12, for
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), p. 19. This is one of
British and German shelter provision, respectively.
the best studies of early modern warfare. By concentrating on logistics
27. Mallory and Ottar, Architecture of Aggression, chapters 7 and 10, for the sea
and organization it gives due emphasis to the importance of sieges in
forts and the Mulberry Harbours.
the warfare of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. See also Martin
28. Virilio, Bunker Archaeology, p. 46.
van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patten
29. Cited in Virilio, Bunker Archaeology, p. 56.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), chapters 1 and 2.
30. Carl Schmitt, Political Romanticism (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986).
4. See Quentin Hughes, Military Architecture (London: Hugh Evelyn, 1974),
Schmitt is the source for Walter Benjamin's view on the aesthetics of
p. 117.
fascism in 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction',
5. Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1367-1659, plate 4,
in Illuminations (London: Fontana, 1973). Samir-al-Khalil's The Monument
shows the oudine of the siegeworks of Amiens in a contemporary print
(London: Andre Deutsch, 1991) examines Saddam Hussein's triumphal
of 1597, and their trace represented by patterns in fields of crops in a
arches in Baghdad not only as kitsch but also as a form of political
photograph of 1964.
aestheticization through monuments.
6. In 1601 the Dutch besieged s'Hertogenbosch with 22 cannon and failed
31. Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building, translated byj. Rykwert et al.
to take it, whereas in 1629 meY usec^ u^ SVins anc^ were successful.
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988).
Similarly, at Gronelo in 1595 the Dutch had only 16 guns and 14 in
1597, but in 1627 80 cannon were brought to bear. Undoubtedly, they
were the result of Dutch enterprise in Sweden and the import of iron
guns from the new factories there. See Parker, The Army of Flanders Fig. i: British Library.
and the Spanish Road 1567-1659, p. 18. Figs. 2, 3, 4: from Siege Warfare: The Fortress in the Early Modern World
7. See 'Mutiny and Discontent in the Spanish Army of Flanders 1494-1660, by Christopher Duffy, 1979.
1572-1607' in G. Parker, Spain and the Netherlands 1559?1659 (London: Fig. 5: AA Photo Library (Peter Cook).
Fontana, 1979). Figs. 6, 8: Imperial War Museum.
8. Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban, A Manual of Siegecraft and Fig. 7: AA Photo Library (Hazel Cook).
Fortification, translated by G. A. Rothwrock (Ann Arbor: University of Fig. 9: AA Photo Library (Stevan Brown).
Michigan Press, 1968). Figs. 10 (top, centre): AA Photo Library (Roger Bennett).
9. See F. H. Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace (Cambridge: Fig. 10 (bottom): AA Photo Library (Michael Eleftheriades).
Cambridge University Press, 1963). Fig. 11: AA Photo Library (M. Hargreaves).
10. Quoted in C. Duffy, Siege Warfare: The Fortress in the Early Modern Fig. 12: AA Photo Library (Valerie Bennett).

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