Hitler’s Concrete Hideouts!

Halloween is over; however the ghostly remains of Hitler’s concrete hideouts are bound to give you the creeps!

Hitler knew the Allied invasion on the Atlantic coast would come eventually, so all along the western edge of Europe — from Spain to Scandinavia — he built a series of fortifications called the Atlantic Wall. In addition to minefields, workers were ordered to build a series of massive concrete bunkers designed to house troops and guns. Decades later, a group of those structures still exist!

Photographer Jonathan Andrew came across these relics while driving around the Netherlands on assignment. With walls up to 9 feet thick, some have withstood the test of time only to be covered in graffiti or converted into livestock barns by local farmers. Andrew was drawn to the bunkers as photo subjects by their strange architectural design.

“It was a visual thing first, but I was also fascinated with their history,” says Andrew, a commercial photographer who was born in England but now lives in Amsterdam.

Below are a set of images taken by Jonathan Andrew:

• Image 1: Type 583a / M 178. Fire control post for medium and heavy batteries. Heerenduin, Ijmuiden, The Netherlands

• Image 2: VF observation bunker, Raversijde, Oostende, Belgium

• Image 3: R636 fire control post. Leffrinckoucke/Zuydcoote, Plage L’Ouest de Zuydcoote, France

• Image 4: SK observation tower. Fliegerhorst, Hemiksem, Belgium

• Image 5: Military casemate type 623. West of Koudekerke, The Netherlands

• Image 6: Dutch double pyramide bunker

• Image 7: Cramond Island World War II submarine defense boom

• Image 8: Type L483 central radio transmitter bunker. Spaandam, The Netherlands

• Image 9: Type L483 central radio transmitter bunker. Spaandam, The Netherlands

• Image 10: 600 gun site for 5cm tank gun. In the background there is a 630 Embrasured MG emplacement with armor plating

• Image 11: 134 ammunition bunker. Patentestraat, Lissewege, West Vlaanderen, Belgium

As well as these images captured by Andrew, other concrete hideouts remain around the Atlantic… as well as inside! In 2008, the sea unearthed three Nazi bunkers which were uncovered by violent storms off the Danish coast, providing a store of material for history buffs and military archaeologists.

These secret Nazi bunkers have been hidden for almost 60 years, yet were found in  practically the same condition as they were  on the day the last Nazi soldiers left them, down to the tobacco in one trooper‘s pipe and a half-finished bottle of  schnapps! The bunkers were three of 7,000 built by the Germans as part of Hitler’s ‘Atlantic Wall’ from Norway to the south of France. However, while the vast majority were almost immediately looted or destroyed, these three were entombed under the sand dunes of a remote beach near the town of Houvig since 1945.