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miRS-tonpon - Sturmpanzer.com

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fortresses stretch over its entire length,including dugouts, antitank positions, anti-aircraft strongpoints,and so forth. The manpower employed consisted roughly of:Pestungspioniere (Fortress Engineers)0TReichsarbeitsdienst (German Labour Service)90,000 men350,000 men100,000 menTo these 540,000 must be added additional help from the Army,which brought units for training purposes up to the Wall toestablish obstacles, blocks, and to lay <strong>com</strong>munication cables.About 6,000,000 tons of cement were used. The daily supply ofstones cane to 140,000 tons, and 695*000 cubic metres of woodwere employed.Firms which worked on the West Wall were chosen from the neighboringtowns (AACHEN, SAARBR0CKEN, Ktof, and others) and werelater moved to the Atlantic Wall*The following, taken from Infantry Journal in 1943* givessome idea of the magnitude of this project,"Proa his headquarters in WIBSBAIEN, Fritz TOUTorganized the work as a gigantic problem in excavating,steel and cement procurement, conorete mixing andtransporting, concrete pouring, labour, transporting andhousing problem, all put on a twenty-four hour basis. Asthe Nazi and German military press depicted this enterprise,a variety of organizations and enterprises werecalled upon to contribute - the German cement industrythrew in one third of its total production; privateconstruction firms furnished the largest excavatorsavailable and fully a third of all ooncrete mixers in theReich as well as pneumatic drills, tractors and 15,000trucks, or over one-third of the whole German truck fleet.The Reich railroads put at TODT's disposal 6,000 freightoars per diem, later raised to 8,000, and the Reich Postalservioe, which runs the larger part of the German ruralbus lines, sixty-eight per cent of its total fleet. TheNational Socialist Motor Transport Corps (NSKK)furnished numerous truck drivers, dispatch riders and trafficoontrol officers."The 0T began its work with 35> 000 men of its own onJuly 20, 1938, practically all building workers; this numberrose to 45*000 a week later and thereafter in the followingacceleration: 77*000 on August 3; 191*000 on Sept 7;213*000 on Sept.14; 241,000 on Sept. 21; 278,000 on Sept.28; and to its maximum of 342,000 on Oct 6« While thesenumbers rose and the work got actually under way, HITLER,speaking at the Annual Party Day rally on Sept. 12, calledit 'The most gigantic fortification work of all ages 1 * Tothe labouring contingents were added 90,000 workers employedby the Staff of Fortification Engineers (Pestungspionierstab),who did the surveying, cable-laying, camouflaging, etc. and100,000 men of the Reioh Labour Service, (RAD), on whom TOUTincreasingly drew as a labour force • '•*ii) The Atlantic Wall*Work on the "Atlantic Wall 11 proper, excluding the Channeldefences, was begun in the spring of 1942. The "Wall" extends fromthe Bay of BLsoay in the south to the North Cape, Norway, in thenorth and oovers about 1,700 miles* A conservative estimate of thenumber of men employed is 300,000* German propaganda figures putthe number at about a half-million,and it is possible that thisnumber, given for a peak period (autumn of 1942), was not

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