A memorial to warn future generations

The National Socialists built a 630-kilometre-long border fortification from 1938 onwards. Part of this Westwall has been preserved in Bad Bergzabern. It is a bulwark composed of bunkers and tank barriers, whose history is kept alive by Martin Galle. He tells stories of the everyday lives of soldiers, of forced labour and expropriation, but also of hope in times of war.

The paper handed out to people by the mayor’s offices was pink. Marschausweis (marching pass) was written at the top in old German script and next to it: Fußmarsch (foot march). Followed by a note saying that this pass must be carried at all times during the march. From one day to the next in early September 1939, hundreds of thousands of people in what was then the Gau Saarpfalz administrative district had to leave their homes and farms. They were told to close their shops and leave the keys in the doors and that the police would take care of things. A year earlier, on 28 May 1938, before the start of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler had ordered the “massive and accelerated expansion of our defensive front in the West”. This also applied to the Southern Palatinate.

The plans, which had been in place since 1936, envisaged the completion of a 630-kilometre-long border fortification from Kleve in northwestern Germany all the way down to the Swiss border with around 18,000 bunkers and tank barriers within a few months. The fortification ran along Bad Bergzabern as well and served strategically to prepare for Nazi Germany’s war of aggression in the East. Psychologically, it was intended to prepare the Germans for war and deter the Western powers from intervening, with the structure being portrayed as impregnable, for propaganda purposes.

Today, the Westwall, also called Siegfried Line, belongs to history. However, the fact that it can be visited and that the memory of the former bulwark of war remains alive is thanks to people like Martin Galle. He runs the Westwall museum in Bad Bergzabern, just a few kilometres from the French border. The museum is a green hill with three bunker complexes scattered across it. From the outside, only a few grey, rounded concrete walls are visible. If you want to find out more, you have to descend into the interior where it is cool, ten degrees Celsius, in summer and winter alike. Of the thousands of structures that once existed, only a fraction remain today. The three artillery bunkers in Bad Bergzabern are now protected as natural and historical monuments. They convey a sense of what the bulwark meant at the time—for the soldiers on site, but also for the civilian population. 

Martin has been looking after the site for many years. His wife sits at the ticket office when the museum is open between Easter and the end of October. “It’s like a full-time job,” says the man with short grey hair about his voluntary work. The museum is financed solely by admission fees and by a few donations. “War doesn’t just happen on television, war is real,” says the museum director, who wants people to remember that only a few decades ago, war was also raging in Germany, interfering with and destroying people’s lives.

It is these individual fates that illustrate the injustices and suffering that happened at that time.

Museumsleiter Martin Galle

For example, through the evacuation of entire villages that stood in the way of the Westwall and the Red Zone on the border with France. Or through expropriating companies located in this strip of land. The Reichsstelle authority wanted to eliminate the Saar-Palatinate border industry. According to German authorities, its preservation was “definitely not desirable”. That is why the machines had already been confiscated and “transferred” to the Salamander company, as the company Rheinberger from Pirmasens had to learn. “It is these individual fates that illustrate the injustices and suffering that happened at that time,” says Martin. Anyone can read the facts and figures somewhere, but he wants to actually open people’s mind for the reality behind them, by telling stories of people’s lives in his museum.

To illustrate everyday life in the bunker complex, he has furnished one of the bunkers with original equipment almost as it was back then. There are camp beds, ventilation systems, oil lamps, rifle racks, stoves, a dry toilet, folding tables and chairs. There are also radios, soap, songbooks and even an emergency container for food.

Another bunker is dedicated to the fates of individuals with messages and documents from that time hanging on the walls. Such as the one from the company Rheinberger, which was expropriated. Or the one from Heinrich Hubert, a worker involved in the construction of the Westwall who was sentenced to death by a special court for alleged looting. Or the one about Eugène Kurtz, who, like hundreds of thousands of other men from German-occupied Alsace, was forced to serve in the Wehrmacht; today they are called Malgré-nous: against our will. “When the men later returned to their homeland—France—after the war, they were viewed with suspicion or even ostracised; after all, they had served with the enemy,” as Martin explains. But there are also stories like that of Renate Bechtold, who spent the period of the bombing raids on Bad Bergzabern, which devastated the small Palatinate town, in one of the bunkers. “As a child, this bunker saved me,” she wrote in the museum guest book many years after the war.

Martin knows her story and many more, because he has read extensively and done his own research. He has always been interested in everything revolving around the military. “I am an amateur military historian,” he says. At the age of 16, he worked with French and German enthusiasts in France to preserve the Maginot Line, a French fortification. At the same time, Martin emphasises that the Westwall museum is not a war museum; it’s anything but that. He wants people to feel what war does and that it doesn’t bring about anything good, no solution. Around 2,000 people per year come to visit the museum and see the bunkers. “I try to help open their eyes to this reality.” Martin is concerned about the rise of nationalism and the increasing disregard for or denial of what happened in the past. But he also knows: “I can only try to make a small contribution to raising awareness.”

Incidentally, the Westwall was never actually completed. With the occupation of the Benelux countries and France by Nazi Germany in 1940, the military significance of the fortifications had been rendered obsolete for the time being. It was only shortly before the end of the war, when the Eastern Campaign had long been lost, that Hitler turned back to focus on the West. By then, however, the propaganda about the impregnable Westwall was nothing more than a lie. The Allies were advancing inexorably, and the end of the war was only a matter of time. From mid-March 1945 onwards, the heaviest fighting over the capture of the bunker line took place. Bad Bergzabern was wrested from the Nazis on the evening of 22 March 1945. Three days later, the Americans had reached the Rhine at Germersheim—the Southern Palatinate was liberated.

One of the first actions the occupying powers undertook was to destroy most of the fortifications. The new Federal Republic of Germany continued the clean-up. That is, until historians and wildlife activists intervened. Because, in addition to serving as a memorial, what remains of the Westwall also fulfils another purpose. Plants and animals have made their home in the relics—the former site of war acts as a habitat for them today.

www.otterbachabschnitt.de

The Westwall museum is open from Good Friday until the end of October. Groups and school classes can come for a visit all year round. Contact the museum at +49-152-59659063 (mobile) or westwallmuseum@Bad-Bergzabern.de.