The Todt Battery, also known as Batterie Todt, was a battery of coastal artillery built by Nazi Germany during World War II, located in the hamlet of Haringzelles, Audinghen, near Cape Gris-Nez, Pas de Calais, France.
The battery consisted of four Krupp guns with a range up to , capable of reaching the British coast, each protected by a bunker of reinforced concrete. Originally to be called Siegfried Battery, it was renamed in honor of the German engineer Fritz Todt, creator of the Todt Organisation. It was later integrated into the Atlantic Wall.
The 3rd Canadian Infantry Division attacked the Cape Gris-Nez batteries on 29 September 1944, and the positions were secured by the afternoon of the same day. The Todt battery fired for the last time on 29 September 1944 and was taken hours later by the North Nova Scotia Highlanders that landed in Normandy, as part of the 9th Infantry Brigade, 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, after an intense aerial bombardment, as part of Operation Undergo.
History
Germany's swift and successful occupation of France and the Low Countries gained control of the Channel coast. Grand Admiral Erich Raeder met Hitler on 21 May 1940 and raised the topic of invasion, but warned of the risks and expressed a preference for blockade by air, submarines and raiders. By the end of May, the Kriegsmarine had become even more opposed to invading Britain following its costly victory in Norway. Over half of the Kriegsmarine surface fleet had been either sunk or badly damaged in Operation Weserübung, and his service was hopelessly outnumbered by the ships of the Royal Navy.
In an OKW directive on 10 July, General Wilhelm Keitel requested artillery protection during the planned invasion:
OKW Chief of Staff Alfred Jodl set out the OKW proposals for the proposed invasion of Britain in a memorandum issued on 12 July, which described it as "a river crossing on a broad front", irritating the Kriegsmarine.
On 16 July 1940 Hitler issued Führer Directive No. 16, setting in motion preparations for a landing in Britain, codenamed Operation Sea Lion. One of the four conditions for the invasion to occur set out in Hitler's directive was the coastal zone between occupied France and England must be dominated by heavy coastal artillery to close the Strait of Dover to Royal Navy warships and merchant convoys. The Kriegsmarines Naval Operations Office deemed this a plausible and desirable goal, especially given the relatively short distance, , between the French and English coasts. Orders were therefore issued to assemble and begin emplacing every Army and Navy heavy artillery piece available along the French coast, primarily at Pas-de-Calais. This work was assigned to the Organisation Todt and commenced on 22 July 1940.
By early August 1940, all of the Army's large-caliber railway guns were operational taking advantage of the narrow width of the English Channel in the Pas-de-Calais. Firing sites for these railway guns were quickly set up between Wimereux, in the south, and Calais in the north, along the axis Calais-Boulogne-sur-Mer making the most of the railway tracks entering the dunes and skirting the hills of Boulonnais, before fanning out behind Cape gris-Nez. Other firing locations were set up behind Wissant and near Calais, at the level of the Digue Royale (royal dyke). Copied from swing bridges and railway turntables, Vögele rotating tables were assembled, on stabilized or lightly reinforced ground, at the end of these various deviations enabling rapid adjustments and all-round firing of these railway guns. Outside of firing periods, the guns and their accompanying carriages would find refuge in quarries, under the railway tunnels or under one of the three (cathedral-bunkers), reinforced concrete shelters of an ogival shape whose construction began in September 1940.Three of these still exist today. The first was located at Pointes aux Oies, near Wimereux (), the second in the Vallée Heureuse, near Hydrequent ( and the third at Fort Nieulay in the suburbs of Calais (). Six 28 cm K5 pieces and a single K12 gun, with a range of , could only be used effectively against land targets. Thirteen and five pieces, plus additional motorized batteries comprising twelve 24 cm guns and ten 21 cm weapons. The railway guns could be fired at shipping but were of limited effectiveness due to their slow traverse speed, long loading time and ammunition types.
Better suited for use against naval targets were the heavy naval batteries that began to be installed around the end of July 1940. First came the Siegfried Battery at Audinghen, south of Cape gris-Nez, (later increased to 4 and renamed Todt Battery). Four naval batteries were operational by mid-September 1940: Friedrich August with three barrels; Prinz Heinrich with two 28 cm guns; Oldenburg with two 24 cm weapons and, largest of all, Siegfried (later renamed Batterie Todt) with a pair of guns.
While the bombing of Britain intensified during the Blitz, Hitler issued his Directive No. 21 on 18 December 1940 instructing the Wehrmacht to be ready for a quick attack to commence his long-planned invasion of the Soviet Union. Operation Sea Lion lapsed, never to be resumed. On 23 September 1941, Hitler ordered all Sea Lion preparations to cease. Most historians agree Sea Lion would have failed regardless, because of the weakness of German sea power compared to the Royal Navy.
On 23 March 1942, days after the British raid on the German coastal radar installation at Bruneval, Hitler issued Führer Directive No. 40, which called for the creation of an "Atlantic Wall", an extensive system of coastal defence and fortifications, along the coast of continental Europe and Scandinavia as a defence against an anticipated Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe from the United Kingdom. The manning and operation of the Atlantic Wall was administratively overseen by the German Army, with some support from Luftwaffe ground forces. The fortification of the Atlantic coast, with a special attention to ports, was accelerated in the aftermath the British amphibious attack on the heavily defended Normandie dry dock at St Nazaire during Operation Chariot on 28 March 1942. The Führer Directive No. 51 definitely confirmed the defensive role of the batteries of the Cape Gris-Nez on 3 November 1943.
Description Built on the small plateau of Haringzelles, located 3 km southeast of Cape gris-Nez, the Todt battery consisted of four casemates. Each casemate consisted of two parts: the firing chamber which housed the 38 cm SK C/34 naval guns under an armored turret, designated as Bettungsschiessgerüst C/39, and, on two floors, one of which was underground, the ammunition bunkers and all the facilities needed for the ammunition, the machinery and the crew.
The casemates are 47 meters long, 29 wide and 20 high, 8 of which are underground. The reinforced concrete walls and roof are 3.5 m thick to be able to resist 380 mm shells, ordinary 4000 pound bombs or 2000 pound armor-piercing bombs.
The casemates were distributed along an arc of a circle with a radius of about 400 meters. In addition to the large-caliber guns, this battery also commanded the following weapon systems and buildings: 14 passive bunkers, four barracks, a belt of 15 "Tobruks" (small stand-alone bunkers, with a hole at the top, usually manned by two people that served as an observation post or machine gun nest), three bunkers with anti-tank guns facing south and directed towards the interior of the coast, nine pieces of anti-aircraft guns of French origin, installed at the center of the battery, a drinking water pumping station, a hospital bunker and a pre-existing farm, between casemate 2 and casemate 3, integrated into the defensive system to serve as barracks and an observation post.
Each casemate had a buffer stock of propelling charges and shells but relied on two separated ammunition bunkers located near the hamlet of Onglevert, located east of the battery Todt. Each casemate was connected to these ammunition bunkers (30 x 20 x 5 m) by a truck road and by a network of Decauville-type narrow-gauge tracks. These two large constructions were made up of 6 cells arranged on either side of a corridor closed at each end by a heavy double-winged armored door.The two ammunition bunkers still exists today ( and ) They were integrated into the strongpoint Wn Onglevert, renamed Wn 183 Eber from 1944.
The battery fired its first shell on 20 January 1942, although it was only officially opened in February 1942 in the presence of Admirals Karl Dönitz and Erich Raeder. Originally to be called Siegfried Battery, it was renamed in honor of the German engineer Fritz Todt, creator of the Todt Organisation and responsible for the construction of the Atlantic Wall, who died on 8 February 1942 in a plane crash days before the battery's inauguration after meeting with Hitler at his Eastern Front military headquarters ("Wolf's Lair") near Rastenburg in East Prussia. This decision was materialized by embossed 1.50-m high letters, displayed on Casemate 3. Hitler visited the Todt battery on 23 December 1940.
In 1941, the battery was initially codenamed 18. When integrated into the Atlantic wall, the Todt Battery, its close-combat defensive positions and its anti-aircraft guns formed the strongpoint Stützpunkt (StP) 213 Saitenspiel in 1943, renamed StP 166 Saitenspiel in 1944.
Construction Before 1940, Haringzelles consisted of three farmsteads bordered by low walls and bushes. The occupants left shortly after the German engineers chose the site to build the Todt Battery. German troops transplanted mature trees from the forests of Boulogne-sur-Mer and Desvres to camouflage the construction operations.
According to the post-war accounts of Franz Xavier Dorsch who supervised the construction of the Todt battery, the construction was divided into 2 phases. First, the guns were to be ready to fire within 8 weeks, with half of its auxiliary facilities ready but without any protective cover in reinforced concrete. The battery was then to be completed in its entirety as soon as possible, without specifying an exact date, while maintaining, at all time, the gun capability to fire from their 60 mm-thick armored turrets. The Organization Todt began the groundwork at the battery in July 1940 and began to build in August 1940 the firing platforms with circular parapets for the rotation of the armored C/39 firing platform with its 38 cm SK C/34 naval guns. Dorsch estimated at 12000 – 15000 the number of workers employed by the Organisation Todt for the construction of the heavy coastal batteries between Boulogne-sur-Mer and Calais. About 9000 of them were Germans.
According to Dorsch, the firing platforms and all the facilities needed for the ammunition, the machinery and the crew were finalized in 8 weeks and three days. Winston Churchill, in his book "The Second World War", recorded that the British had already identified the Todt, Friedrich August, Grosser Kurfürst, Prinz Heinrich and Oldenburg batteries, together with fourteen other 17-cm guns, were "by the middle of September mounted and ready for use in this region alone", around Calais and Cape Gris-Nez.
Dorsch considered that three factors contributed to making the battery combat-ready in about two months. Firstly, most of the workers could be immediately accommodated in the Nissen huts of the former British camp of Etaples, about 15 km southwest of Boulogne. Secondly, the camouflage of the construction site was kept minimal given the size of the future casemates, which allowed the swift progress of the construction. Thirdly, suitable construction aggregates were found in large quantities within a radius of about 15 km from the site.