| Abstract: |
Study of sixty-seven areas of English landscape where material evidence of 1940 defences survives. To counter the threat of a ground war on home territory, defences were erected on the coast and inland, the latter involving a complicated pattern of linear (stop line) defence and area defence based on important communication (nodal) points. The prime purpose of these was to serve as anti-tank obstacles. Through documentary assessment and fieldwork, the defences have been reconstructed as they originally stood, and the strategy behind them analysed. Wherever possible, they have been repopulated with the troops that manned them or were detailed to move to these prepared battlefields in the actual event of invasion, whether units of the regular Field Army or of the Home Guard. Each type of defence work is examined in detail, and the surviving condition of individual structures assessed. A glossary of defence work types is included, and these differing types are indicated on the maps that illustrate the area reports. Archival maps and air photographs are also included, some of which were produced by the German Army and Air Force indicating their meticulous preparations for the invasion. The book also examines the overall historical perspective of the 1940 defences, and seeks to dispel several myths that have grown up concerning this subject. It show that, despite initial shortages of weapons and building materials, the defence systems put in place from mid-1940 to the spring of 1941 were highly complex and meticulously planned, making full use of landscape features and natural topography, and set back in depth from the coastal front edge in protection of the nation's heartlands. Includes French and German summaries, and |
