Visit Fort d'Alet, Saint-Malo, France

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The Fort is often referred to in English simply as ‘the Citadel’. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the coastal town of St Malo had fallen under British attack on numerous occasions, and it was decided in 1759 to build a vast fort on the nearby Alet Peninsula. The construction of the fort was completed in 1762 and included sea walls, trench walls, two bastions of artillery commanding a view of the harbour, and classical fortification on the land side, including two guardhouses, three stores, an armoury, and – important for this story – a prison. Hitler’s decision to build the Atlantic Wall fortifications in 1942, German geologists and engineers designed a deep underground system to protect the Fort’s soldiers from artillery and aerial attack. Renovation work began in early 1943, using up to 2000 forced labourers and Organisation Todt employees from throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. After the Allied D-Day invasion of June 1944, securing St Malo from the Germans became an Allied priority. The US Army laid extended siege to the Fort during the first weeks of August 1944, yet despite numerous ground troop attacks and constant artillery and air attacks – the latter of which include some of the earliest uses of a new weapon called ‘napalm’ – the Germans were able to hold out until finally surrendering on 17 August, probably more from battle fatigue than from casualties or shortage of supplies and ammunition. Around 10,000 German Wehrmacht troops were taken prisoner in the St Malo area alone. The fate and number of non-German forced labourers who were trapped inside the Fort during the Allied attack is unknown. The Allies had liberated St Malo, but at a price: heavy casualties among US troops and 80% of the medieval town of St Malo lay in ruins.

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