Direktive 40

March 23 1942: “Command Organization of the Coasts.”

This was specifically the noted linked to the directive n° 40 in which Adolf Hitler personally employed the Todt Engineering company to built the most impressive and wide war architectures that history ever seen.

Everything started after the end of Dunquerke battle, when France signed the “stop of fighting” with the German Army ([Wehrmacht](http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmacht)).

The “second front “ was definitely open. In this context The Atlantic Wall born and grew up rapidly, covering more than 5000 thousand kms of coasts.

An extensive system of coastal fortifications built by the Third Reich during World War II, between 1940 and 1944. The project consisted about fortifications and naval army batteries along the coasts of all western front (from Norway to North of Spain), in order to defend the German territories from possible Allied landings.

The final result was the creation of probably one of the biggest architecture project of the 20Th century, obtained especially thanks to the forced work of innocent and sleeved people, victims of an history’s nightmare. These structures were so effective that today there are still hundreds of kilometers of these fortifications and defences.

Every architectural vision and landscape during my trip spent to shot at this project inevitably faced me with an inescapable doubt:

On one side the admiration for such a wide architectural project, so impressive that its presence is still touchable even today; on the other side a sense of fear, sadness and mostly reflection.

In the end what now remains is a piece of memory about the biggest crime that the modern Era has ever seen, and that should never be forget.