24 WORLD WAR II
I AM BLESSED WITH FINE WEATHER when I visit the Lorient submarine
base in Brittany on the northwestern coast of France. The Atlantic Ocean
sparkles under the sunshine, and in the marina an armada of yachts, din-
ghies, trimarans, and catamarans add their own bright colors. Men and
women busy themselves repairing sails, painting hulls, and swabbing decks,
while on the quayside those feeling less energetic sit eating and drinking.
It could be a scene from any of the myriad ports along the 2,130 miles of
French coastline but for several incongruous intruders on Lorient’s Kero-
man Peninsula: three enormous concrete U-boat bunkers, built by the Ger-
mans as a base for submarine attacks on Allied shipping in the North
Atlantic. From a distance, their sheer size and the thickness of the concrete
make them look like the gap-toothed grins of giants.
The Germans saw the potential of Lorient within days of occupying
France in the summer of 1940. Admiral Karl Dönitz, commander-in-chief of
the U-boat f leet, arrived in Lorient on June 23 and chose the port as one of
his five French bases, along with Brest, Saint-Nazaire, La Pallice, and Bor-
deaux. Of the five, Dönitz prioritized Lorient because it had avoided large-
scale sabotage damage by the vanquished French military. Such was the
speed of the spring 1940 German advance across France that Admiral Fran-
çois Darlan’s pledge to scuttle the French navy’s fleet and render all ports
inoperable was not fulfilled. Consequently, at Lorient, the naval arsenal
workshops were functioning; the fact that the adjacent fishing harbor had a
rail link north and south was an additional boon.
Dönitz believed—more so than Adolf Hitler or Grand Admiral ErichRaeder, the head of the German
navy—that U-boats were key to win-
ning the naval war against Britain.
Cut off its supply line to North Amer-
ica, reckoned Dönitz, and Britain
would be starved into surrender. By
the end of June 1940, German work-
ers, arms, and equipment began
arriving in Lorient and, on July 7,
U-30 became the first submarine to
make the base its port of call.
U-30 was initially protected only
by a camouf lage net; the Germans
then erected two large sheds of con-
crete and wood, one on either side of
the slipway ramp in the fishing
harbor. But Dönitz quickly realized
it was imperative to build concrete
bunkers to protect the U-boats
against British air raids—the first
major Royal Air Force attack came
on August 22, 1940—and he decided
to erect them above ground to avoid
the time-consuming excavation
work required for sea pens. To con-
struct the bunkers, the Germans
brought in 15,000 civil engineers and
laborers from Organization Todt
(named after its founder, Fritz Todt)
that since 1933 had built many and
massive Nazi construction projects
and whose ranks were swelled by the
forced labor of men from occupied
Europe. Meanwhile, armories, work-
shops, and supply depots sprang up;BUNKER
MENTALITY
TRAVEL LORIENT U-BOAT BASE
STORY AND PHOTOS BY GAVIN MORTIMERGermany constructed both massive wet-
pen bunkers (above) and dry-pen bunkers
(opposite, top) to house its U-boat fleet at
Lorient, France. Opposite, inset: U-boats
return from their patrols.