Dutch dust off ‘painful’ Nazi bunkers

SCHEVENINGEN, Netherlands: Just behind The Hague’s sandy beaches under the dunes lie dozens of Nazi bunkers built during World War II which the Dutch are now dusting off to attract tourists and to help heal lingering scars.

Once buried under heaps of sand and rubble, this network of bunkers and tunnels is a remnant of Hitler’s “Atlantikwall", a coastal defence stretching 5,000 kilometres from northern Norway to southern France.

The Hague in particular was seen as a strategic point to be heavily fortified, and the German Nazi dictator ordered the Atlantic Wall defences to be built in 1942 seeking to keep an Allied invasion of Europe at bay. More than 870 bunkers of different shapes and sizes were constructed of reinforced concrete. Today around 470 of them can still be found in the Dutch capital’s dunes and forests, said Jacques Hogendoorn, a volunteer at the Atlantikwall Museum based in the seaside suburb of Scheveningen.

“Some have been opened to the public, others are used as a shelter for bats during wintertime," Hogendoorn told AFP. “Some bunkers are still being discovered," added Guido Blaauw, a businessman who has bought a bunker at the Clingendael estate where Austrian Nazi boss Arthur Seyss-Inquart -- later executed for war crimes -- once had his own massive underground shelter.