Considering Second World War Archaeological Heritage in France

Abstract

The archaeology of the Second World War has existed since the 1980s in English-language research. However, the vestiges of this conflict were only officially included in French national heritage at the end of 2013. Only since 2014, the year of the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, do preventive archaeology operations prescribe for World War II (WWII) sites. Public research programmes have also been set up to identify and characterise the heritage linked to the conflict, in particular the numerous remains of the Atlantic Wall on France's western seafront. During this decade, several archaeological operations have revealed the strong scientific potential attached to WWII sites throughout the country. At the same time, researchers from the National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) have drawn up a general research theme based on these remains which now form part of an international discussion framework. There are three main lines of research based on the typology of material traces from the conflict. The first of these is dedicated to battlefield remains, which are currently being used to compile an archaeology of military operations in Normandy. The second is the study of defensive structures (bunkers on the Atlantic Wall and passive defence constructions) that are also the subject of exciting discoveries in Normandy and other French regions. The third area of research addresses remains linked to internment and mass crimes. In particular, this concerns the search, currently underway, of the only Nazi concentration camp on French soil, the KL Natzweiler-Struthof. This houses the European Centre of Deported Resistance Members (CERD) and performs important research on other deportation or internment memorials (e.g. Drancy, Mont-Valérien) and on a series of prison camps across France. These sites, long threatened by soil and coastal erosion, development or the looting of militaria, are now crystallising as powerful heritage assets, even though the expression and sharing of this archaeological memory of World War II comes in response to high levels of national and international public expectation.