bunker

Adolf Hitler

trivia

is not just a defensive structure designed for the repulsion of a specific military threat, they also act as indicators of the manner in which military, and therefore political, space has been conceived.

In this context concrete fortifications appear not just as defensive structures designed for the repulsion of a specific military threat (in this case the possible invasion by sea of Allied forces towards the end of the Second World War). They also act as indicators of the manner in which military, and therefore political, space has been conceived.

is a monument of the inner logic of an obsolescent kind of war based on a misguided fixation on certain kinds of space; namely, on the idea of Europe as a fortress, a space with borders to be defended.

In fact Virilio sees these concrete structures as monuments of the inner logic of the Third Reich; they testify to a certain mode of ideological organization proper to the Nazi regime and to a specific logic which led, perhaps inexorably, to its destruction. In this context he affirms, somewhat elliptically, that ‘the bunkers of the European littoral were from the start the funerary monuments to the German dream’ (Virilio 1994a: 29). First and foremost these bunkers testify to the manner in which so much of Nazi political thinking and military planning was orientated around specific conceptions of space and the appropriation of living space for the German peoples. The bunkers or casemates (i.e. fortified enclosures) mark the natural outer limit of a certain territorial organization or aspiration in Western Europe and form a specific component part of that mode of organization. In this context Virilio alludes to the term ‘Fortress Europe’, that is, the aspiration of the Nazi high command to create in the space of the European continent a more or less homogenized entity whose borders and inner organization would be subject to the control of military power.The existence of the concrete bunkers would be unthinkable, Virilio argues, without the prior projection of the space of Europe as a military space, a fortress conceived according to the aspirations of Nazi ideology: ‘The Fortress Europe was three-dimensional, the casemates on the beaches complemented the aircraft shelters of the cities. . . . Space was at last homogenized, absolute war had become a reality, and the monolith was its monument’ (Virilio 1994a: 40). Here the concrete bunkers far exceed their practical use as defensive structures used in the protection of a specific locus or terrain. As monoliths they take on a monumental or symbolic quality. They represent a certain aspiration to master or totalize the space of a continent. Virilio remarks on the sheer scale of a project which sought to militarize such a great length of the European seaboard: ‘The immensity of the project is what defies common sense; total war was revealed here in its mythic dimension’ (Virilio 1994a: 12). p.74

is an edifice whose defensive character lies in a principle of inertia and their function is tied narrowly to the space of terrain or territorial ambition.

In this context the defensive character of the bunkers evidently lies in a principle of inertia, that is to say, they will block the forward movement of the enemy. As such their function is tied narrowly to the space of terrain or territorial ambition. They have little defensive power in relation to the speeds of penetration accomplished by aircraft. Virilio remarks at some length on the manner in which the greater part of German strategy was focused on territorial ambition and the control of land at the expense of aerial or naval strategy (Virilio 1994a: 29). It is this fixation with territory, with living space and with the militarization of frontiers according to the logic of Fortress Europe which confers upon the bunkers their strategic defensive importance, their mythic and symbolic importance, but also their significance as a key moment in the history of warfare and in the construction of military and political space. p.75

is a throw-off of the history of frontiers.

‘These concrete bunkers,’ he asserts, ‘were in fact the throw-offs of the history of frontiers’ (Virilio 1994a: 12). p.75

is the material remains of a previous form of military and political organization; namely, the place where the long organization of territorial infrastructures comes to an end, from the steps of the empire, to the borders of the state, to the continental threshold.

To encounter them in the post-war period, as Virilio himself did in the 1950s, is to encounter the material remains of a previous form of military and political organization. Virilio expresses this by once again underscoring the monumental or mythic dimension of these concrete fortifications: ‘the concrete landmark indicates the place where the long organization of territorial infrastructures comes to an end, from the steps of the empire, to the borders of the state, to the continental threshold. The bunker has become a myth’ (Virilio 1994a: 46). p.76

is symbolic of a turning point or a cusp of history. They mark a moment of transition from the territorial wars of states and empires to a new kind of war where the threat of total destruction is the primary means of waging battle.

More than their defensive capacity and its imminent obsolescence, the blockhouses are symbolic of a turning point or a cusp of history. They mark a moment of transition from the territorial wars of states and empires to a new kind of war where the threat of total destruction is the primary means of waging battle. p.76-7

is the proto-history of an age in which the power of a single weapon is so great that no distance can protect you from it any longer

In Virilio’s own words, ‘The bunker is the proto-history of an age in which the power of a single weapon is so great that no distance can protect you from it any longer’ (Virilio 1994a: 46). p.76-7

bunker, n.Definitions

bunker