Unprecedented Interest in Dutch Bunkers on Annual Bunker Day

It is unprecedentedly busy on the annual Bunker Day. Even before the first bunkers opened at 10 a.m., the first visitors reported. There are now long queues while hundreds of people are shown around inside the old concrete structures by a guide with a flashlight.

“We noticed that interest has already increased in recent years, but now it’s really crazy. I’m looking at a queue, while seventy people are being shown around at the same time inside,” says André van der Niet of the huge bunker complex in the dunes at Noordwijk. “The war in Ukraine will not be unrelated to all this interest.”

“People now realize what it’s like to live in peace and security,” says Romy Fortuin of the national foundation that organizes Bunkerdag. “Because of what is happening in Ukraine now, they are going to delve more into the past.”

On the Dutch coast there are still many hundreds of bunkers built by the German occupiers as part of the Atlantikwall, the more than 5,000-kilometre-long German defense line that stretches from Norway via Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and France to the border with Spain. 110 of those bunkers at 45 locations in the Netherlands, from Zeeuws-Vlaanderen to the Wadden Islands, are holding open house today.

One of the best-visited bunkers is that of Noordwijk. “What I hear most from visitors here is: it’s big! Even people from the village itself are impressed,” says Van der Niet. In the dunes near the seaside resort there is not a single bunker building, but a series of bunkers, interconnected by a network of corridors of over 500 meters.

A maze, but a well thought-out maze. “The Germans have thought about every centimeter,” says Van der Niet Broadcasting West. You can walk straight into the bunker on a path of sand and shells behind the dunes. “This is the central bunker. During the Second World War, all the thinking and calculations were done here by the Germans.”

And that’s how it goes. A brisk walk through a narrow and dead-silent corridor with all kinds of steps, steps and several warnings not to bump your head against the lowered ceilings, you end up at a bunker full of sandbags. “We are now eight meters underground and the walls here are 2.5 meters thick. And this is one of the four artillery bunkers from which they could fire with cannons,” explains Van der Niet.

Like many other bunkers and tunnel systems, the complex in Noordwijk has been partially closed for years. Too dangerous, too dusty, too dark, especially when many neglected bunkers were discovered by loiterers in the post-war years. Van der Niet also often secretly visited the bunkers in his youth.

“When I was sixteen I was here with two friends and then we wrote our names on this wall,” says the bunker guide. “It was actually irresponsible, but I don’t regret it. I was seriously ill later on. During that period I visited here and discovered my name on this wall again,” he smiles. “That somehow helped me a lot to recover, because that’s when I got the goal to volunteer here.”

54 kilometers to the north, in one of the six (!) bunkers in Wijk aan Zee, volunteer Rob van Kampen (75) has another reason to participate in Bunkerdag, “History must be kept alive”, he says at NH News. “I once showed a group of young German tourists around who had no idea this existed, I find that shocking, it is their own history. For that reason alone it is important that the bunkers are maintained and can be viewed.”

It’s not just the six bunkers in Wijk aan Zee that are having an open day today, the whole village is participating in Bunkerdag. There is a large army tent on the meadow in the middle of Wijk aan Zee. Old army vehicles drive between the various bunkers.

“Those vehicles also attract a lot of interested people,” says Romy Fortuin of the national foundation. “Just like the volunteers who walk around in old military uniforms today. Interest in everything related to war and peace is increasing.”