The Calais Memorial Museum 39-45 (Musée Mémoire 39-45) is hunkered down in a park in the middle of Calais. Unless you know it’s there you might miss it. But do visit this huge bunker. The museum it holds inside its imposing thick concrete walls tells a fascinating tale of Pas de Calais during the war, particularly revealing the lives and suffering of the citizens of Calais.

The Beginning of the Nightmare

On May 26, 1940, the German army entered Calais. They were to occupy the city and the Pas de Calais region until September 1944. During the offensive, Calais itself was so heavily bombed that 73% of the old town was destroyed. For five long, violent days, 3,000 British and 800 French troops held out against the German 10^th Panzer Division.  

The Allied forces lost the battle, but the siege diverted the formidable Panzer Division from reaching Dunkirk and was of vital help to Operation Dynamo. What Winston Churchill called the ‘miracle of deliverance’ saved 330,000 Allied and French troops. From May 26 to June 4, the Little Ships of Dunkirk, a flotilla of hundreds of merchant navy boats, fishing boats, yachts, lifeboats and small pleasure craft ferried the troops across the Channel. It prompted Churchill’s famous We shall fight on the beaches speech on June 4 to the House of Commons.

But for the inhabitants of Calais and the surrounding beaches, the German victory marked the start of a horrifying four years of privation and humiliation. And Calais was at its heart.

The Germans believed that the invasion of France would take place in Pas de Calais and heavily fortified the coastline; a belief they held right up to June 5, 1944 when the Allies launched the invasion of France…in Normandy.

In Calais itself, the Germans built the Marine Kommando bunker (Widerstandsnest 13), believed to be the longest in Europe. It was the command post for German troops with a telephone exchange controlling the whole of the region.

Visit the Memorial Museum 39-45

The massive concrete bunker is just one storey high but it dominates one end of the park. Inside it’s set up just as the Germans built it. There’s no natural light; if the power failed it became a claustrophobic, frightening place. 20 rooms stretch down the two sides of the long corridor, each telling a story about the war in Calais and the region.

Each room is small but packed with posters, models, photographs, weapons and boards explaining the action. It’s not a particularly sophisticated museum, and many of the posters and photos are old, some of them faded. But this brings home the reality much more effectively; you really are taken back and get a sense of what the war was like.

Different Rooms in the Calais Memorial Museum

There are rooms dedicated to aircraft, covering the RAF and its planes, complete with a smashed engine and a room full of model aircraft.

Rooms dedicated to Calais cover the resistance and the call to arms for the liberation of the city.

There are rooms full of models of German soldiers – some asleep; some eating; and an impressive communications room. Rooms themed on secret weapons, the Lindemann battery, Charles de Gaulle, coastal support positions, World War I and of course, Liberation.

You see the lives of the civilians under German rule and what they were allowed, and not allowed, to do.

Lindemann Battery and Prisoner of War Camp

And there’s also a great model of the nearby Lindemann Fort with its prisoner of war camp. It fascinates children who stare (along with their equally interested parents) at the tiny figures, guns, battlements and horses pulling carriages in and out of the gates.

The French Resistance

One particularly impressive, and tragic room shows the stories, and pictures, of civilians caught up in the war and killed as a result of their activities. The women are impressive:

Odette Bader Gerschel, born on October 14, 1914. Arrested on February 1, 1944, deported to Auschwitz and killed on February 10, 1944. Her crime? Being Jewish.

Raymonde Boetzle-Basser, born on July 17, 1920 in Ardres. Arrested on July 17, 1942, deported to Loos, then Essen and killed on May 1, 1945. She was heavily involved in espionage and was given various awards posthumously like the Légion d’Honeur, Croix de Guerre, Medal of France Libre and others.

Yvonne Barbier, born May 24, 1892 in the barracks of Blériot-Plage. She hid, housed and fed English soldiers and airmen shot down in the region. Arrested on March 21 in Lille she was taken to Loos and tortured. Condemned to death she was deported on May to Berlin and warned she would be beheaded by axe. She asked for a lesser punishment and received a sentence of five years of forced labour at different concentration camps. On May 28, 1945, she was liberated by the American 101 Airborne. She died on July 28 1966.

The Memorial Museum 39-45 might be small but it’s impressive and you emerge into the park with a better idea of the hell that Calais residents, and Allied forces, suffered.

The Liberation of Calais

Calais was liberated between September 25 and October 1, 1944 by General Daniel Spry’s 3^rd Canadian Infantry Division. Other Canadian forces were liberating the surrounding towns and countryside.

During the liberation, many of the 20,000 civilians who had stayed in Calais came out of their hiding places and began singing the Marseillaise.

More Information about Calais

Calais is one of my favourite north France cities. While most people just use it as a ferry port, I have spent many weekends enjoying the city and the nearby coast.

Guide to Calais
The Calais Dragon

More about World War II around Calais

La Coupole and Hitler’s V2 Rockets
The secret and brutal blockhouse of Eperlecques
The strange story of the V3 weapon, and Lt. Joseph Kennedy’s part in the bombing of Mimoyecques

Visit the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to see how this great organisation looks after the cemeteries of the great wars, and deals with newly found bodies.

Declaration: I travelled to France courtesy of DFDS from Dover to Calais on a self-driving press trip as a guest of Saint Omer/Pas-de-Calais Tourisme.

More Information on Ferries to France including DFDS details.

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