Hitler's Fortress Builders: The Use of Non-Destructive Testing to Quantify the Differential Treatment of Labourers on Second World War Alderney

Summary

World War II left behind archaeological evidence of an impressive magnitude on the British Channel Islands, and today many of these features lay untouched. It was throughout my Master's research at Glasgow University in 2013-2014 that I developed a project to enhance our archaeological understanding of these concrete relics. Using a specific set of methods, I was able to accurately and non-destructively test the compressive strength of several concrete features. Combining this raw data with the available historical material, I was able to show that features constructed by professional German engineers were markedly stronger when compared to features constructed by poorly treated conscript labourers from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Overall, this discovery served as a means to quantify the extreme dichotomy in the living and working conditions of these labour classes, while simultaneously refining a methodology that could have important implications for historical archaeology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16675