In December 1941, Nazi Germany embarked on what it described as the greatest military engineering project since the Chinese Wall: the construction of a line of fortifications stretching from Norway to the Pyrenees, designed to protect the Third Reich from an Allied landing. In France, the construction of the Atlantic Wall was a pharaonic undertaking that disrupted the daily life of coastal regions. Supervised by the Todt organization, it was the source of a gigantic plundering of manpower and raw materials, mobilizing thousands of workers. It offered companies of all sizes the opportunity to do lucrative business with the occupier, while revealing the compromises of the Vichy regime.