Discovering WW1 tunnel of death hidden in France for a century | Hacker News Reader

Discovering WW1 tunnel of death hidden in France for a century

bbc.com

90 pointslongdefeat36 comments

As a history buff and occasional amateur explorer of ruins in the U.S. I think that if a thing that has any value is left lying about humans will loot it. The majority of people don't care much about history at all in my experience. They have their own pressing daily concerns, and one person's sacred history is another's material resource. A fortification becomes a source of building stones, an old barn yields timbers for a new floor, and relics are a source of cash. In New Jersey there is a place where archaeologists uncovered a colonial-era iron furnace and then had to re-bury it to prevent people from carting it off piece by piece.

Given all this I suspect the French will now have no choice but to excavate and inter the remains in the Winterburg tunnel. It would certainly have been better if the location had remained undisclosed, but I think that is really too much to hope for.

>humans will loot it.

Well it looks like an attempt was already made on the tunnel in question.

The intersection of respect for the dead, battlefield amateurs and looting, war grave status, officialdom, archaeology, a citizen scientist, sad, terrifying and fascinating all at the same time.

Some people might call them the enemy, some say they should just leave them be, but they are someone's ancestors (or related), and those people should know what happened to them. My uncle died in WW2 and no one knows where (potentially in the ocean near Tunisia); reading his last letter to his parents, I would certainly want to know where he is buried. He still has a living sister as well. Just because someone was a soldier does not make them some anonymous drone.

They were the enemy of some people’s ancestors a century ago. They are not ennemies of anyone now. They are only victims of a terrible war, exactly in the same ways as the people they were fighting then.

One branch of my family was decimated back then: 4 cousins died in WWI, all the males of that generation. The only thing I wish to their enemies is to rest in peace and keep them in our memory to avoid such a senseless massacre in the future. If this finding brings some comfort to some people because they found a family member, then it’s great. The tunnel should be a museum, and a warning of the horrors brought by nationalism.

Loss at sea is difficult, because locations are often uncertain and documentation is sparse. I know I learnt a lot looking for traces of these people in archives and on the ground (obviously harder for sunken ships). I hope you’ll find out what happened eventually.

>Loss at sea is difficult, because locations are often uncertain and documentation is sparse.

When found, not safe.

People are now predating these sites, to get valuable pre-nuclear-bomb scrap for use in detectors. Divers are reporting that official war-grave wrecks are being destroyed by scavengers.

Am I weird for being sad that they don't want to take any photos of the inside? I'd love to see what it looked like in the original setting. I guess I have a morbid curiosity.

The tunnel itself would be an incredibly valuable document of life in the trenches. I can understand why they would not want to do that with the corpses still there, though.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/462315.Other_Paths_to_Gl...

>Paul Mitchell spends his days researching WWI; his quiet life in the library can hardly be in greater contrast to the carnage he studies. Until, that is, the present catches up with him in the shape of Dr Audley of the MOD. Why does Audley want to know what really happened during the battle for Hameau Ridge on the Somme in 1916? The answer is complex and dangerous.

This cold-war era spy novel brought some of the WWI archaeology/research to life for me. I was totally unfamiliar and surprised how much remains unknown about these battlefields.

if the tunnel is unimportant, not worthy of being protected, then shouldn't it bother no-one that people go and loot it?

But it does bother me that people would loot it. It seems misguided to simply hoping that someone doesn't eventually find a way to excavate it. Which means that I want it protected, I guess?

Seems to me that Pierre Malinowski actions prevent the tunnel from being desecrated rather than the opposite, in the long run. Time will tell.

The problem is the scale. If all war-sites should be protected, and ammunition properly defused and archaeological researched- then all of europe will do nothing else for a century.

Large land-strips in several countries are essentially mined mass graves. Once you set precedence, that upkeep costs for that are multiply exponentially.

The ordinance defuse operations and it constantly blocking business for days in major cities every year comes to mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_bomb_disposal_in_...

2000 tons in germany alone every year. Excavator drivers life dangerous over here. So, yes, if this were to be dealt with properly, goodbye European economy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge

To avoid opening another barrel (poisoned waste by war production, hidden in the sealed of production caves etc.) - many municipalities employ the three monkey strategy. Don't hear it, don't see it, don't have to deal with it.

> goodbye European economy

Even mass defusing (which no one is suggesting) would not tank European economy. It would barely be a blip actually. We are talking about tunnels in the middle of nowhere. The "Zone rouge" is pretty barren.

Any large remains of WW1 in cities have been dug up by urbanisation a long time ago. Defusing mostly concern unexploded ordinance from WW2 and there is at most one major event a year in Europe as a whole. It is certainly not "constantly blocking business for days in major cities".

But Europe isn't just "major cities" either.

I have family living in old WWI Western Front area which, today, is mostly a mix of agriculture and industry. Yearly, tons of ordinance are still dug up by farmers working their lands. Building and road construction is still hampered by discovering un-exploded shells or human remains that require careful handling.

To put things in perspective, in Belgium alone between 1918 and 2014, some 513 shells exploded claiming 896 victims of which 360 died. 150 tons of ordinance are dug up each year and stored awaiting defusing.

I remember my great-uncle stowing shells he found on his land to the side for pickup by the authorities. I've been told countless times by him to not touch anything found by the side of the road whenever we visited them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest

And that's discounting the 35.000 tons of munitions - including chemical weapons such as mustard gas - which were dumped into the sea a few miles of the Belgian coast.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/mustard-gas-...

Nobody is arguing for mass defusing, or mass excavations of these sites. I don't argue for them as well for good reason. It's massively dangerous to begin with, and the complexity is enormous and hard to comprehend.

The first thing archaeologists are taught is this: the best place to preserve artefacts for the long term is in situ. Digging means destroying the context: there's only one chance to capture the story as told by what you find. And doing that in a way that respects the site isn't cheap or easy.

The problem here is that a rogue citizen archaeologist decided to start a peeve with national authorities, rather then considering things pragmatically. By turning to the newspapers (Le Monde) they effectively endangered the site. For sure, it's painful to not know what happened to a long lost ancestor in a War, but there's also a lot to be said to leave things as is until there is an opportunity to find out in a respectful manner.

> The problem here is that a rogue citizen archaeologist decided to start a peeve with national authorities, rather then considering things pragmatically. By turning to the newspapers (Le Monde) they effectively endangered the site. For sure, it's painful to not know what happened to a long lost ancestor in a War, but there's also a lot to be said to leave things as is until there is an opportunity to find out in a respectful manner.

While I agree with your point about the danger this poses to the site, this looks to me like exposing vulnerabilities in software. If this guy managed to find the tunnel, who's to say some other "looter" wouldn't have found it, too?

At least, according to TFA he's not running around telling people where it is, so this looks kind of like the "responsible disclosure" approach. The other looter might just have made a mess of the place looking for whatever it is looters look for.

> While I agree with your point about the danger this poses to the site, this looks to me like exposing vulnerabilities in software. If this guy managed to find the tunnel, who's to say some other "looter" wouldn't have found it, too?

I'm a historian myself.

The historical records isn't just a few meters of files that can be easily accessed at will. We are talking about literally miles upon miles of brittle paper in boxes which are often summarily identified through records management. If you're lucky.

Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of administrative records isn't digitized. We are talking about painstakingly retrieving box after box, one by one, from archival depots and sifting through them in hopes of finding a clue or a trace.

And then you have to cross reference what you've found with other sources - if you're lucky - to ensure that you're on the right track.

From TFA:

> Working on the Paris metro in the 1990s, he travelled daily to the capital and used his spare time to visit military archives in the Château de Vincennes. For 15 years he accumulated descriptions, maps and prisoner interrogations - but to no avail.

That's 15 years of piecing bits and fragments, hoping to catch a lucky break:

> But then in 2009 he chanced on a contemporary map showing not just the tunnel but also a meeting of two paths that had survived till today. With painstaking care, he measured out the angle and distance and arrived at the spot, now just an anonymous bit of woodland.

> At least, according to TFA he's not running around telling people where it is, so this looks kind of like the "responsible disclosure" approach.

I find this questionable based on what the story tells us.

First, in most countries, you can't just get on and dig wherever you fancy. France included. You're legally obligated to declare historical finds to the authorities for later archaeological surveys. All of that comes with licenses and permits to ensure that whatever is unearthed, is unearthed in an ethically sound fashion.

This is what the article writes:

> One night in January last year he led a team that brought a mechanical digger to the spot his father had identified. They dug down four metres, and what they found proved they were indeed at the entrance to the tunnel.

Why did they dig at night in the woodlands? Did he have a permit from the authorities? This isn't something the article discloses at all. It's just assumed he did secure necessary authorizations.

Second, in those 10 months between the first dig in January of 2020 to confirm the location, the publication of the article in Le Monde in November of 2020 and the visit of the BBC journalist in March 2021, were enough for others to find the spot and start digging overnight.

Clearly, others caught wind of the exact location. It means someone has disclosed the location. Maybe someone from the January team? Maybe the Malinowski's themselves in an unguarded moment?

Moreover, the BBC journalist got to visit the exact spot. How did they arrive there? Who did they turn to to request to visit the spot? The authorities? Malinowski? If it was the latter, ask yourself this: is he really to be trusted to only have taken a select few journalists to the exact location? Or did he indulge in other requests as well?

It's not just the article in the BBC and Le Monde. Digging a bit deeper shows that the story was broken in multiple national and regional outlets in France. Can you be certain that they were the only party looking for the tunnel? Remember, they already knew the location back in 2009 after 15 at least 15 years of research.

Again, I can understand the frustration, but this wasn't the way to approach the issue.

> Why did they dig at night in the woodlands? Did he have a permit from the authorities? This isn't something the article discloses at all. It's just assumed he did secure necessary authorizations.

He was doing this to force the authorities hand, to convince them to dig up the tunnel - which is considered a war grave that should not be disturbed.

He did not secure any authorization as that would never have been given to a private person. Archeological team, maybe.

> Defusing mostly concern unexploded ordinance from WW2 and there is at most one major event a year in Europe as a whole. It is certainly not "constantly blocking business for days in major cities".

If you mean “constantly” in the sense of “every day” the yes, it’s not constantly. It’s however, constant enough to be reminded constantly - multiple times every year in Berlin alone. Last one I can recall was Feb 24th this year in Spandau. In 1994 one exploded when it was excavated https://www.gettyimages.de/detail/nachrichtenfoto/explosion-...

In 2019 a major shipping channel in the region was closed for at least 2 month https://m.maz-online.de/Lokales/Oberhavel/Oranienburg/Oranie...

It’s so common here that it’s not big news unless the bomb is exceptionally large.

Gosh, it's almost like the century+ of cleanup costs are a disincentive to going to war.

The tunnel is important and was protected, but it was protected by its obscurity.

Like all "security by obscurity," once the secret is known, it is no longer secure and thus is at risk of desecration. Pierre Malinowski put the government in a bind because he broke their previous zero cost security (via obscurity) and now they have to either secure it at a significant cost and effort or end up complicit in its desecration.

The region is covered in such ruins, and there’s only so much funding and manpower available. And people get grumpy when you want to protect something on their land (thinks not be a problem here though, AFAIK it is in common land). I am not surprised it is a difficult problem.

And yeah, it’s incredibly dangerous to go dig these places. There are literally tons of shells there, some of them still waiting to detonate.

yanno, those looters are seriously playing w/fire. there is so much undiscovered and unexploded ordnance left over from both world wars that even w/a metal detector i'd be afraid to dig very deep at all.

i'm an amateur historian as well, and the last time i was in france my wife and i took a detour and spent a day touring the verdun battlefields. entire areas are off limits due to buried ordnance, and the fields of moonscape-like craters were one of the most sobering sights i've ever seen.

You know, there were more than 100 tunnels dug in WW1. Most were used to insert explosives to blow up the trenches above them. The largest man-made explosion at the time was one of those.

Losing track of one of those tunnels isn't really noteworthy, and the French have no love for the Germans. On their retreat back to Germany, they destroyed the Alsace region "just because."

Most people today think of the Allies and Axis countries as equivalent, but even as early as WW1 the Axis had a reputation as mean and brutal.

Was it just because, or to prevent use by the enemy

OTOH, this tunnel was a bit different. It went through a hill to supply front line trenches from the relative safety of the far side of the hill. It was much bigger than the mining and explosive tunnels dug into no-man's land. Eg the report says they found large amounts of equipment stored there, railway sleepers, machine guns, ammunition dumps, etc.

It would have had a lot more traffic and have been larger than other tunnels. Losing 2 companies of men in there is a not-insignificant war grave.

Axis was WW2, not WW1.

For WW1, the reason I consider Allied and Central powers to be equivalent has more to do with the flaws of the Allies in that era than with the actions of the Central powers.

With WW2 and Axis/Allies, even though I’m not at all sure how to judge the relative behaviour of Stalin (Allied) vs Hitler (Axis) — there’s too much propaganda for me to filter though — the British and Americans were unambiguously more moral than the Axis powers.

In WW1, the rape of Belgium might have been used by propaganda and some parts fabricated, but was still pretty real. And it was not an isolated incident, but a policy.

Interesting — and, surprisingly, not covered in my UK history GCSE — but besides the point.

I’m emphatically not saying “yay Central powers!”, I’m saying “WW1 Allied powers (not WW2! Just WW1!) also bastards”.

I may have to reevaluate this belief — GCSEs aren’t good qualifications, they’re what UK pupils do at 16 — it’s just that my current belief is everyone looked bad in the first war.

I know you weren't, just providing some background information. If you were a local living in the colonies, any of the imperial powers were going to treat you rather poorly. But in continental Europe, the treatment of occupied Belgium/France would prefigure WW2 behavior of the German troops. In either cases putting entire villages and their inhabitants to the torch and sword was rather normal.

There is some truth in that, though I would not say both were equivalent. Western powers were also imperialistic and morally dubious (people like Joffre were straight up war criminals and utter bigots with no more consideration for their troops than for their enemies). Of course Belgians have a very different opinion.

You're projecting post WW1 politics on pre axis Germany.

France hated Germany because of the loss of Alsace Lorraine, and the wreckage of 1871.

The animosities are even older. France has been depicted as "Erbfeind" (i.e. enemy for generations) in German school books since the Napoleonic wars.

And Waterloo, and...

"Into the story stepped his son Pierre Malinowski, at 34 years old a maverick ex-soldier who once worked for Jean-Marie Le Pen and now runs a foundation in Moscow dedicated to tracing war-dead from the Napoleonic and other eras. "

This was the most interesting part of the article to me: a super condensed portrait of the person who actually ran the illegal excavation. Ex-foreign legion, former parliamentary assistant to the most famous racist French nationalist. Now living in Moscow, close to Putin. Easy to miss for those not too familiar with the French context. Wikipedia [0] has more.

The man is a professional firebrand. Different in many ways from Steve Bannon, but they'd probably get along well.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Malinowski

Could you elaborate on why you think this point is important to the story in the article?

I'm not sure how doing this digging would help further the cause of the Rassemblement National (for context: it's the current-day incarnation of Jean-Marie Le Pen's party, the "most famous racist French nationalist" as parent put it) or of Putin's affairs.

The story is about history. The main source to this story worked as the personal European Parliament assistant to Jean-Marie Le Pen [0]. Some Le Pen quotes from that year below [1][2]. Showing this strong support for the most famous holocaust denier in the country is not what you do if you want to be taken seriously as an amateur historian [3].

It shows disrespect for history. It's the historical equivalent of showing your support for the Pi Bill [4] as an amateur mathematician.

I can see the potential for some worthwile signal in the noise cloud this man has generated though. With some luck, proper archaelogists and historians may be able to do their jobs using the lead he has generated. If he hasn't damaged the site too much, that is.

P.S. With my initial comment, I did not have the intention to suggest that Malinowski was doing this in order to further the cause of the Rassemblement National, Putin or Jean-Marie Le Pen.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Marie_Le_Pen

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/08/jean-marie-le-... . "On fera une fournée la prochaine fois", when asked about jewish French singer Patrick Bruel.

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/21/jean-marie-le-... . "Monseigneur Ebola could sort that out in three months."

[3] ...or a human being, but I digress

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

I think the implication is that he sows conflict between nations, or just sows conflict in general.

I know nothing of the Rassemblement National or how that would help them. I have heard accusations that Russia intentionally creates conflicts to destabilize opponents and draw attention away from their own dealings. Perhaps that is the implied link with Russia.

I don't really see anything here to support that. Personally, I think the guy just doesn't particularly care if conflict arises in the course of him pursuing what he thinks is right. That's not really a heinous characteristic; it's often considered admirable.

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