Saint-Nazaire

Saint-Nazaire
Location of
Country	France
Arrondissement	Saint-Nazaire
Canton	Chief town of 3 cantons
Time zone	UTC+01:00 (CET)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+02:00 (CEST)
INSEE/Postal code	44184 /

For other uses, see Saint-Nazaire (disambiguation).

See also the St. Nazaire Raid

Saint-Nazaire (Breton: Sant-Nazer), is a commune in the Loire-Atlantique department in northwestern France.

Also called St. Nazaire, the town has a major harbor, on the right bank of the Loire River estuary, near the Atlantic Ocean. The town is at the south of the second major swamp in France "la Brière". Given its location, Saint-Nazaire has a long tradition of fishing and shipbuilding.

Name

There are a number of alternative versions of the name of the town"

• Its Breton name is Sant Nazer into Breton modern
• Señ Neñseir in the Breton dialect of Loire-Atlantique
• Its name in gallo is Saint-Nazère or Saint-Nazaer
• According to Jacques de Voragine, Nazaire comes from the word Nazaréen, which means pure, devoted

History

The building of the French ocean liner SS Normandie in the 1930s required the construction of a massive new dock infrastructure, and Saint-Nazaire was chosen as the site. On June 17 1940 the port was swarming with British troops trying to escape from the advancing German army. An estimated 9000 were embarked aboard the Clyde-built troopship RMS Lancastria which was then attacked and sunk by German bombers, taking with her around 4000 victims. It is the worst disaster in British maritime history and the worst loss of life for British forces in the whole of World War II. Winston Churchill banned all news coverage of the disaster on learning of it and it remained largely forgotten by history. Following the surrender of France to German forces later in June 1940, the port immediately became a base of operations for the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) and was as such the target of Allied operations. A heavily fortified U-boat submarine base was built shortly after occupation. Its 9 m (30-ft) thick concrete ceiling was capable of withstanding almost any bomb in use at the time. The base still stands today, as its extremely sturdy construction makes demolition uneconomical.

The drydock built for SS Normandie was the largest of its kind in western Europe at the time. It was the only port on the Atlantic capable of servicing the German battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz. This gave the port a strong strategic importance to both the Axis Powers and the Allies during the Second World War.

On March 28, 1942, a force of 611 British Commandos and the Royal Navy launched the St. Nazaire Raid against the shipyards of Saint-Nazaire, codenamed Operation Chariot. The old British destroyer HMS Campbeltown was used as a ram-ship loaded with explosives, and it and the commandos succeeded in destroying the gates and machinery of the Normandie drydock, preventing its use by Germany during the war.

The U-boat threat to supply convoys across the Atlantic made Saint-Nazaire a constant target of Allied air forces. To minimize civilian casualties during air attacks, the Allies eventually devised a plan to force evacuation of the town. For three days in 1943, British and American aircraft dropped scores of leaflets warning the population of a planned fire-bombing raid. At the end of the third day, the raid came and burned the entire city to the ground. Casualties were light as most of the civilians had heeded the warning and fled to the safety of the countryside. Except for the self-contained U-boat base, Saint-Nazaire remained abandoned until the end of the war.

After D-day and the liberation of most of France in 1944, German troops in Saint-Nazaire's submarine base refused to surrender, and they holed up (as did their counterparts in the La Rochelle and Lorient bases). Since the Germans could no longer conduct major submarine operations from the bases without a supply line, the SHAEF commander, General Eisenhower decided to simply bypass these ports, and the Allied armies focused their resources on the invasion of Germany. Saint-Nazaire and the other two German "pockets" remained under German control until the last day of the war, 8 May 1945.

The town of St. Nazaire was rebuilt in the late 1940s in a minimalist, somewhat drab style that belies the natural beauty of the area.

Economy

• First port of France on the Atlantic side
• Shipyard - Saint-Nazaire suffered heavily from the downsizing of shipbuilding activity in western Europe in the 1960s and '70s. For a long time in the 1980s, it remained an economically depressed area with unemployment rates above 20%. Today, the local economy is more diversified and its situation is more in line with that of France as a whole. The local shipyard (Chantiers de l'Atlantique) has completed a successful reconversion to cruise ship building and is now one of the world leaders in this sector. The Cunard Line's new flagship, RMS Queen Mary 2, was built in Saint-Nazaire.
• Site of a major factory of Airbus, responsible for the construction of fuselage sections.

Cultural References

• In the Franco-Canadian CGI Cartoon Skyland, Saint Nazaire is the name of the pirate flagship.
• The video game Medal of Honor: European Assault opens with the British raid on St. Nazaire.

See also

• 1942 raid on the Normandie dry dock - see St. Nazaire Raid
• Skyland Cartoon - see Skyland

External links

• Official Website (in English)
• Lancastria Association of Scotland (in English)
• Official website (in French)
• Saint-Nazaire Harbor pictures

References

• Perrett, Bryan (2003). For Valour: Victoria Cross and Medal of Honor Battles. Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, London. ISBN 0-297-84662-0
• Guériff, Fernand. Saint-Nazaire sous l'occupation allemande: le Commando, la Poche. Éditions du Paludier (In French)