The War Illustrated, Volume 1, No. 2, Page 43, September 23, 1939.

In the summer of 1938 work was begun in real earnest on the construction of a vast system of fortifications on Germany’s Western Front called the Siegfried Line. At Nuremburg on September 12, 1938, Hitler said that 278,000 workmen were then employed and boasted that before the following winter the vast wall of steel and concrete laid out in three, and partly in four lines of a total depth of up to 50 kilometres, with 17,000 concrete turrets, would be finished.