German WW2 U-boat base in France reboots as data center

The thick concrete walls of a long-abandonned World War Two German submarine base in Marseille, southern France, are set to find a new purpose: keeping banks of computer servers safe and cool. Dutch cloud services firm Interxion plans to invest 140 million euros to turn the “Martha Base” bunker – which was built in 1943 to accommodate up to 20 U-boats but was never completed – into a data center for corporate clients. During the German occupation of France, the bunker was meant to be the main German U-boat base in the Mediterranean, but Allied forces bombed the city in May 1944 and took it back in August that year.