1914: The Battle of Liege Part One
August, 1914
Time was of the essence to the German forces under the leadership of Helmuth von Moltke. The Chief of the German Great General Staff, von Moltke, had inherited Germany’s grand war plan for a major war. The infamous Schlieffen Plan was von Moltke’s blueprint for Germany’s war. His predecessor, Alfred von Schlieffen, had planned to quickly remove Germany’s enemies to avoid being locked in on both of Germany’s borders. France and Russia had been long-time diplomatic friends with mutual strategic interests in Europe and shared a common enemy, Germany. Germany was forced to quickly end the French threat before returning to defend their eastern borders, according to the Schlieffen Plan, before they suffered a protracted war on their borders.
Alfred von Schlieffen and his successor Helmuth von Moltke the Younger saw the necessity of avoiding France’s modern military fortifications along the German-French frontier. The German plan to avoid most French fortifications meant sweeping south from France’s northern border. German forces desired to control and maneuver through the Ardennes region between Antwerp and the Belgian city of Namur as a pathway to Paris. To move through France, the Germans felt compelled to violate Belgium’s neutrality by shoving their forces through a narrow doorway at Liege, Belgium.
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World War I saw numerous legendary battles. Most people know names like the Somme, Verdun, Passchendaele, Belleau Wood, and others. The first major battle occurred in the Belgian city of Liege just days after the war was declared and is largely forgotten. From August 5 to 16, the German Army vigorously attacked the ring of twelve fortresses surrounding the Belgian city. The Battle of Liege was the first significant engagement of the Great War, and despite this, the battle is lacking in historical sources. The German records surrounding the battle were burned during the April 1945 British bombing of Potsdam. A few official German records briefly cover the battle. The official Belgian history of the battle gives a Belgian perspective, but aside from that, the battle is buried in the mix of much larger battles.
Background:
The Belgian status at the beginning of the war was neutrality. The Treaty of London, signed in 1839 by Austria, Belgium, France, the German Confederation, the Netherlands, Russia, and the United Kingdom, pledged Belgium's independence and neutrality. After Germany’s invasion in 1914, Belgium's neutrality pledge went out the window, but before the war, Belgium sought to honor its pledge.
The situation for Belgium in 1914 was less than ideal. The Franco-Prussian War ended with a Prussian victory on January 28, 1871. The Prussian states were unified into Germany after the war, which also granted them the French territory of Alsace-Lorraine. Alsace-Lorraine sat on the eastern border of France, and in future wars, the French anticipated a German invasion via the territory. The French bolstered their eastern border with heavy fortifications, making a move through Belgium inevitable in a future French-German conflict. Aside from an invasion through Belgian borders, the government of Belgium feared a repeat of 1870, when the French were pinned at the Belgian border during the Battle of Sedan. The French did not want to retreat and break Belgian neutrality during the Franco-Prussian War, but Belgium did not want to dismiss that possibility in future wars. The Belgian government was then forced to prepare for any possibility as Europe crept toward war.
Before 1914, the British and French validated their belief in a neutral Belgium, which dictated the Belgian war plans. Many in Europe saw France and Germany creeping closer and closer to war, and the militarization of Europe forced the Brussels government to act. Belgium had no chance of defeating a German invasion. They only had to wait long enough for French and British backups to arrive.
Belgium’s plans for war consisted of heavily fortified areas. Antwerp, an important European port, was to serve as a base of operations. Antwerp would allow for resupply and reinforcements from incoming British forces. In the mid-1800s, Belgium began building a ring of forts around Antwerp and Liege. Antwerp was ringed by twenty-one forts by 1914 and sought to serve as the hub of military activity. Nine fortresses circled Namur on the Belgian-French border. On the German-Belgian border over the Meuse River, the city of Liege, twelve forts surrounded the entryway into Belgium, and it was there that the war kicked off on August 5, 1914.
The Belgian Forts at Liege:
The twelve forts that ringed Liege were obsolete by the turn of the twentieth century. The Belgian government ordered Henri Brialmont, a Belgian fort architect and army officer, to design fortresses necessary to protect the city of Liege. This process was delayed until funding was approved in 1887. Brialmon built the fortresses to withstand the most powerful guns of the 1880s, which was a 21cm gun capable of producing 240 metric tons of force. German siege guns of World War I could make over 3600 metric tons of force. The forts were recessed into the ground and built of 2.5-meter concrete walls covered with 3 meters of earth.
The Belgian Forts on the Meuse
Fort De Hollogne: This picture shows the scarp of the fort. The counterscarp, or outer wall across from the main citadel, contained the latrines, kitchens, bakeries, and food stores. This was problematic during the fighting as crossing to the outer wall exposed them to enemy artillery fire.
The fortresses took on various shapes, with Forts Barchon, Fleron, Boncelles, Loncin, and Pontisse being large, triangular shapes. Four small triangular forts were built: Evegnee, Hollogne, Lantin, and Liers. Fort Flemalle was constructed as one sizeable quadrangular fort, and Chaudefontaine and Embourg were small quadrangular forts. Each fort had moveable turrets on rollers fixed onto the central fort or citadel. The citadel contained ammunition magazines, ventilators, a gas generator, and cisterns to collect and store water. The counterscarp of the fort included the kitchens, barracks, latrines, and bakeries which showed to be a poor design once the Battle of Liege commenced. German fire kept the Belgian garrison from leaving the citadel, keeping them from toilets, barracks, and food stores.
The Belgian Forts on the Meuse
Fort De Hollogne: This picture shows the scarp of the fort. The counterscarp, or outer wall across from the main citadel, contained the latrines, kitchens, bakeries, and food stores. This was problematic during the fighting as crossing to the outer wall exposed them to enemy artillery fire.
Armaments for each fort:
Large forts: Two 12cm gun turrets, one 15 cm gun turret, and two cupolas containing 21 cm howitzers. A retractable searchlight sat behind the main 15cm gun. Four retractable turrets containing fast-firing 5.7cm cannons.
Small forts: One 21cm howitzer and 3 5.7cm fast-firing cannon turrets.
The Liege forts' guns were all black powder, which gave off a thick cloud of noxious smoke when firing. The smoke would cloud both the line of sight and fill the interior of the fort. The hand-cranked ventilators failed to excrete the smoke. The guns required a large crew. Large turrets had a twenty-five-man crew, including an officer or non-commissioned officer (NCO) and a gun captain who commanded the gun crews. Eight men worked the guns. One level below an assistant gun commander relayed orders to the bottom level of the turret. At the bottom level, an NCO and six men moved the turret for firing. Two men operated the ventilator and two more operated the ammunition hoist while four ran ammunition to the hoist operators. Smaller guns utilized a smaller crew with a similar teamwork mechanism of firing, rotating, and restocking the ammunition.
This rudimentary diagram shows the inner workings of the gun turrets. The crew and turrets would have been much larger.
A double-gun turret shows the armor plating to protect the crew below. The gun turrets were covered with 20cm of iron sandwiched between two cm thick sheets of steel. Another layer of curved armor, called the avant-cuirasse surrounded the turrets.
This rudimentary diagram shows the inner workings of the gun turrets. The crew and turrets would have been much larger.
A double-gun turret showing the armor plating to protect the crew below. The gun turrets were covered with 20cm of iron sandwiched between two cm thick sheets of steel. Another layer of curved armor, called the avant-cuirasse surrounded the turrets.
The fortresses took fire direction from spotters in and around Liege. High points for spotting included church towers and tall buildings. Telephones, which were connected to the public lines in Liege, relayed information to and from the forts. Patrol cars driving around the city served as a secondary spotter and runner.
The Belgian military stocked the forts with an assortment of artillery options: explosive, steel, shrapnel, and canister. The largest forts had roughly 4300 shells split up into the variety of options listed above. Five officers and three hundred and seventeen men were necessary to operate the large forts and full capacity. Smaller forts required five officers and two hundred and sixty-nine enlisted men. Each fort contained two doctors and a team of stretcher bearers.
The infantry defense area was designed to include entrenchments between forts and another near the ditch of each fortress. The dry ditch surrounding each fort was nearly seven to ten meters deep. The sloping ground to the ditch was supposed to aid in defense and at the end of each slope was guarded by a pair of 5.7 cm fast-firing cannons casemates standing nearly two-stories high. The ditch cannons were to provide flanking fire.
Problems with the Liege forts:
The fortresses were designed with mutual protection in mind. Any attackers would also receive fire from surrounding forts. The guns would fire at predetermined targets that the garrison had marked on a map. Since civilians surrounded the ring of forts, the guns had never been fired to ensure the pre-sighted targets were accurate. Infantry support of upwards of 60,000 men was required to defend Liege properly. These men were to hold the entrenchments between each fortress, but during the Battle of Liege, there were few infantry attachments. When the Battle of Liege began on August 5, a garrison of roughly 26,000 infantry with 72 field guns protected the defense ring which was less than half the required number of infantry.
The ditches and walls of each fort were built before the common usage of the machine gun. With no machine gun ports, the fortresses were ill prepared to deal with infantry attacks. Small arms fire was provided solely by infantry rifles. None of the garrison were equipped with machine gun teams.
The ground surrounding Liege was less than ideal for artillery fire. Aside from the problem of black powder smoke clouds blocking vision, the ground surrounding the forts was consistently blocked by obstacles. Several areas of the Liege battlefield offered the German attackers a natural hiding place behind slopes and other natural features. The old guns of Liege required a direct visual, using a flat trajectory to hit their targets. This was contrary to modern artillery which could arc fire and could hit distant coordinates without a direct visual. The fortresses failed to counter distant German guns due to the flat nature of the Belgian guns.
The forts of Liege were ill-prepared for the German invasion of 1914. The garrison was poorly trained and grossly understrength. Liege's defense was honorable but costly. The fortresses were not designed to withstand the firepower of the twentieth century. With no large infantry garrison, there was little the fort commanders could do to stop the German advance. The guns of the Liege forts were slow and cumbersome and each had a small allotment of ammunition relative to the task at hand. The ring design allowed the infiltrating enemy to capture Liege and use their position to attack the backside of other fortresses.
Setting the backdrop:
The Liege defense was futile and the fortress commander General Gerard Leman knew it. He was assigned to command the ring in February of 1914 and with war growing imminent there was little time to upgrade the garrisons. This article sets the backdrop for the ensuing battle which we’ll get to in the next article. The Battle of Liege kicked off the hostilities on the Western Front, immediately drawing France and eventually the British Empire into the conflict. Stay tuned for coverage of the Battle of Liege and a deep-dive into the most interesting aspects of the battle.