Luxembourg in World War I by Balmoral International Group History Blog

This year marks the 1001st year after Germany invaded Luxembourg during the Great War. Luxembourg was under full German occupation from August 2, 1914 until the end of World War II on November 18, 1918. Germany has reasoned out that their reason for invading the neighboring city of Belgium was because they needed the service of the people against France. The people, however, said otherwise.

Background

Since the middle ages, Luxembourg City had been one of Europe’s best-defended fortresses, first by the Spanish, then the Austrians as part of the southern Netherlands. When Belgium was created in 1815, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg was founded.  A Prussian garrison moved into the great fortress once it came under the jurisdiction of the German Customs Union.  The garrison left under the terms of the Treaty of London (1867), which guaranteed Luxembourg’s perpetual neutrality, and the fortress was rendered unusable. However, in 1914, Luxembourg was unfortunate enough to lie across one of the Schlieffen Plan’s routes of advance and the German 4th Army, commanded by Albrecht von Württemberg, moved across Luxembourg, leaving occupation troops behind to secure the important railway junctions as well as Luxembourg city itself.

Luxembourg remained under German occupation for the duration of the war. Germans met no resistance to their invasion in 1914 as Luxembourg’s army was limited to a ceremonial palace guard.

Invasion

The story states that Luxembourg was supposed to remain neutral and that Germany was not to use the country in any dealt of war. However, when the French was still a far off distance from the country, the Germans advanced to South Eastern part of Luxembourg crossing the Moselle River at Remich and Wasserbillig, and headed towards the capital, Luxembourg City. Tens of thousands of German soldiers had been deployed to Luxembourg in those twenty-four hours (although the Grand Duchy’s government refuted any precise number that was suggested). Grand Duchess Marie-Adélaïde ordered that the Grand Duchy’s small army, which numbered under 400 not to resist, and, on the afternoon of the 2 August, she and Eyschen met the German commander, Oberst Richard Karl von Tessmar, on Luxembourg City‘s Adolphe Bridge, the symbol of Luxembourg’s modernization. They protested mildly, but both the young Grand Duchess and her aging statesman accepted German military rule as inevitable, thus, the occupation of Luxembourg by the German forces.

Commemoration

Balmoral International Group Luxembourg, along with other Luxembourgers are surely looking forward to celebrate the momentous event and to feel how good it is to be freed from the confines of foreign nations.

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