After the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 relations between France and Germany were very tense. Both sides fortified their shared border. If either side were to try to invade the other nation by attacking through the border it would be a difficult prospect. The best option for either country would be to go around the fortified Franco-German border by crossing to the north though Belgium (Going round to the south would be too difficult through mountainous Switzerland). This fact was not lost on the small nation of Belgium which did not have an army large enough to hope to resist the German or French armies.
The solution that Belgium came up with was to build a ring of fortresses around the city of Liege, near the German border, and the city of Namur, near the French border. The reason for this was if a large army wanted to cross from France into Germany, or vice versa, it would have to pass through or near Liege and Namur. So from 1881 to 1891 Belgium build about twenty fortress in total around each city.
The idea behind these fortresses were not to stop a French or Germany army, but to the make the prospect of crossing through Belgium impractical in a war between France and Germany, as it would take too long to deal with the Belgian fortresses.
When you read "fortress" you might picture high walls with tall towers of brick or stone. But the Belgian fortresses had no resemblance of a medieval castles. They were state of the art when they were build and made of modern concrete. Most of the structure of these fortresses was underground (the parts that housed supplies, ammunition and soldiers) the only visible structures on the surface were low rising concrete domes that housed artillery and machineguns in mechanical turrets. These domes would be behind but deep and wide concrete trenches (that functioned like a moat) arranged in a triangle with the domes and turrets protected in the middle. The soldiers in these types of fortresses were often protected by ten to fifteen feet of concrete.
These fortresses were that they were built on elevated positions and their purpose was to fire artillery at any army that tried to bypass them. They could not be ignored because the guns in these fortresses could hit targets miles away and even if an army could move past them intact, these fortresses housed tens of thousands of soldiers who could cut off any invading army of from supplies from home if they just passed them by without capturing them.
Based on Belgium's estimates it would take an invading army a month to capture the fortresses around each city. The fortresses were thought to be a strong deterrent for invasion, as France or Germany would need a month to capture Liege, a month to capture Namur and a few days to cross the country in between. This would give the invading army's opponent (be it France or Germany) too much time to prepare for an invasion for a route through Belgium to be a practical, or at least that was the idea.
Ironically it was a battle on the other side the world that would change the fate of Belgium. It was not France or Germany the doomed the Belgian fortresses, but Japan. In 1904 and 1905 Japan and Russia fought a war. During the war Japan attacked Russian troops in a fortress at Port Arthur (in what is today China). The Japanese soldiers took very large guns from battleships and moved them overland to positions that could smash the inland fort and forced the Russians to surrender. Both Germany and Austria-Hungry took noted of these events. At the start of World War One most nations thought the largest land based artillery piece would be and still be practical was a 20 centimeter gun (20 centimeters being the diameter of the barrel). Any larger and the gun would be too heavy to move over land was the conventional wisdom of the day. But the Japanese showed that larger guns (as navel guns were bigger as they did not have to be hauled anywhere once on board ship) could be moved in a reasonable amount of time over land. So both nations built massive land based siege guns that could quickly destroy a fortress. Thus making an invasion of France though Belgium possible even with the Belgium fortresses in the way.
The Belgian fortresses were build to withstand shots from 20 centimeter guns. The siege guns the Germans had designed and built were 42 centimeter guns (the projectile the gun fired was 16 and a half inches wide and contained almost a ton of explosives in a single shot that could hit a target 7.8 miles away). When the Belgian fortresses resisted the German invasion the German army moved these massive guns into position. Each of these guns were forty-three tons, when fully assembled, they were loaded in pieces on to trains shipped to the Belgian border and then loaded on to specially designed carriages and pulled the remaining miles by teams of dozens of work horses to their firing positions and then reassembled. These guns were known as "Big Berthas" named for Bertha Krupp (affectionately it is believed) the daughter of Friedrich Krupp the owner of the Krupp armament manufacturer which built these guns.
The German army had expected it would only take two or three days to capture the fortresses at Liege if they resisted, without even using the Big Berthas and the other super-heavy artillery (as they were known at the time), which would only slow the army down due to their massive weight. But by the 11th of August after six days of fighting some fortresses had been captured but the majority of the fortresses at Liege fought on. Once the these massive guns were brought to bear against the Belgian fortresses at Liege on the 12th of August the fortresses were quickly smashed. The last of the Liege fortresses were captured on the 16th after only four days of facing the German super-heavy guns.
This development shocked all parties involved. The Germans were surprised because the fortresses at Liege took nine days longer to capture than expected. Giving the French army time to prepare for the German invasion. This was lost time that the German army could not afford. The French and Belgians were shocked by the use of German super-heavy artillery as fortresses at Liege fell 20 days earlier than they had hoped.
With the fall of Liege Germany was able to quickly advance its armies to the fortresses at Namur. With the experience gained at Liege and having the super heavy guns at the ready from the start of the attack Namur fell quickly. The attack started on the 20th of August and the fortresses only lasted five days, having all been captured by the 25th of August. Surrendering twenty five days earlier than French and Belgian prewar estimates of how long the fortresses could resist, but two days longer than German army had hoped.
The resistance of these fortresses were relatively small battles compared to later battles in the war. But they were among the most pivotal. Had the Belgians not have stalled the German army for roughly twenty days, the French very well could have caught unprepared, and France may have lost the war in 1914. Additionally, because Belgium resisted so successfully the Germany invasion, Germany would respond by taking punitive measures against the Belgian people that would shock the world and be instrumental in turning the public opinion of many nations against Germany. Making it easier for France, Russia and Britain to recruit allies against the Germany.
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