German invasion of Luxembourg

• 1. Introduction

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  The German invasion of Luxembourg lasted exactly one day. On the 10th of May 1940, three panzer divisions crossed the border at dawn, and by noon the capital was in German hands. But the speed of the conquest obscures how much preparation, fear, and last-minute scrambling went into those few hours on both sides of the border.

  How does a small, neutral country prepare for a war it has tried desperately to stay out of? What happened to Grand Duchess Charlotte and her government as German troops swept through the streets of Luxembourg City? And how did a nation of gendarmes and volunteers, with no artillery and no air force, respond when the moment finally arrived?

• 2. A Careful Neutrality

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  When Germany invaded Poland on the 1st of September 1939, Luxembourg found itself in a painfully familiar bind. Its neutrality had been guaranteed by the Treaty of London in 1867, and the government clung to that status even as the population's sympathies tilted toward the UK and France.

  To honour the treaty's restrictions, Luxembourg kept only a small Volunteer Corps under Captain Aloyse Jacoby and a Grand Ducal Gendarmerie under Captain Maurice Stein. Together these forces formed the Corps des Gendarmes et Volontaires, commanded by Major-Commandant Émile Speller. The total force was tiny by any measure of wartime need.

  On the very day Germany marched into Poland, Radio Luxembourg stopped regular broadcasting. The station would transmit only a daily twenty-minute government message at midday and in the evening. The move was meant to signal unambiguous neutrality, but by that same afternoon German stations had begun broadcasting on Luxembourg's wavelength. United States Chargé d'Affaires George Platt Waller described the transmissions as "grossly unneutral announcements". On the evening of the 21st of September, the Grand Ducal government suspended all broadcasts entirely.

  By the spring of 1940, nervous citizens could see German military manoeuvres and unusual river traffic along the borders. The government responded by building the Schuster Line, named after its chief constructor. It consisted of 41 sets of concrete blocks and iron gates: 18 bridgeblocks on the German border, 18 roadblocks on the German border, and five roadblocks on the French border. Because the Corps des Gendarmes et Volontaires had no pioneer unit, civilian engineers did the construction work, with technical guidance from French advisers who followed the project closely. Nine radio outposts were placed along the German border, each manned by gendarmes and linked to a central receiver in Captain Stein's office near the Saint-Esprit Barracks in the capital.

• 3. Planning to Flee

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  On the 4th of January 1940, Grand Duchess Charlotte convened her cabinet and put a stark question on the table: what should the royal family and government do if Germany attacked? Charlotte had a clear answer, drawn from painful family history.

  During World War I, her elder sister, Grand Duchess Marie-Adélaïde, had remained in Luxembourg while Germany occupied the country. That decision had brought the monarchy into deep disrepute. Charlotte was determined not to repeat it. If invasion came, she and her government would flee abroad and advocate for Luxembourg's sovereignty from exile.

  Preparations followed immediately. The government moved part of the country's gold reserves to Belgium. Funds were stockpiled in the Luxembourg legations in Brussels and Paris in case a sudden flight became necessary. The Paris legation was also entrusted with a sealed envelope containing a formal request for military assistance from the French government, to be used if communications were severed during an invasion.

  Meanwhile, French intelligence had planted one of its own inside Luxembourg City. Captain Fernand Archen posed as a wine merchant while actually serving as a senior undercover intelligence officer. On the 7th of May 1940 he reported to his superiors at Longwy that German Abwehr agents under Oskar Reile, who had entered the country disguised as tourists, were positioned to seize key bridges over the Sauer, Moselle, and Our rivers. On the 3rd of March, the French Third Army had already been ordered to occupy Luxembourg in the event of a German attack.

• 4. The Night Before

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  On the evening of the 8th of May 1940, for the first time, the Grand Ducal government ordered all doors of the Schuster Line closed at 11:00 and kept shut until 06:00 the following morning. The directive reflected a sharpening sense of dread.

  The afternoon of the 9th of May brought several converging warnings. A French intelligence officer stationed in Clervaux spotted German troops laying pontoon bridges in the Sauer and tried without success to reach Captain Archen by phone, eventually calling Longwy directly. That same day a German national working as a gardener in Luxembourg and a member of the German fifth column warned his Luxembourgish employer, Carlo Tuck, that an invasion was coming. Tuck passed the warning to government officials.

  Late that evening, the Grand Ducal government obtained a document from a German divisional command, dated the 23rd of April 1940, detailing orders from the division's chief of staff to various units to occupy strategic points inside Luxembourg. Every border post and Gendarmerie station was put on full alert.

  In Luxembourg City, gendarmes mobilised to guard public buildings and sent vehicle patrols to arrest fifth columnists. The economic councillor and the chancellor of the German legation were detained for questioning over allegations they had used legation cars to organise subversive activities. Because no invasion had yet begun, the two men still held diplomatic privilege and the police were compelled to release them. One group of fifth columnists was arrested while trying to reach the legation.

  Around midnight, Captain Stein, Minister of Justice Victor Bodson, and Police Commissioner Joseph Michel Weis held an emergency meeting. Bodson asked for gendarme reinforcements from the south to be sent to the capital. Weis tried to pass the order to the district commissioner by telephone but could not reach him. The reinforcements never came. At around 02:00 on the 10th of May, two gendarmes were ambushed near the German border by plainclothes German agents. At 02:15 soldiers stationed at Bous were attacked by Germans in civilian clothes; one soldier was badly injured. Fifth columnists then cut the telephone wires connecting the capital to the border posts, forcing all communication onto shortwave radio. German agents seized the radio stations one by one. The last post to fall, at Wasserbillig, kept transmitting until the Germans physically broke into the operating room.

• 5. The Invasion Itself

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  At 04:35 on the 10th of May 1940, the 1st, 2nd, and 10th Panzer Divisions crossed the border at Wallendorf-Pont, Vianden, and Echternach respectively. Wooden ramps bridged the Schuster Line's tank traps. Fire was exchanged, but the Germans encountered almost no organised resistance. Most of the Luxembourgish Volunteer Corps remained in their barracks; the border was held only by soldiers who had volunteered for guard duty and by gendarmes.

  A handful of German troops secured the Moselle bridge at Wormeldange, capturing two customs officers who had demanded they halt but declined to shoot. At Echternach, engineers from the Großdeutschland regiment quickly repaired a partly demolished bridge over the Sauer, opening the route for the 10th Panzer Division.

  In Esch, a group of roughly 125 German special operations troops had landed by Fieseler Storch aircraft and were holding the area pending the main force's arrival. A single gendarme confronted the soldiers and asked them to leave. He was taken prisoner. The government motorcade, carrying Prime Minister Pierre Dupong and Foreign Minister Joseph Bech among others, ran into a German roadblock at a crossroads and had to detour through open countryside to avoid capture. French Ambassador Jean Tripier followed the government party but was stopped by German soldiers and turned back. The Luxembourgish Minister of Education, Nicolas Margue, trying to escape by taxi, was also stopped at the border and ordered to return.

  At 08:00 elements of the French 3rd Light Cavalry Division under General Petiet, supported by the 1st Spahi Brigade under Colonel Jouffault and the 2nd company of the 5th Armoured Battalion, crossed the southern border to probe German forces. Five Spahis were killed before the units retreated behind the Maginot Line. British Air Marshal Arthur Barratt, frustrated with French reluctance to conduct air strikes, ordered Fairey Battle bombers from the 226 Squadron to attack German tank columns without escort. They flew into heavy anti-aircraft fire. Most were damaged but escaped; one received a direct hit and crashed near Bettendorf. German soldiers pulled three injured crew from the burning aircraft, and one of them later died in a local hospital.

  Total Luxembourgish casualties by day's end were six gendarmes and one soldier wounded. Twenty-two soldiers and 54 gendarmes were taken prisoner. By evening, most of the country, excepting the south, was under German occupation. More than 90,000 civilians fled the canton of Esch-sur-Alzette: 47,000 went to France and joined the vast columns of refugees streaming out of Belgium and northern France, while another 45,000 moved into central and northern Luxembourg.

• 6. Charlotte's Escape

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  Following consultation with her ministers, Grand Duchess Charlotte decided to leave the palace. Her party included her husband, Prince Felix, her mother Dowager Grand Duchess Marie Anne, and members of the Grand-Ducal suite. They drove for the border village of Redange and crossed into France at 07:45.

  Hereditary Grand Duke Jean and two of his sisters, accompanied by aide-de-camp Guillaume Konsbruck, waited at the border for confirmation that the occupation was complete. Their car was strafed by a German aircraft while stopped at a cafe. Near Esch the group met a German roadblock, and their chauffeur drove straight through the soldiers to break free. The party eventually joined Charlotte and the government at Sainte-Menehould.

  Minister of Justice Bodson stayed behind in the capital until it was no longer tenable, then slipped out by memorising back roads to avoid the German checkpoints, navigating his way to France alone.

  Charlotte and the government arrived in Paris on the 11th of May and set up in the Luxembourg legation. Fearing German air raids and finding the space too small, the government moved south to Fontainebleau and then to Poitiers. From there the government went to Portugal, then Britain, and finally Canada, where it remained for the duration of the war. Jean, Charlotte's eldest son and heir, volunteered for the British Army in 1942, and Charlotte herself became a central symbol of national resistance and unity throughout the occupation.

• 7. Governing an Occupied Country

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  Back in Luxembourg City, a different kind of administration took shape. The only official representative left behind by the exiled government was the head of the Ministry of State Affairs. In the days immediately after the invasion, Luxembourgish officers moved freely around the capital, though ordinary soldiers were mostly confined to their barracks.

  ColonelSpeller, commander of the Corps des Gendarmes et Volontaires, was briefly arrested by the Gestapo before being released under close supervision.

  By the end of May, Wehrer and several senior functionaries had established a provisional Administrative Commission to govern Luxembourg in the absence of the Grand Ducal family and the ministers who had fled. Wehrer himself kept the Ministry of State Affairs and took on responsibility for Foreign Relations and Justice. Jean Metzdorf handled Interior, Transportation, and Public Works. Joseph Carmes managed Finance, Labour, and Public Health. Louis Simmer oversaw Education, and Mathias Pütz directed Agriculture, Viticulture, Commerce, and Industry. This administrative shell would govern Luxembourg in place of the legitimate government now operating from Canadian soil.