Like The Netherlands, Belgian and France, neutral Luxembourg was invaded by Germany on May 10th, 1940. This was part of "Fall Gelb", the invasion-plan of General Erich von Manstein, chief of staff of Army Group A. In London a government-in-exile was formed. In 1942 Germany annexed Luxembourg. In the years 1942-1943 674 Jews from Luxembourg were deported to Auschwitz. Thousands of Luxembourgers were used as forced labourers. A small Luxembourg army joined Operation Overlord. The Allies liberated Luxembourg at the end of 1944. In January 1945 part of the Ardennes Offensive was fought on Luxembourg soil. American Military Cemetery at Luxembourg (American Militairy Cemetery @ Luxembourg) This Cemetery has got one very famous grave: http://www.marville.org/photos/localarea/local-443.jpg (Shoth in July 1953) http://www.marville.org/photos/localarea/local-442.jpg http://www.marville.org/photos/support/pma-66.jpg (1964) Traditionally, military leaders are buried among the troops. Keeping true to this tradition, General George S Patton was buried among his troops on December 24th, 1945 on a hillside in an unfinished American military cemetery in Luxembourg. He remained there, among the soldiers of his beloved 3rd Army, until it became apparent that the large number of visitors to his grave was having an adverse affect on the surrounding ground. In order to maintain the cemetery in good condition, he was eventually moved to a spot near the memorial that overlooks the cemetery. In this manner, people could more easily find his grave site and not disturb the others. His grave, marked by a simple white cross, is situated near the memorial terrace where it faces two Stars of David, indicating the final resting place for two Jewish soldiers who had fallen while in the general's command. Engraved on the general's cross is the epitaph: GEORGE S PATTON, JR. GENERAL THIRD ARMY CALIFORNIA, DEC 21 1945. http://www.marville.org/photos/localarea/local-278.jpg (A Aerial view) Let us not forget the Germans: Sandweiler and Wallendorf German war cemeteries Any shots from these Cemeteries are more then Welcome. Also a bit off info aobut the Luxembourgian army in Operation Overlord and about Luxembourgian volunteers in the German Army and SS. Friendly Greetings Arneken.
In After The Battle's Blitzkrieg Then & Now are some great photos of German Special Forces in May 1940 who were flown into Luxemburg in Storchs to disrupt communications. I wonder if there's anything about it on the net? It was called Operation Rosa.
THE SECOND WORLD WAR - PRELUDE Luxembourg began preparations for the inevitable in September, 1938. The Anschluss of Austria was fait accompli. Czechoslovakia was abandoned by the leaders of western democracy. Munich ignited Luxembourger’s smoldering suspicions of the Reich. The Grand Duchess Charlotte issued a decree calling for the addition of a second 300 man company to her country’s tiny army. The company was organized in February, 1939. The Nazi-Soviet Nonagression Pact was signed on August 25, 1939. Hitler fomented another crisis, this time with Poland. War between France and Germany seemed certain. Luxembourg’s Chamber of Deputies met for a final pre-war session on August 29, 1939 and voted to surrender full executive and legislative powers to the Grand Duchess and her cabinet for the duration of the conflict. After Britain and France issued their declarations of war with Germany on September 3rd; The Grand Duchess Charlotte joined King Leopold III of Belgium and Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands in calling for a negotiated settlement. At the same time, she called for the recruitment of an additional 125 man company of volunteer reservists. The commandant of Luxembourg’s armed forces, Major Emile Speller, spent the interlude between the outbreak of the war and the German offensive in the west planning a campaign of passive defense. Luxembourgers knew they had no chance of holding their ground against the Wehrmacht. Speller aimed to minimize the loss of life and physical destruction by evacuating the border villages and to delay the German advance long enough to allow those who wish to seek refuge behind Allied lines to make their escape into France. Invasion German forces invaded Luxembourg on the morning of May 10, 1940. Once again, as it had in 1914, the Reich excused its attack on the Grand Duchy as a military necessity dictated by Allied war plans. It claimed that the British and French were planning an attack on Germany through the Low Countries in collaboration with the Belgian and Dutch governments. The Luxembourg authorities were handed a memorandum explaining that under these circumstances: "The German Government, therefore, is obliged also to extend the military operations they have undertaken to the territory of Luxemburg. The German Government expects the government of the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg will appreciate the situation created by the sole fault of Germany’s opponents and will take the necessary measures for insuring that the population of Luxemburg will put no obstacles in the way of German action. The German Government for their part desire to assure the government of the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg that Germany does not intend, either now or in the future, by these measures to impair the integrity and political independence of the Grand Duchy." The Government in Exile Reports of German troop movements reaching Luxembourg City during the night of May 9, 1940 prompted the immediate flight of the Royal Family and four of the Grand Duchy’s five cabinet ministers. The entourage arrived in Paris after a harrowing four day journey over the refugee clogged roads of eastern France. The Grand Duchy’s Paris legation announced the formation of a Luxembourg Legion to fight beside the Allies and called for the mobilization of all military age Luxembourgers resident in France on May 30th. The declaration came too late to effect the turn of events. The British evacuation had already begun at Dunkerque. The German advance on Paris proved unstoppable. Luxembourg’s government fled south with the French before escaping to Lisbon when the Franco-German Armistice was concluded in late June. The exiles continued on to London in early August. Prince Felix took a commission and Crown Prince Jean enlisted as a Private in the British Army. The Grand Duchess, her five youngest children and Premier Dupong left for America. Their convoy reached New York on October 4th. The United States was still neutral, so the royal party went on to Montreal where they spent the duration of the war. Foreign Minister Joseph Bech and Labor Minister Peter Krier remained in London to represent the Government in Exile to Britain. Occupation The Reich began reneging on its assurances to Luxembourg shortly after the fall of France. Gustav Simon, Gauleiter of Coblenz-Trier, added the Grand Duchy to his realm on July 25, 1940. Simon’s administration was conducted with the sole aim of assimilating Luxembourgers within German society. The Volksdeutsche Bewegung (VDB), a Nazi front formed under the leadership of Professor Damian Kratzenberg, was the only authorized political party. The VDB’s philosophy was embodied in its slogan, "home to the Reich". It enrolled 84,000 members but the vast majority joined to avoid the loss of employment. Integration accelerated in August. The Gestapo took over police functions from the gendarmery. German was made the official language of government. French, the official language for 800 years and Letzebergesch, the local dialect, were banned. German was introduced as the exclusive language of school instruction. All publications including newspapers were required to be published exclusively in German. French sounding surnames were require to be Germanicized. The Belgo-Luxembourg economic union was abrogated and the Grand Duchy was incorporated into the German customs area, Reichmarks replaced Francs. German currency and foreign exchange controls were instituted. The Nuremburg Laws were applied to Luxembourg in September. The Grand Duchys’ 3500 Jews were encouraged to leave during the first months of the occupation. A few found refuge in Portugal. Others found temporary sanctuary in unoccupied France. Those who stayed where imprisoned in a concentration camp near the railway junction of Ulfligen and eventually deported to extermination camps in Poland. Simon continued on with his campaign to extinguish Luxembourg’s national identity. A census was conducted on October 10, 1941. The Grand Duchy’s inhabitants were required to declare themselves as German or Luxembourgish. A defiant 97% answered in the spirit of the national motto, "Mir welle bleiwe, wat mir sin" i.e. "we wish to remain, what we are". Letzebergsch was unintelligible to most Germans but the implications of the reply were not lost on the Gauleiter. Simon met humiliation with increased coercion. The clergy came under increasing assault. Church properties were expropriated. Clervaux’s famed abbey of Saints Maurice and Maur was turned into a school for the propagation of Nazi ideology. The property of all Luxembourgers other than those designated as "friends of Germany" was subject to seizure under a decree issued by Simon in March, 1942. German patience wore thin as tide began to turn in the east. Luxembourg was annexed to the Reich on August 30, 1942. The Grand Duchy became Gau Moselleland. Luxembourgers were declared German nationals and subject to conscription into the Wehrmacht. Resistance Reaction to the unilateral actions of August 30, 1942 was immediate. A general strike began in Wiltz and Ettelbruck and spread throughout the country. German counter reaction was just as quick. The Gauleiter declared martial law and had the strike organizers arrest. Twenty five of them were executed. Industrial workers returned to work under threat of death. School aged participants were deported to work camps in Germany. Conscription was the most feared and fiercely contested aspect of the new order. The German forces had conducted an intense recruiting effort from the beginning of the occupation but fewer than 2,000 residents of the Grand Duchy had voluntarily enlisted and most of them were Reichdeutschers not Luxembourgers. The draft was imposed just as German fortunes took a turn for the worse. Few Luxembourgers relished a trip to the Russian Front. Resistance increased after reports of conditions in the east filtered back to Gau Moselleland. A few weeks after the German defeat at Stalingrad rioting broke out among the newest groups of draftees as they waited on Luxembourg’s railway platforms for their trip to the east. The conscript revolt of March 6, 1943 was suppressed with machine gun fire. The Wehrmacht drafted a total of 12,035 Luxembourgers of whom 2,752 were killed in action, 1,500 were wounded and 3,516 deserted. Many of those who evaded forced service were aided by a Resistance group called the Red Lions. Conditions on the home front also deteriorated as the war progressed. Luxembourg’s steelworkers went on strike in November, 1943 to protest long work hours and German requisitions. Hundreds were arrested and deported. Volunteers from Spain and forced laborers from Poland and Russia replaced the full 10% of the Grand Duchy’s population deported during the war. German attempts to erase Luxembourgers’ sense of national identity frequently backfired and in often unexpected ways. A group of Luxembourgers was deported to Peenemunde to provide forced labor in Werner von Braun’s rocket factory. They copied the plans for theV-1and slipped them to a guard. The guard was a conscript from Luxembourg. He took the plans with him when he went on home leave and gave them to the local Resistance. Another resistance network, the Luxembourg Patriotic League, helped 4,000 Allied airmen evade capture. The ban on Letzebergsch actually stimulated interest in the local dialect. French and German had been the Grand Duchy’s written languages. Letzebergsch was entirely conversational and no commonly accepted orthography i.e. spelling and grammar had been developed for it. A phonetic orthography was developed during the war to allow the Resistance to publish a newspaper D’Un’ion in Letzebergsch. Liberation The bulk of German forces in Luxembourg were withdrawn in early September, 1944 to prepare for a last ditch defense of the fatherland at the Seigfried Line. General Courtney Hodges’ American First Army encountered little resistance when it entered the Grand Duchy on September 9th. Prince Felix and Crown Prince Jean arrived with the initial Allied units. Luxembourg City was liberated on September 10th. The Grand Duchy was cleared of German troops the following day when the Americans reached the border with the Reich on the Our and Sure Rivers. The American advance was halted for the moment. Gasoline supplies were diverted to British and Canadian forces who were bogged down in there efforts to open the port of Antwerp to Allied shipping. The Ardennes remained quiet for the next three months. The peace of the Grand Duchy was disturbed once more in the early hours of December 16th. Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt’s panzers stormed westward across a 60 mile long front stretching from Saint Vith in Belgium south to Echternach, Luxembourg. The Germans planned to break through the Allied front line, sweep through the Ardennes and encircle the British and Canadians in northern Belgium. The Allied command was caught napping and slow to react. The Germans forced the U.S. 28th Division to retreat from Wiltz on December 19th. The last obstacle in the path to German victory was the U.S. 101st Airborne Division which held the vital crossroads at the Belgian city of Bastonge. The General Eisenhower prepared to launch a counter-offensive as the Germans marched into Wiltz. The U.S. 3rd Army under George S. Patton was preparing to launch an invasion of the Saar when it was directed to turn ninety degrees northward and march on Bastogne. The maneuver was completed in an astonishing two days. The Americans liberated the town of Ettlebruck on Christmas Eve and broke through the German lines surrounding Bastogne to relieve the 101st Airborne on December 26th. The U.S. 5th Armored Division launched a daring night crossing of the River Sure and liberated the town of Diekirch on January 18th. The Germans were pushed back to the positions they held at the start of the battle on January 28, 1945. Luxembourg’s final liberation was purchased at tremendous cost. The Battle of the Bulge was fought in the midst of the fiercest Ardennes winter of the century. Sixty thousand Allied soldiers fell victim to the enemy or the elements including 19,000 killed in action and 15,000 taken prisoner. Restoration Allied victory in the Battle of the Bulge ended the German threat to Luxembourg. The Grand Duchy turned to the task of national restoration as the war in Europe entered its final days. A fifth of the country’s homes were destroyed in the final battle. Sixty thousand Luxembourgers were without shelter. There was little time to mourn the nation’s 5,000 dead. The problems of the living seemed more pressing as survivors straggled home from the concentration camps, forced labor and service in the armies of both friend and foe. Repatriation of foreign workers bought in by the Germans to replace recalcitrant Luxembourgers was another problem to be faced. The Grand Duchess Charlotte returned to Luxembourg on April 15,1945. The wartime cabinet, no longer in exile, continued rule by decree pending restoration of the country’s democratic institutions. The first post-war election for a new Chamber of Deputies was held on November 21st. The Christian Socialist Party won the largest block of seats. Premier Dupong continued in office and formed a coalition cabinet. Twelve hundred Luxembourgers were tried for collaboration. VDB leader Damian Kratzenberg and 11 others were convicted of treason and executed. The others were sentenced to lesser punishments in most cases dismissal from the civil service. The purge of the civil service proceeded too slowly to suit a few impatient citizens. Among them, wartime resistance leader Albert Winghert and two associates who were arrested in August, 1946 for conspiring to overthrow the Government. Premier Dupong later dismissed the affair as a bit of comic opera. Luxembourg was determined to have its say in shaping the peace. The Grand Duchy’s Army sent two companies to assist in occupying the French Zone of Germany. Luxembourg’s Minister to Washington, Hugues le Gallais, joined the Belgian and Dutch ambassadors in requesting representation for the Benelux countries at any peace treaty conference. Luxembourg presented the Allied Council of Foreign Ministers with a demand for 235 square miles of German territory in November, 1946. Cold War politics ended the possibility of convening a peace conference and the Ministers failed to act on the Grand Duchy’s territorial demands. Luxembourg abandoned neutrality in favor of collective security. After the war, the Grand Duchy joined both the United Nations and NATO as a charter member. It was party to most of the pioneering pacts that led to the creation of the present day European Community. It is, perhaps, more than mere coincidence that the father of the EEC,Robert Schuman, was a native of Luxembourg. The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg
One of my favorite story from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg . In Dec 1939 Flying Officer Richard Martin after landing his damaged Hurricane became the first prisoner of The Duchy of Luxemburg Flying Officer Richard Martin with two other pilots attacked 12 Messerschimtts when a cannon shell hit his oil system. There was smoke coming out and oil all over the canopy. Feeling that the plane was still serviceable, he decided not to bail out. After landing he got out of his cockpit and was walking away. He saw some people heading towards him in funny uniforms and he realized he wasn't in France LOL. He tried to run back to the plane and was caught LOL. He gave his parole not to try and escape. He was treated as a celebrity and given full freedom of movement. A short time later after hearing of the expliots of his fellow pilots, he wanted to get back into the fighting. He then asked the Mayor if he wouldnt mind if he could take back his parole and escape asap. The Mayor just laughed .And taking advantage of everyone having a good time F/O Martin walked back into France Christmas Day.
