Forts of Metz


The forts of Metz are two fortified belts around the city of Metz in Lorraine. Built according to the design and theory of Raymond Adolphe Séré de Rivières at the end of the Second Empire—and later Hans von Biehler while Metz was under German control—they earned the city the reputation of premier stronghold of the German reich. These fortifications were particularly thorough given the city's strategic position between France and Germany. The detached forts and fortified groups of the Metz area were spared in World War I, but showed their full defensive potential in the Battle of Metz at the end of World War II.

Context

Before the invention of rifled artillery, the place de Metz was considered untakeable. In the 19th century, improvements in artillery forced French engineers to conceive a new defensive system around the stronghold of Metz, the first fortified belt. For this work marshal Adolphe Niel allocated a sum of twelve million gold francs, used for four detached advance forts, Saint-Quentin and Plappeville to the west, and the Fort de Saint-Julien and Fort de Queuleu to the east. This measure, conceived by colonel Séré de Rivières, was incomplete when war broke out in 1870.
After the Treaty of Frankfurt, the defenses of Metz were completed by German military engineers, who added seven more forts between 1871 et 1898. These forts, designed by Hans von Biehler, made up the first fortified belt of Metz. The purpose of this first belt was to hold attackers at a distance and keep them away, thus protecting the city from direct enemy fire. The forts could also assist troop maneuvers outside the fort by providing supporting fire.
Because of advances in artillery technology, between 1899 and 1916 the first belt was reinforced by a second, composed of nine fortification groups. Based on new concepts of defense, such as dispersion and dissimulation, the fortification groups were intended to constitute an uncrossable barrier to any attacking French forces. The fortifications of Metz were part of a larger program of fortifications called Moselstellung which fortresses scattered between, Thionville et Metz in the Moselle valley. The German objective was on the one hand to protect against a French attempt to retake Alsace-Lorraine from the German Empire, and on the other to form an advance post in French defenses capable of serving as a rear base to a German offensive.
For this major strategic point in the empire's defenses, the German command kept work going on the fortifications until World War I. Emperor Wilhelm II, who regularly came to Metz to inspect the construction, said on this subject:
"Metz and its army corps constitute a cornerstone of the military might of Germany, destined to protect the peace of Germany, even of all of Europe, a peace I have the firm will to safeguard."

Within its walls Metz was then a vibrant German garrison town manned with Bavarians in cloth caps, Prussians and Saxons in pointed helmets and dark green uniforms, and Hessians in light green uniforms. The German garrison oscillated between 15,000 and 20,000 at the beginning of the period and reached 25,000 before the First World War. Many German officers belonging to the Prussian military aristocracy settled in Metz with their families, which explains the more than forty German generals born in Metz. Rotations brought some of the most famous names of the German army there, such as Goring, Ribbentrop or Guderian, and gave the German high command the conviction that this stronghold, thought to be untakeable, was unquestionably German. At the onset of World War I Metz was considered one of the most formidable strongholds in the world. Paradoxically, the city was spared from combat.
These fortifications proved their defensive capabilities at the end of the Second World War. During the Battle of Metz the forts de Metz, despite the ravages of time, despite undermanning and a definite lack of weaponry, shielding and optical equipment, blocked a powerful army, much superior to the French Army of 1914.

Concept

The forts are generally composed of one or more casernes fortes, surrounded by smaller blockhauses. Buried underground on three sides, they faced away from enemy fire and offered nothing to catch the eye beyond the façade, of dressed stone on the oldest forts, concrete on the newer. They generally had walls more than two meters thick covered with several meters of rammed-earth, after 1900 often reinforced by an additional one to two meters of concrete. Tunnels often link the structures to one another. The oldest forts are surrounded by large ditches, actually dry moats, whose depths reached a dozen meters deep in places. After 1914 these forts were often surrounded by a dense network of barbed wire and anti-tank spikes.

Forts of the first belt

Starting in 1905, no less than eleven secondary works were added to reinforce the defenses northwest of Metz:
*Sainte-Anne
Wolfsberg
Moscou,
Leipzig
Saint-Vincent
were built between the groupes fortifiés Lothringen et Kaiserin. In front of Feste Lothringen, several other infantry works were built:
de Fèves,
d’Horimont I, II, III, d’Amanvillers and
de Vémont. All these works have infantry casemates, and were surrounded by ditchwork and barbed wire.
To the southwest, the anticipated direction of French attack, no less than seven secondary works were built between 1912 and 1916, between the Feste Kaiserin et Kronprinz. Because of their vulnerability compared to the fortified groups of the second belt, these works were nicknamedThe Seven Dwarves by the GIs of the 3rd Army, during the battle of Metz in September to December 1944.
Batteries of cannons on armored shields were built between the forts of the first and second fortified belts and east of the second belt:
To protect the front east of the second fortified belt, four artillery works were built between 1905 and 1909. From north to south, the Sainte-Barbe battery monitored the Bouzonville road, the Silly battery and the Mont battery covered the Sarrebruck road, and the Sorbey battery the road to Morhange.
in addition to these advance forts, many barracks remain from this period, such as,, Colin, Desvallières, Dupuis, Féraudy, Lattre-de-Tassigny, Lizé, Raffenel, Reymond, Riberpray, Roques, Séré-de-Rivières, Serret, Steinmetz, and Thomassin as well as many military grounds in Metz and neighboring communities are all legacies of the military past of Metz.