Feste Illingen

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Thionville illange 001.jpg

The Feste Illingen ( French Fort d'Illange ) is a fortification built after 1905 in Thionville (Diedenhofen) in Lorraine , Moselle department , in northeastern France, which was then part of the German Empire .

task

The Illingen Fortress was part of the Moselle position , which was very important for the implementation of the Schlieffen Plan, and took on the task of securing the course of the Moselle south of Thionville and the mouth of the Orne , as well as preventing the Metz fortress from being bypassed to the north .

Planning and construction

With the Supreme Cabinet Ordinance of January 23, 1900, after completion of the Obergentringen fortress, initially only one tank battery was to be built near Illange . Construction began on May 18, 1905 at a height (216 m above sea level , directly above the right bank of the Moselle ) north of the municipality of Illange. The facility was completed on February 21, 1907 and was expanded into a fortress for three companies of infantry and one  company of foot artillery by 1911 .

Structure of the plant

As a fortress , Illingen is a very special type of fortress developed in Germany. The tank battery that was built first had four turrets. The built-in 10 cm cannon with a 3.2 m long barrel (10 cm PT) had a range between 8,500 and 10,800 m at a rate of fire of about nine rounds per minute.

The tank battery, located in the middle of the approximately 25  hectare complex, was surrounded by four infantry positions. In each of these practically independent units there was a concrete multi-storey barracks to accommodate the troops with appropriate supply facilities such as cisterns or medical rooms. Depending on the site, several standby rooms, armored watchtowers and concrete trenches were built. All important parts of the plant were connected to one another via an underground corridor system. The entire system was surrounded by a wire obstacle about 30 m wide.
After the loss of the First World War , the facility passed into the possession of the French, completely undamaged. Due to its location, it was only partially suitable for direct artillery support for the Maginot Line , which was built in the 1930s . However, the French army expanded it into an important command center with appropriate telecommunications and radio equipment .

Occupation and war effort

The fortress was originally intended for a crew of around 1200. The war crew for the First World War initially provided parts of the 2nd Battalion of the 16th Lorraine Foot Artillery Regiment. When this unit was posted to the front in 1915, only a small guard team remained on site. The fortress was not involved in combat missions during the First World War.

Even during the western campaign in 1940 there was no fighting, but the command center of the Thionville fortress sector of the Maginot Line was located in the fortress . Here on June 12, 1940, General Poisot gave the senior officers of the sector the order to abandon the Maginot Line. Just one day later, the four guns of the tank battery were rendered unusable. However, since the German 183rd Infantry Division was approaching from the west on June 15, the French fortress garrisons had no exit route. The commander of the sector, Colonel Jean-Patrice O'Sullivan, therefore gave up the Illingen fortress on June 16 and moved his command post to the Metrich safe artillery group.

The first attack on the fortress took place in the course of the reconquest of France by the Allies on November 14, 1944. At that time, the facility was manned by only one company from the  74th Infantry Regiment of the 19th  Volksgrenadier Division and thus represented the last German resistance in the Thionville area. After an artillery bombardment by 155 mm cannons and 240 mm howitzers the attack was carried out by the 2nd Battalion of US Infantry Regiment 377. In the evening the Americans had overcome the wire obstacle. The next morning, steel doors to the entrances were blown open and explosives were thrown into the ventilation openings. Then the German occupation surrendered.

The fortress today

After the war, the French army only used the fortress temporarily as a training ground. The furnishings were largely expanded. In 1997 the property became the property of the municipalities of Yutz and Illange , and a park was built there as a result. The fortifications themselves are all locked. Information boards explain the structure of the freely accessible facility.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Rudi, p. 260 and 262.
  2. ↑ Cf. G. Fischer u. B. Bour: Die Feste Kaiser Wilhelm II. Mutzig 1980, p. 142.
  3. ↑ Cf. Voigt, Günther: Deutschlands Heere bis 1918, vol. 8. Field artillery and foot artillery, p. 600 u. 606.
  4. ↑ Cf. Roger Bruge: Faites sauter la ligne Maginot. o. O. 1973, p. 312 u. 328; ders., On a livré la ligne Maginot, o. O. 1975, p. 18.
  5. ↑ See Cole, p. 404.
  6. ↑ See Clayton Donnell: The German Fortress of Metz 1870-1944. Oxford 2008, p. 61.

literature

  • Hugh M. Cole: The Lorraine campaign . Washington 1950.
  • Christian Dropsy: Les fortifications de Metz et Thionville . Brussels 1995.
  • Rudi Rolf: The development of the German fortress system since 1870 . Tweede Exloërmond 2000.

Coordinates: 49 ° 20 ′ 2 ″  N , 6 ° 10 ′ 36 ″  E