Fortress Eben Emael

Fortress Eben Emael was actually a collection of hardened defensive emplacements made of concrete and steel and carefully sited on the Albert Canal north of Liège, Belgium. As the Maginot Line was intended to be the impregnable fixed defense of France, so Eben Emael, which guarded the bridges at Briegen, Veldwezelt, and Vroenhoven, was meant to be the sovereign defense of Belgium, a means of controlling the key passages from Germany into the country. Garrisoned by 700 men, the Eben Emael defenses were state of the art and very formidable—at least if attacked conventionally, by an army approaching on the ground and from the east. During the western European Blitzkrieg, however, the Germans did not use conventional tactics to assault Eben Emael. Instead, on May 10, 1940, 78 engineers of the Koch Assault Detachment used gliders to land on top of the fortifications. Working with hollow charges shaped to ensure that the force of the blast was directed downward, the engineers blew up some of the emplacements of the fortress complex from the roof down. Such an assault had never been anticipated by the defenders, and the buildings were quite vulnerable when approached this way. The attack effectively neutralized Eben Emael as an airborne assault was staged to take the bridges that the fortress was supposed to defend. With these secured, the main German column, the 223rd Infantry Division, attacked the rest of the fortress complex on May 11. The garrison quickly capitulated, and Belgium was soon overrun. The cost to the Germans was six men killed and 20 wounded, all belonging to the Koch Assault Detachment.