How can you attack the fortification Eben-Emael?
The Belgians asked themselves this question too.
From the North it's simply impossible.
A steep ridge, well over 60 meter high, forms the northern border of the fortification, right next to the Albert Channel.

From the East it's almost impossible.
The fortress is built upon a hill giving wide views in eastern direction, over the Meuse valley direction Germany. The river itself acts like a natural obstacle that can prevent troops crossing it and reaching the other side with the fortress. For the fortress was equiped with heavy artillery guns, the attacker would be under constant fire when crossing the wide Meuse valley.

From the West it was considered very unlikely. Germany (the enemy) is situated towards the East, and in order to reach Eben-Emael from the West, the Germans would have to cross the southern part of the Netherlands and make a large circle to attack the fortress from the eastern side. By the time they would have achieved that, the Belgian army would have been joined by French troops coming from the South, to stop the Germans from occupying more of the Belgian territory. At least they thought those days.
And, there's a small river on the western side of the fortress, called the Jeker (or Geer in French) , which could be used to flood a substantial area adjoining the hill, preventing any attackers to come near the entrance.

The South, as you can see on the map above, was protected by the ring of fortifications around Liege. Also a small part of the south side could be flooded by the Jeker river.
To prevent tanks from reaching the fortress additional anti tank ditches were constructed.

Still, history has learned the allies were wrong.
The fort turned out to be not that impregnable at all, in fact it was captured by the Germans, not within a matter of weeks, but within hours !!!



How was the fort of Eben Emael captured in such a short time?
German strategy was to occupy Belgium and the Netherlands as quickly as possible, and then, go straight ahead for France. Their plans were to break the Dutch and Belgian defense on a line from Aachen to Venlo, cross the river Meuse and head for central Belgium. Main direction was the Belgian city of Tienen (Tirlemont in French).
Then they wanted to break the central Belgian defense line and from there on break through the French defense at Sedan-Abbeville.

Since the fort of Eben-Emael was located at a very strategic spot (other side of river Meuse, junction with Canal Albert and northern corridor towards Liege) the fort was the first and one of the main goals they wanted to conquer. Furthermore four very important bridges were well within reach of the guns at the fort, so firstly the fort had to be disabled and right after that the bridges could be attacked.
The bridge across the river Meuse in Maastricht and the three bridges across the Canal Albert (Vroenhoven, Veldwezelt, Kanne) were of crucial importance to the German army because these were the bridges they needed to transport of groundtroops into Belgium.

On May 9th 1940 at 1.10 pm Adolf Hitler sends a telegram to the 6th German Army, "Gelb - 10 Mai 1940", which means that the following day at 5.35 am the offensive will commence. At 10.15 pm on May 9th, according to plans, he confirms the attack by sending the codeword: "Danzig".

"Fall Gelb" (Case Yellow) included specific instructions for neutralizing the Fort of Eben-Emael, but also for occupying the strategically important bridges of Kanne, Veldwezelt and Vroenhoven. This part of the operation was codenamed "Stahl, Beton, Eisen, Granit" which can be translated as "Steel, Concrete, Iron, Granite"; "Stahl/Steel" representing the steel bridge at Veldwezelt, "Beton/Concrete" representing the concrete bridge at Vroenhoven and "Eisen/Iron" representing the iron bridge at Kanne whereas "Granit/Granite" represented the fort of Eben-Emael.

Objective "Steel" Bridge at Veldwezelt	Objective "Concrete" Bridge at Vroenhoven	Objective "Iron" Bridge at Kanne

Objective "Granite" The fort of Eben Emael	8 German paratroopers of Gruppe Granit (Group Granite) whose objective it was to silence the fort of Eben Emael.

The taking of each of these 4 objectives was assigned to a different group, with the same codename as their objective. E.g. "Gruppe Granit" had to silence objective Granite; the fort of Eben Emael. In order to do so, in all a rather limited group of somewhere about 350 Fallschirmjäger (paratroopers) was divided into 4 sub groups, each with a different objective. Group Steel exisited of 1 officer en 91 troops would conquer Veldwezelt bridge. Group Concrete, existing of 5 officers and 129 troops had to conquer the Vroenhoven bridge. Kanne bridge had to be conquered by Group Iron, 2 officers and 88 troops. And the fort at Eben Emael had to be conquered by group Granite, existing of 2 officers and 85 troops.

Since all objectives were situated at about 30 kilometers of the German border, the only way to surprise the Belgian army would be by approaching the objectives, not via land, but out of the air.
In the early morning of May 10th 1940 at the German airfields Ostheim and Butzweilerhof (both near Köln) all troops were divided on 42 gliders of the type DFS230, about 8 or 9 men per glider. Each DFS230 assault glider was towed by a transport aircraft of the type Junkers 52.


The group took off in darkness from both airfields at 4.30 a.m. The gliders were towed along a pathway of guide lights on the ground, where at the end near the border at Aachen (some 15-20 NM away from the objectives) a final groundsign of three lights announced the point of release. From there on 40 gliders (the other 2 didn't make it to the border) made an glide flight from an altitude of 7000 ft, speeding with a velocity of about 70 knots towards the fort of Eben Emael and the three Belgian bridges. At about 5.25 a.m. the gliders reached their goals.

DFS230 being towed by a Junkers 52, photographed from that Junkers, looking backward.

Of the 11 gliders that should have landed on top of the fort, in fact 9 made it within tens of meters from their goal. Number 10 was lost to anti aircraft fire and number 11, carrying their commander Witzig, had to land just out of Köln (Eng: Cologne) because of a broken towrope. To confuse the Belgium military around the area, the Germans also used dummy gliders that ‘landed’ in areas near the canal bridges but served no other purpose but to confuse the defenders.
Some 5 minutes later the main ground attack across the German-Belgian border would commence.
At 5.40 a.m. the bridges of Vroenhoven and Veldwezelt were reported to be taken. The bridge of Kanne had been blown up by the Belgian defense, but it was still passable with a little help of engineers.

Picture of several DFS230 assault gliders on top of the fort of Eben Emael.

The Koch Storm Detachment had given themselves just 60 minutes to create a base in the fort which they could defend. In this time, they destroyed many of the gun emplacements in the fort and captured a large section of it. Remember there were only 85 German troops against more than 500 Belgian in their fort. Apart from the glider-surprise the Germans also carried a new type of explosives; a so called shaped charge (or hollow charge), which was placed on top of the fort's cupolas and could penetrate the thick concrete of the fort. Some of the complex remained in the hands of the Belgium army but by May 11th, the fight was over as the advancing 151st Infantry Regiment arrived in force. At 1.30 p.m. on May 11th the invincible fort surrounded itself to the german army.
In the end, only 85 men in 9 gliders captured the strongest fort of Europe in about 30 hours!

Captured DFS230 as photographed by British troops in North Africa. (public domain image)

Later during the war the German would use gliders for a second time during their landing on Crete, as well as in Northern Africa and during the rescue of the Italian leader Benitto Mussolini. Near the end of the war the British army had also trained its paratroopers in the use of gliders and on D-Day they conquered Pegasus Bridge, considered to be a vital point during the first hours of the attack on the Normandy coast.

© may 2007 Leo Llama (webmaster)

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Got interested in Eben Emael? Then checkout this second story on another monument in town, originating from the same war, but with a complete different function and ideology.

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If you want to know more about the historical event that took place on May 10th 1940 at Eben Emael, please take a look at the next 45minutes video on the German attack. This YouTube video has been cut into five parts, each about 9minutes long.

Movie in 5 parts about the fort of Eben Emael and the German attack on May10, 1940.
Source: Youtube.com