The Siege of Liege, 1914. Blindsided by Courageous Belgian Resistance, German's Lightening Plan Thwarted, Paris Saved.

Belgian resistance was not supposed to exist. The German war machine had counted on speed... on smashing through the Low Countries unopposed. Instead, Belgian troops stood and fought, throwing the invasion off balance. What should have been a relentless advance became a grinding struggle, costing the Germans precious days. Those lost days gave France and Britain just enough time to rally, to fortify, to prepare. When the Germans finally reached the Marne, they no longer had the advantage. The road to Paris had been open. Now, it was a battlefield.

Liege. August 7 - 16, 1914.
German Forces: 60,000 Troops.
Belgian Resistance: 25,000 Infantry.

Additional Reading and Episode Research:

• Tuchman, Barbara. The Guns of August.
• Buchan, John. A History of the Great War.
• MacDonald, Lyn. 1914.

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Transcript

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of History's Greatest Battles. Season 2 where we explore history's greatest sieges. If you know somebody that enjoys this genre of history, please share the podcast with them.  In the summer of 1914, Europe went to war. The empires of the continent had armed themselves for decades, each preparing for a conflict they believed would be swift and decisive.

Germany, the dominant power of Central Europe, had spent years refining its war plans, calculating every movement down to the hour. Its strategy was built on one simple truth. Speed. France had to be crushed before Russia could fully mobilize. The German war machine would strike west, hammering through Belgium, enveloping the French armies, and seizing Paris before the enemy could react.

If this could be achieved, the war would end in weeks. But the opening days did not go as planned. What was meant to be a smooth advance became something else entirely. An unexpected delay that rippled through the entire course of the war. In a place few in Berlin had given serious thought to, a resistance emerged that disrupted timetables, forced tactical improvisation, and created the first fractures in Germany's strategy.

That delay, brief by the scale of the coming war, altered the tempo of the entire campaign. It forced German high command to adjust, to press harder, to stretch supply lines further. And when those consequences compounded in the weeks that followed, The Germans found themselves halted on the banks of the Marne.

The war that was supposed to end in a single season would instead drag on for years, consuming millions. Because Germany did not win in those first few weeks. History unfolded as it did. The world we live in was shaped by what followed.

The rise of the United States as a global power. The collapse of empires. The bitter resentments that led to an even greater war two decades later. All of it stems from the failure of the German war plan in 1914. And the first crack in that plan began here.

Let's now experience, the Siege of Liège.

Welcome to History's Greatest Battles, Season Two, Episode 15: The Siege of Liege, the 7th through the 16th of August, 1914.

German Forces: 60,000 Soldiers.
Belgian Forces: 25,000 Infantry and Fortress Garrisons.

Belgian resistance was not supposed to exist. The German war machine had counted on speed, on smashing through the Low Countries unopposed. Instead, Belgian troops stood and fought, throwing the invasion off balance. What should have been a relentless advance became a grinding struggle, costing the Germans precious days. Those lost days gave France and Britain just enough time to rally, to fortify, to prepare. When the Germans finally reached the Marne, they no longer had the advantage. The road to Paris had been open. Now, it was a battlefield.

Looking back, the march to World War I seems all but unavoidable. The war drum had been sounding since 1870, when Prussia shattered France in a war so decisive it rewrote the balance of power in Europe. That humiliation festered for decades, feeding the kind of resentment that nations do not forget. But resentment alone does not ignite a world war. The continent was a powder keg packed tight with nationalism, imperial ambitions, and an arms race spinning wildly out of control. Political leaders across Europe, many of them drunk on their own rhetoric, pushed harder and harder. By early 1914, Europe was split into two armed camps, and every man in a uniform could feel it, war was coming. It only needed a trigger.

The spark came on June 28, 1914. A handful of pistol shots on the streets of Sarajevo cut down Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, setting off a diplomatic crisis that spiraled beyond anyone’s control. Austria-Hungary demanded Serbian submission. Serbia resisted. Germany stood behind Austria. Russia stood behind Serbia. Within weeks, every great power in Europe was drawn into the storm.

When Serbia refused to bow to Austria’s impossible ultimatum, war became inevitable. On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war. Russia mobilized to defend its Slavic ally. Germany, bound by honor and treaty, declared war on Russia on August 1. The following day, Berlin sent an ultimatum to France, Russia’s ally. It was not a request. The machinery of war had been set in motion, and there was no stopping it now.

Germany’s plan for war, the Schlieffen Plan, had been written in steel years before. To crush France quickly, the German army would swing through Belgium, outflanking the French defenses along the Alsace frontier. There was no alternative. On August 2, Berlin sent an ultimatum to King Albert of Belgium: let the German army pass, or be crushed under its boots.

Belgium had a choice: yield or fight. The Germans expected surrender. A Prussian officer sneered that any resistance would be nothing more than “the rage of dreaming sheep.” But Belgium was no flock waiting for slaughter. King Albert’s men took up arms, prepared to defend their land against impossible odds. Courage, however, does not replace firepower. The Germans had numbers. They had artillery. They had the will to grind down anything in their path.

Belgium’s defenses had been built for any invasion, French, German, or British. When Berlin’s ultimatum arrived, King Albert and his chief of staff, General Selliers de Moranville, activated their war plans. The Belgian army would pull back to the center, while the fortress cities of Liège and Namur held the frontier. The plan was simple: hold the line as long as possible and buy time for the Allies to respond.

Liège was the gateway to Belgium, and through Belgium, to France. To the south, rough terrain made large-scale movement difficult. To the north, the Dutch border restricted maneuvering even further. The city itself was a fortress, ringed by twelve heavily armed strongpoints, but the defenses were aging, undermanned, and in places, neglected.

The twelve forts of Liège, designed by Henri Alexis Brialmont, were once the cutting edge of military engineering. They were built to withstand modern artillery, their main structures buried underground, with only domed cupolas exposing their guns to the sky. Each fort had heavy-caliber weapons, but their design had not kept pace with military advancements. The Belgian government had ignored Brialmont’s calls for additional defenses, leaving gaps between the strongpoints. In theory, Liège was a fortress. In reality, it had cracks in its armor.

The forts were undermanned. Many of their defenders were local militia, brave men, but scarcely trained for modern war. They had rifles, but little else. Against the German war machine, they would be tested to their limits.

On August 2, King Albert gave his answer. Belgium would resist. He ordered the army to mobilize, the defenses to be reinforced, what little could be done in the time left. The Germans were already on the move.

There was no time. Before the defenses could be strengthened, the German invasion began. At dawn on August 4, the Army of the Meuse, eight brigades under General Otto von Emmich, crossed into Belgium. Their objective: take Liège and punch a hole through the Belgian lines.

Emmich’s orders were simple, take the bridges, secure Liège, and move on. He expected little resistance. But when his troops reached the Meuse, the bridges were already destroyed. The Belgians had seen them coming. Forced to build pontoon bridges under fire, the Germans learned the hard way, Liège would not fall without a fight.

August 5. The German assault began. Infantry charged the eastern forts, their ranks torn apart by Belgian machine guns. Men fell by the hundreds, their bodies piling in front of the defenses. All day, the defenders held their ground, their rifle fire cutting down wave after wave. But war does not stop when the sun sets. Under cover of darkness, German troops slipped through the gaps between the forts, creeping toward the city itself.

The twelve forts stood in a ring six miles from Liège, each positioned to support the others. In theory, they created an unbreakable barrier. In reality, there were fatal gaps between them. No trenches, no secondary defenses. The Germans found the weaknesses, and they pushed through.

The Germans tried diplomacy. They sent envoys to demand surrender. General Gérard Leman, commander of the Liège garrison, gave his answer, no. The forts would fight to the last shell, the last bullet, the last man.

August 6. War found a new frontier. A German zeppelin drifted over Liège, its shadow creeping across the city. Thirteen bombs fell. Nine civilians died. It was the first time an airship had been used to strike a population center in war, but it would not be the last.

Desperate to break the Belgian resistance, the Germans resorted to deception. A squad of soldiers, disguised as British troops, infiltrated the city, their mission clear, kidnap General Leman. They failed.

The Germans had not taken the city, but they had played their hand well. Misinformation flooded the Belgian lines. Leman, believing Emmich had eight divisions instead of eight brigades, faced an impossible choice. His single 3rd Division could not hold out forever.

August 7. Leman made the call. The 3rd Division would retreat to Louvain, regrouping with the rest of the Belgian army. The city was lost, but the forts would fight on.

The newspapers called it a victory. Reports of German defeats filled Belgian headlines. But King Albert knew the truth. Without reinforcements, his army could do nothing but delay the inevitable.

France could have helped. President Poincaré was willing to send five divisions. But Marshal Joffre, obsessed with his own offensive through the Ardennes, refused to divert troops. The Belgians would fight alone.

Britain promised men, one cavalry division, four infantry divisions. But promises do not stop an advancing army, and no one knew if the British could arrive before Belgium was overrun.

With the Belgian 3rd Division gone, Liège lay open. Nothing stood between the German army and the city itself. Emmich and his deputy, a hard-edged staff officer named Erich Ludendorff, marched four brigades in and took control. But the forts still held, their guns blocking the German advance westward. Ludendorff gave an ultimatum, surrender, or the city would be reduced to rubble.

From the moment they set foot in Belgium, the Germans had shown no mercy to civilians. Anyone suspected of resisting, any hint of a sniper, a partisan, or an ambush, was met with execution. Houses burned. Villages vanished. The war had already taken its first steps toward brutality.

Leman would not yield. As long as the forts stood, they were a barrier. Without them, the road to France was open. He knew the Germans would do anything to break them. He was prepared to do anything to hold them.

The Germans had one answer to stubborn defenses, annihilation. And for that, they had a secret weapon.

From the Skoda factories of Austria came the 305mm howitzers, monstrous guns that could shatter anything in their path. But even they were dwarfed by the weapon forged in Germany’s Krupp factories, the 420mm siege gun, the "Big Bertha." It was a weapon unlike anything seen before, its shells capable of reducing fortresses to dust.

Big Bertha had been designed to reduce Paris to rubble. Instead, Ludendorff ordered it to Liège. The forts had held off infantry, cavalry, and field artillery. They would not survive this.

On August 9, the siege guns were loaded onto trains. By the next day, they were rolling toward Liège. But war does not accommodate schedules. A destroyed tunnel forced them to halt twenty miles short of their destination. For three agonizing days, engineers and laborers fought against time, clearing roads, repairing equipment, dragging the massive guns inch by inch toward the battlefield.

As the siege guns crept forward, Germany made one last attempt to force Belgium’s surrender. Albert refused. He pleaded for reinforcements from his allies, but the response was slow. He was on his own.

A French cavalry detachment scouted the front, searching for the enemy. What they found, or rather, what they failed to find, led to a fatal mistake. No large German formations were visible. This only reinforced French high command’s belief that the main German offensive was behind the Ardennes. No reinforcements were sent. The Belgians would have to endure the storm alone.

Albert understood the German plan. The hammer was coming down on the French left flank, through Belgium. He saw it clearly. But his allies were blind. When Belgian troops defeated a German cavalry detachment on August 12, it only confirmed French suspicions, the real battle was elsewhere.

August 12. The siege guns were in position. The real battle was about to begin.

Until now, German forces had taken only two of the smaller forts, Barchon and Evegnée, through sheer numbers and bloody sacrifice. But when the siege guns opened fire that afternoon, the battle changed. The outcome was no longer in doubt.

The first shells arced high into the sky, climbing thousands of feet before slamming down with unstoppable force. Their delayed fuses ensured maximum destruction, burrowing deep before detonating. Concrete and steel shattered like glass.

Below ground, the garrisons listened. The impacts crept closer, each explosion shaking the earth, each shockwave a reminder that death was closing in. German artillery observers, perched high in church towers and balloons, guided the destruction with precision.

August 13, three forts fell. August 14, another was gone. The ring of steel around Liège was collapsing.

Fort Boncelles endured a full day under the hammer of the siege guns. By August 15, it was unrecognizable. What had once been a fortress was now little more than a ruin of shattered rock and twisted metal. The defenders had no choice but to surrender.

With the eastern forts obliterated, the siege guns rolled forward, their barrels now aimed at the western defenses. The German advance could not be stopped, only delayed. The final strongholds of Liège braced for annihilation.

August 16. The end came in fire. At Fort Loncin, General Leman, stubborn and unyielding, made his stand. But war does not spare heroes. A single 420mm shell found its mark, hitting the fort’s ammunition magazine. The explosion tore through the structure, collapsing tunnels, burying men alive, and blasting Leman into unconsciousness. The fortress, and the resistance, were finished.

The Germans pulled Leman from the wreckage, dazed, covered in dust and blood, but alive. Taken before General von Emmich, he did not beg. He did not bow. He simply stated the truth: “I was unconscious. Now I am your prisoner.”

The German timetable had called for their armies to march through Belgium on August 10. The Belgians had cost them a full week. On August 17, the road was finally open. The armies of the Kaiser surged forward, but precious time had been lost.

Twelve forts. Countless Belgian dead. A delay of only a handful of days. But those days mattered. The German war plan had been built on speed, on overwhelming force, on a lightning strike into France before resistance could harden. Liège had cracked that plan, just enough to make a difference.

Some had dreamed that Liège would hold for months, as Port Arthur had against the Japanese in 1904. That had been a fantasy. But war is not won only in grand victories. Sometimes, a few lost days can change everything.

By the time the Germans reached the Marne, the delay at Liège, insignificant on a map, critical on a battlefield, had given the French and British just enough time to dig in. It would be at the Marne, not in the fields outside Paris, where the German advance would be stopped.

The Marne was not a battle of grand strategy, it was a brutal, chaotic slugfest, a fight balanced on the edge of a knife. A few days sooner, and the Germans might have broken through. A few days sooner, and Paris could have fallen. A few days sooner, and history itself might have changed.

But Liège was more than just a tactical delay. It was a statement. A message to the world that Germany was not unstoppable, that resistance was possible.

Since 1870, the German army had been a specter looming over Europe, undefeated, unmatched, unbreakable. Liège did not stop them, but it wounded them. And in war, the first wound is always the most important.

The Belgian army, battered but unbowed, fell back to Antwerp, refusing to die. Their defiance burned across Europe, stiffening spines in London and Paris.

No one had expected Belgium to resist. No one had expected them to stand and fight. But they had. And if Belgium, a nation outnumbered and outgunned, could hold its ground, what excuse did Britain and France have to do anything less?

“The triumph was moral,” wrote John Buchan, “an advertisement to the world that the ancient faiths of country and duty could still nerve the arm for battle, and that the German idol, for all its splendor, had feet of clay.”

Liège did not break the German war machine, but it cracked its armor. It did not win the war, but it stole the illusion of a swift victory. In those bloodied forts, among the ruins and the dead, time itself was bought with courage. Time for the French to rally. Time for the British to arrive. Time for Europe to understand the war they had unleashed. The road to Paris lay open, but it was no triumph, it was a funeral march. The dream of a short war had died in the rubble of Liège. The nightmare of the 20th century had begun.