When we talk about European battles of the Second World War we basically imagine Germans or Italians fighting against the British, Americans or Russians and we can extend it to the French, Dutch, Balkans or Scandinavians. But what never crosses our minds is the Wehrmacht fighting soldiers from Luxembourg. And yet, there was no shortage of clashes in that country, of which perhaps the most famous was the one at Vianden Castle.
Vianden is a town that today barely exceeds two thousand inhabitants. It is located in the Our Valley, in the northeast area, very close to the border with Germany. It was born from a castellum Gallo-Roman and during the Middle Ages it became a center for craftsmen of various specialties (locksmithing, cooperage, textiles...), with which the cultivation of vineyards and pig farming were combined, the latter also generating considerable tanning activity. . At that time, between the 11th and 14th centuries, the Counts of Come built their castle there. An earthquake followed by a fire left it so battered that the owners left for the Netherlands - they were the ancestors of the Orange-Nassau family - and the building was left abandoned.
It was bought in 1820 by a local merchant who sold not only all its contents -doors, coffered ceilings, furniture...- but also its stones, leaving only some pathetic ruins. A restoration was only undertaken three decades later, although not complete. The chapel took the best part, although the rest must have undergone sufficient reform to inhabit a part because in 1871 the writer Victor Hugo stayed there. In 1890, Adolf of Nassau-Weilbourg, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, commissioned a more extensive reconstruction that lasted until the outbreak of the First World War. By then it was almost finished but it was left unfinished and could not be finished off because in 1939 the next global war came.
The country was occupied and annexed in 1940. Half the army fled to join the Belgian, British or Foreign Legion, as did an exodus of civilians. There were collaborationist entities, such as the pro-Nazi Volksdeutsche Bewegung (German Ethnic Movement) and a year later what is called the Luxembourg Resistance emerged, creating clandestine groups such as Letzerburger Ro’de Lé’w (Luxembourgish Red Lion), PL-Men (Operating Underground), Lëtzeburger Patriote Liga (Luxembourg Patriot League) and several more. They focused, above all, on hiding young people to prevent them from being recruited by the Germans, but they also distributed anti-Nazi propaganda, passed political refugees to allied territory, called a general strike and, when they had equipment (which rarely happened), They organized sabotage. However, they did not pose too much of a problem for the Teutons because they lacked coordination, responding to different ideologies, with communist, liberal, and Catholic groups...
However, in the autumn of 1944 the situation had changed:the Allies were advancing unstoppably across the continent and the Wehrmacht He was retreating towards his country, so that the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg was liberated by the US army for the most part, leaving only a few populations under the control of the adversary in the northeast region. This, coupled with the fear of a possible counterattack, which would indeed occur a month later, led the members of the Resistance to leave behind their guerrilla and irregular nature to form a national militia with compulsory military service, which the Allies provided of uniforms, weapons and ammunition. Its main task was to monitor the border with Germany and warn of possible concentrations of enemy troops, something for which Vianden was a privileged place; especially its castle, which in addition to being a fortification was located on a hill, between 394 and 560 meters, from which you could see German territory.
But on November 15 they did more than just watch. Upon discovering a small German patrol between the towns of Wiessen and Bettel, they attacked it, causing five deaths. Although it was a minor skirmish - there were only eleven Teutonic soldiers and the Luxembourgers did not register casualties - the German command understood that the castle gave away their movements, so they decided to recover it by sending a unit of the Waffen-SS , the military branch of the Nazi Party, made up of soldiers from their country but also from the occupied and others, as long as they met Aryan racial standards. General Erich Brandenberger's 7th Army operated in that area, and he assigned a small contingent of two hundred and fifty men to the operation.
Facing them, the Luxembourgers only had about thirty militiamen. The thing was difficult because the Americans left them equipment to resist but no reinforcements (although they were joined by five Americans and a Belgian interpreter who had been lost), so the civilian population was evacuated and they barricaded themselves in the castle under command. by Victor Abens, a member of the LSAP (Luxembourg Socialist Workers Party, with a social democratic tendency) and a member of the Lëtzeburger Volleks Legio'n . On the morning of Sunday, November 19, it was time to go into action. The Waffen-SS they entered Vianden and attacked the castle, trying to breach the walls with their grenade launchers. Despite their numerical superiority, it took them a long time to achieve this, as the defenders, firing from behind cover, forced them to keep their distance.
Finally they managed to blow up a section, through which six soldiers entered and opened the gate for the others. However, inside the enclosure there were many architectural structures and houses from which the militiamen continued to defend themselves, forcing the assailants to go from house to house. In the course of the battle they lost thirty-seven men to one of the adversary (plus three seriously wounded, another three slightly and a civilian who died in his home due to the explosion of a grenade). Perhaps that dissuaded the German commanding officer - whose identity is unknown - or he was simply ordered to withdraw to join the bulk of the forces preparing a counteroffensive, as we shall see; the thing is that the Luxembourgers victoriously retained the position.
Of course, a month later, on December 16, the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe jointly unleashed Operation Wacht am Rhein (Operation Rhine Guard, the title of a patriotic hymn), the feared counterattack that we reviewed earlier, which caught the Allies by surprise. Although mainly carried out through the Belgian forests of The Ardennes, hence it is known as the Battle of the Bulge (although the Anglo-Saxons call it Battle of Bulge and in German it is Ardennenoffensive or Rundstedt-Offensive ), the southern part was fought in Luxembourg. The Allies had to react desperately to send reinforcements and equipment to face the harsh winter, but in the end they managed to contain the attack.
The Battle of the Bulge ended on January 25, 1945 and technically ended in a draw, but for the Teutonic army it was a catastrophe:it lost tens of thousands of men and thousands of tons of material (tanks, cannons...), apart from that the fear of a new attempt led the Allies to request help from the USSR, which answered the request by initiating the Vistula-Oder Offensive, which brought the Red Army seventy kilometers from Berlin at the beginning of February. The Luxembourg militiamen, by the way, contributed their bit, since they fired from the castle on the paratroopers of the 4th Company Fallschirmpionier of the 5th Battalion commanded by Lieutenant Hans Pridge, although later, given the size of the German attack, they had to escape to join the Americans.
After the contest, the multi-decorated Victor Abens was appointed national deputy and mayor of Vianden. In 1964 he was also elected a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and in 1979 an MEP, retiring in 1987 and dying six years later in Liège; In memory of his deed, the Vianden Town Hall Square was renamed after him.
As for the castle, he showed that it had a certain military value even for modern warfare, but its use has been oriented towards tourism. In 1962 the armory was restored and from 1977, after its transfer to the state, a rehabilitation was undertaken that ended thirteen years later. It is currently open to the public and, ironically, many of its visitors are German.