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the “jump off” date having been set for the 16th of November. On November 19th, French troops of the
Tenth Army entered Metz.
Twenty-six years later, to the day, the XX Corps of the American Third Army liberated the city
once more.
The Moselle region was protected by a belt of modern fortified works connected by anti-tank
obstacles.
Upon mobilization in September 1939, the French moved specially trained troops into the
fortified zones. There were service forces to handle food, munitions, and fuel, as well as automatic
weapons and anti-tank gun crews in positions behind obstacles. These obstacles included fields of
vertically affixed railway tracks, six to eight rows in depth.
The French Third Army under General Conde established its headquarters in Metz (Jeanne
D’Arc Fort).
By mid-September, before the polish situation had become desperate, minor offensive action had
been undertaken at Metz. An absolutely defensive attitude, with a front marked by the main line of
resistance, was then adopted.
From October 1939 until June 1940, the French troops worked on their defensive installations.
They constructed supplementary blockhouses and improved obstacles and communications.
On the tenth of May, 1940, the Germans attacked, bombing airfields and important road
junctions. Large German units appeared in the Lorraine zone but did not approach the fortified line.
The Lorraine front itself was held only by thinly spaced troops backed by fortified works.
The enemy was incapable of reducing the crews of the most important strongholds who had
remained at their posts, and it was only following an order in July, after an armistice was signed, that the
French forces threw down their arms.
No important combat took place in the region of Metz which fell automatically after being
bypassed on the north. With the signing of the armistice, all resistance evaporated.
The Germans entered Metz on the 17th of June, 1940 from the west, approaching from the
Meuse river.
Each of the warring forces sweeping over this historic battle ground had left on the terrain the
imprint of military ingenuity and tactical inventiveness. Each had constructed new fortifications and
improved on natural barriers. The Germans no sooner occupied Metz than they were digging, pouring
concrete, laying wire and emplacing more guns.
The Moselle river forms one of the greatest natural barriers of them all. Through the centuries its
swift current had cut the Lorraine Plateau to create a natural breastworks on the abrupt slopes of its
western banks. To the east of the Moselle, tributary streams, chiefly the Seille and the Nied, have cut
hills and ridges that are steep and heavily wooded.
It was up the dominating terrain formed by the confluence of these rivers that Metz, “Wonder
City of Fortifications”, was built.
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