Luxembourg’s occupation in Germany: violence, revenge and annexation plans

After five years of occupation by the Third Reich, Luxembourg became an occupying power herself, entrusted with the districts of Bitburg and Saarburg, which were officially under French authority in the wake of the Second World War.

Soldiers under the watchful eyes of Prince Félix – the husband of Grand Duchess Charlotte – and Crown Prince Jean crossed the border bridge in Remich on 13 November 1945.

Fuelled by post-war euphoria, the first weeks and months of the occupation caused a veritable buzz in the country: newspapers and magazines were filled with large-format photomontages, caricatures and triumphalist texts.

Luxembourg historian Félix Streicher has intensively researched the history of the Luxembourg occupation in Germany, scrutinising 15 archives in six countries. The result of his years of research is his doctoral thesis entitled “The Forgotten Occupation: Politics, Everyday Life, and Gender in the Luxembourg Occupation Zone in Germany, 1945-55”, which he submitted in 2025.

On the way to becoming an occupying power

The fact that Luxembourg, which had just been liberated by the Allies, would become an occupying power was by no means a coincidence, but rather a strategic decision by Joseph Bech, who served as prime minister before the war and became foreign minister in 1937. He would serve as prime minister again in the 1950s.

“Bech wanted to firmly integrate Luxembourg into the post-war alliances and saw Luxembourg’s participation in the occupation of Germany as a kind of ‘entry ticket’ into these new international structures. Luxembourg therefore insisted on participating in the occupation as quickly as possible,” said Streicher.

However, this request initially fell on deaf ears with the Soviet Union and the United States.

Great Britain was more open. The British Empire was severely weakened at the end of the Second World War and hoped that the involvement of smaller Allies would ease the burden on its own troops and enable it to continue to exert political, diplomatic and military influence in these smaller European states in the post-war period.

France was initially not granted an occupation zone in Germany and received this only after the negotiations with Luxembourg.

The Wehrmacht barracks in Mötscher Straße in Bitburg served as headquarters for the Luxembourg occupying forces in Germany from November 1945 to July 1955. The photo shows two Luxembourg guards in front of the entrance to the barracks in the late 1940s. Prominent in the centre: the Luxembourg flagpole © Photo credit: Unbekannter Fotograf. Musée National d’Histoire Militaire (Diekirch), Fonds Thilmany

The Luxembourg army was to provide two infantry battalions for the occupation, totalling around 2,000 men. Surviving documents show that in practice around 1,600 soldiers were sent across the border. “Overall, it can be assumed that more than 10,000 Luxembourg conscripts probably served in the two occupied districts over the entire ten-year period,” said Streicher.

Claiming back lost land

“However, this process developed into a long diplomatic struggle,” said Streicher.

By participating in the occupation, Luxembourg not only wanted to position itself vis-à-vis the Allies, but also vis-à-vis a future German state. Luxembourg laid claim to reparations – and above all to territorial annexations. “Specifically, the intention was to annex large parts of the Eifel and the Saar-Moselle triangle,” said the historian.

Article “Should Luxembourg expand territorially after the war?” in the Luxembourg weekly newspaper Ons Jongen, 17 February 1945 © Photo credit: Musée National d‘Histoire Militaire

By participating in the occupation, Luxembourg not only wanted to position itself vis-à-vis the Allies, but also vis-à-vis a future German state. Luxembourg laid claim to reparations – and above all to territorial annexations. “Specifically, the intention was to annex large parts of the Eifel and the Saar-Moselle triangle,” said the historian.

In a telegram to the Allies in January 1945, the Luxembourg government demanded that the territories that Luxembourg had “lost to Prussia” in 1815 as a result of the Congress of Vienna east of the Our, Sauer and Moselle rivers should be reattached to Luxembourg as war reparations.

“From spring 1945, the foreign ministry very actively invoked precisely this argument. They emphasised that it was not a question of annexing German territories, but of ‘disannexation’, the reintegration of allegedly ‘old Luxembourgish’ territories – at least that was the official terminology,” said Streicher.

Luxembourg’s far-reaching territorial claims supported a “tough, highly punitive Germany policy” within the Western Allies, the historian said.

Luxembourg occupying soldiers during a troop exercise in Germany, 1949/50 © Photo credit: Fotograf unbekannt. Privatsammlung Leick

Later, however, this chapter no longer fitted in with Luxembourg’s 1950s image of an engine of European integration and rapprochement with Germany, not least as the first seat of the European Coal and Steel Community.

“Against this backdrop, people looked back with shame on the immediate post-war years in which Luxembourg had acted as an annexationist towards Germany. Accordingly, this phase of Luxembourg’s own history was downplayed in political discourse and in the collective memory for a long time,” said Streicher.

Revenge on the Germans

After years of occupation, forced conscription into the Nazi army, brutal crackdowns on the resistance and thousands of war dead – around 2% of Luxembourg’s population died during WW2 – “the desire for revenge, for revenge against Germany, was omnipresent,” said Streicher.

“In the first few months – until the spring of 1946 – the German civilian population was therefore treated with great severity. There were very strict controls, a demonstratively martial appearance of the Luxembourgers in the townscape of Bitburg, for example, and clear repression for violations of the Luxembourg occupying power’s rules,” said Streicher.

The Luxembourg soldiers serving in the occupied zone were generally around 19 or 20 years old.

On 13 November 1945, the Luxembourg occupying troops enter the Saarburg district via Remich. Prince Félix on the left, the future Grand Duke Jean next to him on the right © Photo credit: Tony Krier / Photothèque de la Ville de Luxembourg

“Individual acts of revenge also took place. These included targeted humiliations by Luxembourg soldiers and the deliberate destruction of private German property,” the historian said.

This manifested itself in soldiers deliberately breaking into German homes and destroying furniture and kitchen equipment. “In doing so, they systematically subjected the population to intimidation, harassment and humiliation,” said Streicher.

A particularly vivid example of this retaliatory behaviour was the so-called “flag salute”, which was introduced on the very first day of the occupation. This meant that all German civilians had to salute the Luxembourg flags hanging in the streets as they passed.

The salute involved taking off their hats and bowing. “A deliberately staged ritual of humiliation,” said Streicher.

If the Germans ignored the salute, they faced punishments. “There were physical assaults: German civilians were beaten, forced to kneel for minutes in the street dirt in front of the flag or had to run in circles around the flagpole. Drivers were instructed to manoeuvre their vehicles around the flagpole up to thirty times – and to take off their hats each time.”

Caricature by Pierre Bergem in “Luxemburger Wort”, 17 November 1945 © Photo credit: Musée National d‘Histoire Militaire

The Luxembourg soldiers made no distinction in terms of social class or profession. For example, it is documented that the mayor of Bitburg at the time, Jakob Mölbert, had to perform squats in the street dirt for half an hour. The local Catholic priest also suffered such humiliations.

However, these practices were not without backlash. The inhabitants of Bitburg avoided streets where the Luxembourg flag was hoisted and took to side streets.

One example is Denkmalstraße, one of Bitburg’s main streets, where the officers’ mess was located. A large Luxembourg flag was displayed there, and the people of Bitburg began to use Adrigstraße, which ran parallel to it, instead of this street to avoid having to walk past the flag, said Streicher. This alternative route was soon popularly known as “Fahnenfluchtgasse”, which translates into “flag escape lane” but “Fahnenflucht” in German also means desertion.

Of ruined castles and scrap equipment

The soldiers stationed on the other side of the Moselle on the German side found themselves in an area devastated by war. In particular, the Battle of the Bulge from mid-December 1944 to the end of January 1945 had left behind a trail of destruction on both sides of the border.

With the exception of the damaged Wehrmacht barracks in Bitburg, the Luxembourg occupying soldiers lived in houses barely suitable for habitation.

“One soldier wrote to his parents that during the day they had to carry buckets of water down from the upper floors because it was raining in through the ceiling. In winter, the water even froze so badly that you could ice skate in the building. This may seem like a curious anecdote, but it shows impressively what miserable conditions the Luxembourg troops actually had to live in,” said Streicher.

Luxembourg conscripts during their military training in Bitburg, April 1951 © Photo credit: Unkown photographer. Private collection of René Kerschen

How the young soldiers experienced everyday life under occupation depended greatly on where they were stationed. One colourful example is the Eifel village of Neuerburg, which housed two Luxembourg companies with around 300 men, scattered across “a former hotel, in the agricultural school and even in the medieval castle” Streicher found.

Damp, cold and a lack of furniture made everyday life difficult for the soldiers. These shortcomings were only remedied in the late 1940s and 1950s.

The initial equipment of the occupying troops was no less inferior. The Luxembourg army was materially rebuilt from British scraps in the spring of 1945.

Both the uniforms and the equipment, including the weapons, were in poor condition.

“The equipment was outdated, as were the rifles and ammunition. It is highly questionable whether these weapons could have been used at all in an emergency,” said Streicher.

A manoeuvre in December 1945 shed light on the desolate state of affairs: “It became a real general disaster. Nothing worked as planned – vehicles broke down by the dozen, equipment failed, and the manoeuvre made it unmistakably clear to the general staff that the Luxembourg army was barely fit for action,” the historian explained.

The fact that the army had to fulfil its mission under these precarious conditions was due, on the one hand, to the limited availability of reliable material and, on the other, to the political course that led to a considerable reduction in military spending between 1947 and 1949 in the face of growing criticism of compulsory military service.

The situation only changed fundamentally when Luxembourg joined Nato in 1949 as a founding member of the defence alliance. “As a result, the Luxembourg army at the beginning of the 1950s was actually very well equipped and up to date. The units stationed in Bitburg from 1952 onwards had modern, reliable and, from a military point of view, high-quality equipment,” said Streicher.

Stay tuned for a second part of this story…

About the historian

Félix Streicher © Photo credit: Anouk Antony

Félix Streicher is a historian and researcher at the Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po in Paris. He studied history in Heidelberg and Paris and defended his doctoral thesis on the history of the Luxembourg occupation zone in Germany (1945-1945) at Maastricht University in September 2025, funded by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR). He is currently researching the history of resistance in Luxembourg during the Second World War for the “Fondation Nationale de la Résistance”.

(This story was first published in the Luxemburger Wort. Translated using AI, edited by Cordula Schnuer.)