Dodendraad; Belgium's Wire of Death
A guard sits in a small wooden shack listening to the rhythmic whirring of panels and watches the constant flickering of lights. All is normal when out of nowhere a panel lets out a loud whistle and the lights begin to flash faster, a switch is flipped and the guard immediately dashes out of the bright room and into the gloomy darkness. The cool night air nips at him as he runs down the long line of wires, rifle at the ready. Soon he comes upon it, in a mess of sparks and flashes is a body laying limp across several tensioned wires.
German and Dutch guards look at a man who died from the wire. Courtesy of dodendraad.org.
Invasion of Belgium
During the onset of World War One the German Army attempted to outflank the French Army to the North by going through Belgium. The small country however did not want to be used as an expressway for German soldiers and resisted their advance. Even with help from the British Army it did not take long for the Kaiser’s war machine to overrun them and advance into France.
German soldiers marching through Belgium. Courtesy of World War I Centennial.
Reasons for the Wire
After the initial invasion Germany was left with well over a million Belgian citizens that they had to watch over. Keeping these citizens within the confines of Belgium was their top goal. If these citizens were to escape they might give away valuable information that would be detrimental to Germany’s war effort. Also they were seen as a resource because they could be used in factories to help produce materials for the war effort.
By far the easiest way for Belgians to escape was through the large border they shared with the Netherlands who were a neutral country. Germany tried to seal off this route by positioning soldiers along the border but this failed tremendously. Nowhere near enough men could be spared to watch over the entire border at all the times, plus due to supply lines not being fully set up in this stage of the war food supplies were short causing many of the soldiers to desert.
A German guard stands beside the wire. Public Domain.
With the border even less protected than the German military thought, thousands of refugees poured across it where they would eventually spread throughout the allied nations. Roughly 30,000 escapees would go on to fight against them at the Battle of the Yser. Another issue with the porous border was that France had roughly 6,000 intelligence agents in the region who observed troop movements, supply resources, and even aerial activity. This intelligence easily flowed back and forth across the Dutch border and helped the allies plan their strategies. Not just intelligence but hundreds of thousands of letters to friends and family members passed back and forth. Germany had taken over the official post offices so secret postal networks had to be set up, Le Mot du Soldat and Familiegroet being two of the most prominent. Newspapers were also a big deal as the Germans wanted to limit what information the Belgian population saw so news from other countries was highly sought after. Food smuggling was extremely common as the country now had no commerce whatsoever and had to rely heavily on its neutral neighbor for basic foodstuffs. Many Dutch citizens made quite a bit of money helping smuggle these supplies, but they did face more danger as they not only had to account for German guards but Dutch ones as well. Some German soldiers even helped smuggle food across the border, while taking a cut for themselves of course.
Three soldiers stand outside of a guard shack behind the wire. Courtesy of War History Online.
Many of the escaped Belgians did return in late 1914 as Germany formally requested for the Netherlands to send back their deserted soldiers and refugees. The Netherlands obliged, not wanting to risk their neutral status and the cost of feeding, clothing, and housing these refugees was weighing heavily on them. Still with people, information, and supplies being passed so freely back and forth across the border it became clear that they would need more than just sheer manpower to close it.
A German and Dutch border guard stand across from one another beside the wire. Courtesy of Terry-Jean Trevellion.
Construction of the Wire
The solution to their problem was a 450 kilometer (280 mile) long electrified wire fence that ran along the border from the Belgian town of Knokke to the German city Aachen. Its construction began in April and May of 1915 and was first electrified on July 24, 1915, but it was not fully completed until mid 1916. This was partly due to it being built in sections with the most vulnerable areas seeing construction first. Originally the Germans tried to use Belgian prisoners to erect the fence but many were not used to the hard labor and deserted across the Dutch border, so regular army units had to take over.
German soldiers constructing the wire. Courtesy of dodendraad.org.
The fence was constructed using pine stakes that held porcelain insulators that the wires ran through. The wires were originally smooth and measured between three to five millimeters thick, but those soon became scarce and they had to use barbed wire instead. The wires were generally spaced 30 centimeters (11 inches) apart from top to bottom but this varied, places where more people were located had eight wires while places with less would only have four or five. Sitting roughly 1.5 meters away on either side of the electric fence were two smaller fences meant to keep people and animals from accidentally touching the electric one. Though the wire ran along the border there were places where it was moved further back to make it easier to either construct or secure. Unfortunately this meant that sometimes entire villages would be split in two by the wire and there are even stories of farmers being cut off from their fields and livestock with only 100 meters between them.
German guards stand near a technical installation. Courtesy of Amalia van Solms.
The wire was lethal with 2000 volts of electricity surging through it. Since electricity was still relatively new at the time and not many people really used it the Germans had to either use generators or run power from a nearby factory. In order to control this flow of power they also had to construct technical installations every 500 meters. These installations often housed the generators and had fail safes in place for when the wires were disrupted so they could quickly pinpoint the area and investigate it. Unfortunately during the first few days of the fences use many Belgians who did not grasp the concept of electricity accidentally died by unknowingly touching it, prompting the Germans to put up warning signs.
One of the warning signs for the fence. Courtesy of Amalia van Solms.
It was also patrolled by border guards who were given shoot to kill orders for anyone attempting to cross, they were not permitted to shoot in the direction of the Netherlands however. Guards were placed every 50-100 meters and at night their numbers were doubled along with extra patrols. At certain points spotlights were used and even improvised mines were present, manned balloons would often patrol the area during the day. To make the guards' jobs easier and to keep people away from the fence there was a sort of “no-man's-land” set up around the perimeter of the wire. It was called the Grenzgebiet and was an area that extended between 100 to 500 meters from the actual wire where no civilians or even German soldiers were allowed. Only border guards could enter and anyone else who was found there and did not immediately answer the guards when questioned would be shot.
One of the gates used to safely cross the border. Public Domain.
Border Crossings and Casualties
There were 75 gates set up along the fence to allow military and sometimes civilian personnel to cross. Belgian civilians were allowed to cross over in the case of a sick parent or child, to attend a funeral, or to do work on a farm that may be on the other side of the wire. These were about the only exceptions and citizens were not allowed to cross everyday, even if for work. Smuggling of course continued and grew as the war went on. Resistance groups had many strategies to cross the border but the most common way was by bribing the guards to turn the power off for a short time, though it was not uncommon for a guard to take the bribe then fetch other guards to arrest the border crossers. Scrap drainage pipe was often used to put between the ground and the wire so that people could then slip through. Wooden frames were made to fit between a top and bottom wire and insulate against the electricity as someone wiggled their way across, heavy wool blankets were also used for this purpose. They even found that a person could lift electrified wires up with their hands to allow others to crawl under so long as the person kept their feet firmly planted on a thick rubber mat. Resistance groups did occasionally sabotage the fence but this was risky and dangerous as the guards would automatically be alerted by the fail safes.
A drawing of one of the ways people could go through the wire. Courtesy of Amalia van Solms.
Problems also arose from the wire itself that sometimes made it easy for people to pass through. For instance it was not uncommon for the Germans to be unable to maintain a lethal voltage at all parts of the fence at all times. There are several smugglers who reported feeling the current as they went over but it being too weak to cause them any real harm. During times of heavy thunderstorms the guards would even switch off the electricity to prevent power surges.
Above shows how the wooden frames worked. Images courtesy of bunkergordel.be and Amalia van Solms respectively.
Even though the wire could be defeated that does not mean that it was ineffective. Records are a little spotty but it is estimated that roughly 1,000 to 2,500 people died by either electrocution or being shot by guards. There are a few notable incidents of border deaths. The first happened on the night of August 25, 1917 when guards came across several refugees attempting to cross the border. With incomplete records it is unknown exactly what happened next but four were shot dead. They were Max Skölle who was a German soldier attempting to desert, Charles Farcy just 16 years old, his brother Henry, and another man named Antoon Van Den Broeck. Another incident happened to one of the guards themselves, a young conscript who was not familiar with electricity attempted to use his bayonet to remove a dead rabbit from the wire and was immediately electrocuted. Possibly the most tragic incident was that of a four year old named Peter Wuijts who accidentally touched the wire while playing. His family home was just 30 meters from the fence and died while attempting to crawl under it. A witness later reported, “The father, who witnessed the accident, wanted to lift the child from the wire. Some bystanders stopped him from doing so. They wound rubber around a stick and managed to get the child off the wire. Its arm was burnt through, making the tiny hand fall on the ground.”
A young man who was killed by the wire displaying severe burns. Courtesy of Afbeelding overgenomen uit DE SCHAEPDRIJVER S.
When the armistice was declared the people of Belgium quickly dismantled the fence and many farmers used pieces of it to enclose their livestock and gardens. Ironically when the German Kaiser went into exile after the war he crossed this very same border into the Netherlands. There are a couple small sections of the fence still standing today but just for historical purposes.
Several guards stand in front of one of the technical installations. Courtesy of dodendraad.org.
Personal Thoughts
While I understand that the Germans didn’t want people escaping and helping allied countries but I can’t help but feeling that the resources they used would have been better utilized at the front. They probably could have made a deal with the Netherlands for them to have tighter border security since they were already willing to return refugees and weren’t opposed to the fence. It’s sad that so many that didn’t understand were killed by it too. Feel like there was probably an all around better solution they could have implemented.
Sources
Cover image by Albert Hahn
https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/high_voltage_fence_the_netherlands_and_belgium
https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_low001201401_01/_low001201401_01_0009.php
https://www.dodendraad.org/wire-of-death
http://ww1centenary.oucs.ox.ac.uk/memoryofwar/the-rape-of-belgium-revisited/
https://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/civilian-atrocities-german-1914
