PEEBLES PROFILES
EPISODE VI
Cordt von Brandis: Hero of Douaumont?
Born on October 4, 1888 in Eimbeckhausen, Cordt von Brandis began his military career as a cadet in Naumburg and Gross-Lichterfelde.
On June 19, 1908, von Brandis joined the infantry regiment ‘Grand Duke Friedrich Franz II of Mecklenburg-Schwerin” (4th Brandenburg) Number 24 of the Prussian Army in Neurippen.
When the Great War began, his unit was deployed to the Western Front. One month later, von Brandis took over the leadership of the 1st company. After being wounded several times, he took over the 8th company and was promoted to Oberleutnant in late February 1915.
Von Brandis went to Serbia later that year, then he returned to France in early 1916 for the upcoming offensive at Verdun, a city once burned by Attila the Hun, the place where the heirs of Charlemagne divided his empire via the famous treaty in 843.
It was here that von Brandis also caught the spotlight!
Operation Gericht (the attempt to “bleed France white”) began on February 21, 1916. The Franco-German battle would be remembered as the longest and one of the most sanguine of the war. The fourth day of the fight witnessed a moment that brought glory to one side, and alarm on the other.
Verdun was protected by a ring of 18 large forts and 23 smaller strong points (called ouvrages by the French). Fort Douaumont was the largest and strongest of the system, the keystone of the whole massive ferroconcrete arch supporting Verdun. It was built in 1885 as part of the Seres de Rivieres system of border defenses the French established after the 1871 defeat against the Prussians. It was continually reinforced and modernized until the Great War.
Douaumont was an elongated pentagon stretching more than 500 yards at its widest point. The outer defenses consisted of two concentric belts of barbed wire (each of them 30 feet deep) followed by 8 feet of sharpened stakes. A dry moat 24 feet deep and 35 feet wide surrounded the fort proper. Machine guns covered every inch of the ditch with enfilading fire.
The two levels of Douaumont could hold a garrison of one thousand troops. The fort’s concrete walls were 8 feet and reinforced with steel; its roof was 12 feet thick and covered with several additional feet of earth. Atop the fort were four steel observation turrets, two machine gun turrets, a turret with a pair of 75 millimeter guns, and a primary turret with a 155 millimeter howitzer. Both rapid fire turrets were fully automated. Covering the left rear of Douaumont was a flanking battery mounting a 75 millimeter field gun on a special carriage.
However, the French had let it decay; General Joffre felt that the field guns and a majority of the troops could be used elsewhere. Only the two 75mm guns, the single 155mm, and a mere 56 territorial gunners led by Sergeant Major Chenot were inside Douaumont’s walls.
On February 25, 1916, the German 12th Grenadier Regiment was to storm Douaumont, supported by the 24th Brandenburg Infantry Regiment. But during the approach, the two units lost contact in a blinding snowstorm, and the 12th Grenadiers veered off course in the Chauffeur Woods.
However, the 24th Brandenburgers of General von Lochow’s III Corps surprisingly took Fort Douaumont without a shot being fired! Word was sent back to the head of the German Fifth Army (the Crown Prince himself). It was Cordt von Brandis who delivered the message.
For this, the Oberleutnant was hailed a hero and awarded the coveted Pour le Merite just under a month later.
But was Cordt von Brandis truly the “hero of Douaumont”?
When the 12th Grenadiers went astray, a pioneer squad of ten men under Feldwebel Felix Kunze was a mere fifty yards from Douaumont. The guns were eerily silent as Kunze’s men cautiously approached the fort from the north. They soon entered the fortification via a breach from a massive German shell. The French artillery team was taken by surprise and locked up!
Another group from the Brandenburg regiment (led by reserve leader Leutnant Eugen Radtke) entered the fort. They met up with Kunze’s men, captured more French defenders, and secured the fort.
Next to enter was Hauptmann Hans-Joachim Haupt and his team followed by von Brandis and his company. In all, no shots were fired; the only casualty was one of Kunze’s men scraping his knee!
So even though von Brandis was first to report the fall of Fort Douaumont, he was by no means the first to take the fort. Haupt also received the Blue Max a month later, but both Kunze and Radtke would eventually be recognized two decades later…
Fort Douaumont and Fort Vaux were taken by the Germans… only to be recaptured by the French in the autumn of 1916.
Cordt von Brandis eventually attained the rank of captain by war’s end. He formed the Freikorps Brandis at Neurippen in early 1919 when revolution was gripping Germany. He retired from military service one year later and became a farmer.
Although his political views leaned to the right, von Brandis never joined the Nazi Party in the 1930s. He died on June 11, 1972 in Barendorf at the age of 83.