Fort Douaumont Fort Douaumont ( French " Fort de Douaumont " ) was the largest and highest fort on the ring of 19 large defensive forts protecting the city of Verdun , France since the 1890s . However , by 1915 the French General Staff had concluded that even the best - protected forts of Verdun could not resist bombardments from the German 420 mm ( 16 in ) Gamma guns . These newly deployed giant howitzers had easily taken several large Belgian forts out of action in August 1914 . As a result , Fort Douaumont and other Verdun forts , being judged ineffective , had been partly disarmed and left virtually undefended since 1915 . Consequently , on 25 February 1916 , Fort Douaumont was entered and occupied without a fight by a small German raiding party comprising only 19 officers and 79 men . The easy fall of Fort Douaumont , only three days after the beginning of the Battle of Verdun , produced a deep shock in the French Army ' s command structure . It set the stage for the rest of a battle which lasted nine months , at enormous human costs . Douaumont was finally recaptured by three infantry divisions of the French Second Army , during the First Offensive Battle of Verdun on 24 October 1916 . This event brought closure to the Battle of Verdun in 1916 . History . Construction work started in 1885 near the village of Douaumont , on some of the highest ground in the area . Over subsequent years , the fort was continually reinforced until 1913 . It has a total surface area of 30 , 000 square metres and is approximately 400 metres long , with two subterranean levels protected by a steel reinforced concrete roof 12 metres thick resting on a sand cushion . These improvements had been completed by 1903 . The entrance to the fort was at the rear . Two main tunnels ran east - west , one above the other , with barracks rooms and corridors to outlying parts of the fort branched off of the main tunnels . The fort was equipped with numerous armed posts , a 155 mm rotating / retractable gun turret , a 75 mm gun rotating / retractable gun turret , four other 75 mm guns in flanking " Bourges Casemates " that swept the intervals and several machine - gun turrets . Entry into the moat which was surrounding the fort was interdicted by Hotchkiss anti - personnel revolving cannons located in wall casemates or " Coffres " present at each corner . With hindsight , Douaumont was much better prepared to withstand the heaviest bombardments than the Belgian forts that had been crushed by German 420mm howitzers in 1914 . However , the German invasion of Belgium in 1914 had forced military planners to radically rethink the utility of fortification in war . Belgium ' s forts were quickly destroyed by German artillery , and easily overrun . Hence , in August 1915 , General Joffre approved the fateful decision to reduce the garrison at Douaumont and at other Verdun forts . So Douaumont was stripped of all its weaponry except for the two turreted guns that were too difficult to remove : one 155 mm and one 75 mm gun . Conversely , the two " Casemates de Bourges " bunkers , one on each side of the fort , were totally disarmed of their four 75 ' s . The garrison was mostly middle - aged reservists , under the command of the city ' s military governor and not the field army . Capture . On 21 February 1916 , the German army launched a major offensive which started the Battle of Verdun . Douaumont was the largest and highest fort on the two concentric rings of forts protecting the city of Verdun , and thus the keystone to the city ' s defenses . The German offensive was already four days old and progressing rapidly from the north when , on 24 February , it came within reach of Fort Douaumont . However , in spite of this imminent danger , Fort Douaumont was still manned by a small maintenance crew of only 57 troops and a few artillerymen . The highest - ranked soldier in the fort was an NCO named Chenot . No officers were present . On 25 February , four days after the beginning of the Battle of Verdun , elements of the German 24th Brandenburg Regiment ( " 6 Infanterie - Division , III Armeekorps " ) approached Fort Douaumont from the north , as a reconnaissance or raiding party . Most of the French small garrison had already gone to the lower levels of the fort to escape the incessant German shelling with large - calibre guns . A battery of very heavy 420 mm German howitzer s was intermittently pounding the fort , damaging the 75 mm gun turret . The French occupants had been without communication with the outside world for some time . The observation cupolas were unoccupied . Only a small gunnery team was manning the 155 mm gun turret which was firing at distant targets . The dry moat s which could have been swept by French machine gunfire from the wall " casemates " or " coffres " had been left undefended . About 10 combat engineers from the Brandenburg regiment , led by Pioneer - Sergeant Kunze , managed to approach the fort unopposed . Visibility was poor due to bad weather , and French machine gunners in the village of Douaumont thought the Germans were French colonial troops returning from a patrol . Kunze and his men reached the fort ' s moat and found that the wall casemates ( " coffres " ) defending the moat were unoccupied . Kunze managed to climb inside one of them to open an access door . But his men refused to go inside the fortifications as they feared an ambush . Armed only with a bolt - action rifle , the Pioneer - Sergeant entered alone . He wandered around the empty tunnels until he found the artillery team , captured them and locked them up . By now , another group from the Brandenburg regiment , led by reserve - officer Lieutenant Radtke , was also entering the fort through its unoccupied defences . Radtke then made contact with Kunze ' s troops and organised them before they spread out , capturing a few more French defenders and securing the fort . Later , more columns of German troops under Hauptman Haupt and Oberleutnant von Brandis arrived . No shots were ever fired in the capture of Fort Douaumont . The only casualty was one of Kunze ' s men who had scraped one of his knees . Despite being the last officer to enter the fort , the latecomer von Brandis was the one who dispatched the report on the capture of Douaumont to the German High Command . A few days later , the Prussian officer was telling His Imperial Majesty the Crown Prince about its heroic seizure . No mention was made of the efforts of Lieutenant Radtke or Sergeant Kunze . Instead von Brandis became " the hero of Douaumont " and was awarded the " Pour le Mérite " , ( Hauptman Haupt received it later , too ) . But Kunze , who broke in and locked up the garrison , and Radtke , who took command during the fort ' s capture , received no award . It was not until the 1930s after historians from the German Great War committee had time to review Fort Douaumont ' s capture that credit was belatedly given . Kunze , now a police officer , received a promotion and Lieutenant Radtke got an autographed portrait of the now - deposed Crown Prince . Douaumont , the keystone of the system of forts that was to protect Verdun against a German invasion , had been given up without a fight . In the words of one French divisional commander , its loss would cost the French army 100 , 000 lives . Douaumont ' s easy fall was a terrible setback for the French armed forces and a glaring example of the lack of judgment prevailing in the General Staff at the time , under General Joffre . The French General Staff had decided in August 1915 to partially disarm all the Verdun forts , acting under the erroneous assumption that the forts could not resist the effects of modern heavy artillery . After its capture , Douaumont became an invulnerable shelter and operational base for German forces just behind their front line . The German soldiers at Verdun came to refer to the place as " Old Uncle Douaumont " . Recapture . The French Second Army made a first attempt to recapture the fort in late May 1916 . They occupied the western end of the fort for 36 hours but were dislodged after suffering heavy losses , mostly from German artillery and trench mortars that had been brought at proximity . The Germans stubbornly held onto the fort , as it provided shelter for troops and served as first aid station and logistics centre . Afterwards , French artillery continued to shell the fort , turning the area into a pockmarked moonscape , traces of which are still visible today . Earlier , on 8 May 1916 , a careless cooking fire had detonated grenades and flamethrower fuel . This in turn had detonated an ammunition cache . Apparently some of the soldiers tried to heat coffee using some of the fuel from flamethrowers , which proved to be too flammable and spread to shells which were without caution placed right next to such environments . A firestorm ripped through the fort , killing hundreds of soldiers instantly , including the entire 12th Grenadiers regimental staff . Worse , some survivors attempting to escape the inferno were mistaken for attacking French infantry and were fired upon by their comrades . Six hundred and seventy nine ( 679 ) German soldiers perished in this fire . Their remains were gathered inside the fort at the time and placed into a casemate which was then permanently walled off . The site is underground , inside the fort , and has long been an official German War Grave . A commemorative plaque in German and a cross stand at the foot of the grave ' s sealing wall . This site is visitable today . A French offensive involving three infantry divisions began on 24 October 1916 . Its goal was to recapture the fort . This took place on the same day and was carried out by the elite Regiment of Colonial Infantry of Morocco . Douaumont had been pounded for days by two super heavy 400 mm ( 16 - inch ) long - range French railway guns emplaced at Baleycourt , to the southwest of Verdun . Douaumont had become untenable under their fire and was in the process of being evacuated when it was recaptured . Up to that point , millions of lesser - caliber shells had been fired at the fort since its capture by the Germans to little avail , and tens of thousands of men had died in attempts to recapture it .