Assault on a fort on the Albert Canal, May 1940
German soldiers push through wire, burn a concrete bunker with flamethrowers and reach the gate of a fort before marching on.
Barbed-wire entanglements hang between iron posts, soldiers crouch with a light gun on a smoking slope, and one wades chest-deep across a water-filled ditch. Black smoke pours over a concrete bunker behind a fence of stakes, fire glowing at its base; soldiers dash past a wall, and men stand in the haze before the barred, arched gate of a fortification. A long column of infantry then marches through a village, and soldiers ride on an armoured vehicle marked with a cross. German newsreel footage.
The source identifies the fighting as the capture of a fort on the Albert Canal. The strongest of these forts, Eben-Emael, surrendered on 11 May 1940 after German engineers had blown in its casemates and gun turrets with hollow charges. German newsreels made the fall of the Belgian forts a showpiece of the campaign.
