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1914-1918 - The Great War

Despite the guarantees laid down with the Treaty of London in 1867, the international status of Luxembourg remained precarious. Each European crisis brought up the "Luxembourg question" and heightened the desires of annexation harboured by its neighboring countries. In 1914, Luxembourg was dragged into the First World War. On 2 August, the German army invaded the Grand Duchy and thus violated its neutrality. The Luxembourg authorities protested against the German invasion, but continued to observe strict neutrality with regard to all the warring parties.

The occupation was restricted to the military domain. The occupier did not touch the institutions of the Luxembourg state. The sovereign and the government remained in place. Following the war, the Allies were to criticise Luxembourg for its policy of neutrality towards the parties at war. During the occupation, the major problem facing the population was the provision of supplies. The state of war rendered the importing of supplies to compensate for the insufficiencies of national production impossible.

The government introduced rationing and imposed maximum prices to curb inflation. The result was a flourishing black market and a high level of tension between the cities and the country. Shortages, price increases and loss of purchasing power triggered social conflict. The dissatisfaction drove laborers to organise themselves into trade unions. In September 1916, the first two trade unions of the steel industry were born, one in the mineral basin, in Esch-sur-Alzette, the other in the capital. A strike broke out in the steel sector in 1917 and was harshly repressed by the German army.

The annexation of Luxembourg was one of the objectives of Wilhelmian Germany in the event of a final victory. But in the meantime, the German authorities imposed a certain restraint on themselves. The hardship of the 1914-1918 occupation can therefore not be compared to that of 1940-1944, when numerous Luxembourgers perished as victims of the Nazi regime. The oppression during the Second World War was to give rise to a remarkable burst of national solidarity, which translated into an active resistance against the occupier, whereas during the First World War, Luxembourg was a country marked by serious internal dissension.