the empire's defenses, the German command kept work going on the fortifications until World War I. Emperor Wilhelm II, who regularly came to Metz to inspect the construction, said on this subject:"Metz and its army corps constitute a cornerstone of the military might of Germany, destined to protect the peace of Germany, even of all of Europe, a peace I have the firm will to safeguard." Within its walls Metz was then a vibrant German garrison town manned with Bavarians in cloth caps, Prussians and Saxons in pointed helmets and dark green uniforms, and Hessians in light green uniforms. The German garrison oscillated between 15,000 and 20,000 at the beginning of the period and reached 25,000 before the First World War. Many German officers belonging to the Prussian military aristocracy settled in Metz with their families, which explains the more than forty German generals born in Metz. Rotations brought some of the most famous names of the German army there, such as Goring, Ribbentrop or Guderian, and gave the German high command the conviction that this stronghold, thought to be untakeable, was unquestionably German. At the onset of World War I Metz was considered one of the most formidable strongholds in the world. Paradoxically, the city was spared from combat. These fortifications proved their defensive capabilities at the end of the Second World War. During the Battle of Metz the forts de Metz, despite the ravages of time, despite undermanning and a definite lack of weaponry, shielding and optical equipment, blocked a powerful army, much superior to the French Army of 1914. Concept The forts are generally composed of one or more casernes fortes (fortified barracks), surrounded by smaller blockhauses. Buried underground on three sides, they faced away from enemy fire and offered nothing to catch the eye beyond the façade, of dressed stone on the oldest forts, concrete on the newer. They generally had walls more than two meters thick covered with several meters of rammed-earth, after 1900 often reinforced by an additional one to two meters of concrete. Tunnels often link the structures to one another. The oldest forts are surrounded by large ditches, actually dry moats, whose depths reached a dozen meters deep in places. After 1914 these forts were often surrounded by a dense network of barbed wire and anti-tank spikes. Forts of the first belt Fort Saint-Privat (1870) / Fort Prinz August von Württemberg (1872-1875)