The Battle of Verdun was one of the most important battles in World War I on the
Western Front, fought between the German and French armies from 21
February to 18 December 1916 around the city of
Verdun-sur-Meuse in northeast France. It remains one of the
longest battles in history, spanning roughly 10 months.[1]
The Battle of Verdun resulted in more than a quarter of a million deaths and approximately half a million wounded. Verdun was
the longest battle and one of the bloodiest in World War I. In both France and Germany it has come to represent the horrors of
war, similar to the significance of the Battle of the Somme in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.
The Battle of Verdun popularised the phrase "Ils ne passeront pas" ("They shall not
pass") in France, uttered by Robert Nivelle, but often incorrectly attributed
to Henri Philippe Pétain.
History
For centuries Verdun had played an important role in the defence of its hinterland, due to the city's strategic location on
the Meuse River. Attila the Hun, for example, failed in
his fifth century attempt to seize the town. In the division of the empire of
Charlemagne, the Treaty of Verdun of 843 made the
town part of the Holy Roman Empire. The Peace of
Munster in 1648 awarded Verdun to France. Verdun played a very important role in the defensive line that was built after
the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. As protection against German threats along the
eastern border, a strong line of fortifications was constructed between Verdun and Toul and between
Épinal and Belfort. Verdun guarded the northern entrance to the
plains of Champagne and thus the approach to the French capital city of
Paris.
In 1914, Verdun held fast against German invasion, and the city's fortifications withstood even Big Bertha's artillery attacks. The French garrison was housed in the citadel built by
Vauban in the 17th century. By the end of the 19th century, an underground complex had been built
which served as a workshop, munitions dump, hospital, and quarters for the French troops.
Precursor to the battle
After the Germans failed to achieve a quick victory in 1914, the war of movement soon bogged down into a stalemate on the
Western Front. Trench warfare developed and neither side could achieve a successful
breakthrough.
In 1915 all attempts to force a breakthrough—by the Germans at Ypres, by the
British at Neuve Chapelle and by the French at Champagne—had failed, resulting only in terrible casualties.
The German Chief of Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, believed that although a
breakthrough might no longer be possible, the French could still be defeated if they suffered a sufficient amount of casualties.
He planned to attack a position from which the French could not retreat, both for strategic reasons and for reasons of national
pride, so imposing a ruinous battle of attrition on the French armies. The town of
Verdun-sur-Meuse was chosen to "bleed white" the French: the town, surrounded by a ring of forts, was an important stronghold
that projected into the German lines and guarded the direct route to Paris.
In choosing the battlefield, Falkenhayn looked for a location where the material circumstances favoured the Germans: Verdun
was isolated on three sides; communications to the French rear were poor; finally, a German railhead lay only twelve miles away,
while French troops could only resupply by a single road, the Voie Sacrée. In a war where
materiel trumped élan, Falkenhayn expected a favorable loss exchange ratio as the French would cling fanatically to a death trap.
Rather than a traditional military victory, Verdun was planned as a vehicle for destroying the French Army. Falkenhayn wrote
to the Kaiser:
"The string in France has reached breaking point. A mass breakthrough—which in any case is beyond our means—is unnecessary.
Within our reach there are objectives for the retention of which the French General Staff would be compelled to throw in every
man they have. If they do so the forces of France will bleed to death."
Recent scholarship by Holger Afflerbach and others, however, has questioned the veracity of
the Christmas memo.[2] No copy has ever surfaced and the
only account of it appeared in Falkenhayn's post-war memoir. His army commanders at Verdun, including the German Crown Prince,
denied any knowledge of a plan based on attrition. It seems likely that Falkenhayn did not specifically design the battle to
bleed the French Army, but justified ex-post-facto the motive of the Verdun offensive, despite its failure.
Current analysis follow the same trend and exclude the traditional explanation. The offensive was planned to crush Verdun's
defense and then take it, opening the whole front. Verdun, as the core of an extensive rail system, would have immensely helped
the Germans.
Battle
Verdun burning during bombardment with incendiary shells
Verdun was poorly defended because most of the artillery had been removed from the local fortifications, but good intelligence
and a delay in the German attack due to bad weather gave the French time to rush two divisions of 30th Corps—the 72nd and 51st—to
the area's defense.
The battle began on 21 February 1916 with a nine-hour
artillery bombardment firing over 1,000,000 shells by 1,200 guns on a front of 40 kilometres (25 m), followed by an attack by three army corps (the 3rd, 7th, and 18th). The Germans used flamethrowers for the first time to clear the French trenches. By 23
February the Germans had advanced three miles capturing the Bois des Caures after two French battalions led by Colonel
Émile Driant had held them up for two days, and pushed the French defenders back to
Samogneux, Beaumont, and Ornes. Poor communications meant that only then did the French command realize the seriousness of the
attack.
On 24 February the French defenders of 30th Corps fell back again from their second line
of defense, but were saved from disaster by the appearance of the 20th Corps under General Balfourier. Intended as relief, the
new arrivals were thrown into combat immediately. That evening French Army chief of staff, General de Castelnau, advised his commander-in-chief, Joseph Joffre, that the French Second Army under General
Phillipe Petain, ought to be sent to man the Verdun sector. On 25 February the German 24th
(Brandenburg) Infantry Regiment captured a centrepiece of the French fortifications, Fort
Douaumont.
Castelnau appointed General Philippe Pétain commander of the Verdun area and ordered the French Second Army to the battle
sector. The German attack was slowed down at the village of Douaumont by the tenacious defense of the French 33rd Infantry
Regiment and heavy snowfall. This gave the French time to bring up 90,000 men and 23,000 tons of ammunition from the railhead at
Bar-le-Duc to Verdun. This was largely accomplished by uninterrupted, night-and-day trucking
along a narrow deparmental road: the so-called "Voie Sacree" . The standard gauge railway line going through Verdun in peacetime
had been cut off since 1915.
As in so many other offensives on the Western Front, by advancing, the German troops had lost effective artillery cover. With the battlefield turned into a sea of mud through continual shelling it was very hard to
move guns forward. The advance also brought the Germans into range of French artillery on the west bank of the Meuse. Each new
advance thus became costlier than the previous one as the attacking German Fifth
Army units, often attacking in massed crowds southward down the east bank, were cut down ruthlessly from their flank by
Pétain's guns on the opposite, or west, side of the Meuse valley. When the village of Douaumont was finally captured on
2 March 1916, four German regiments had been virtually
destroyed.
Le Mort Homme and Hill 287, May 1916
Unable to make any further progress against Verdun frontally, the Germans turned to the flanks, attacking the hill of Le Mort
Homme on 6 March and Fort Vaux on 8
March. In three months of savage fighting the Germans captured the villages of Cumières and Chattancourt to the west of
Verdun, and Fort Vaux to the east surrendered on 2 June. The losses were terrible on both sides.
Pétain attempted to spare his troops by remaining on the defensive, but he was relieved on 1 May
and replaced with the more attack-minded General Robert Nivelle.
The Germans' next objective was Fort Souville. On 22 June 1916,
they shelled the French defences with the poison gas diphosgene, and attacked the next day with 60,000 men, taking the battery of Thiaumont and the village of
Fleury. The Germans, however, proved unable to capture Souville, though the fighting around the fort continued until
6 September.
The opening of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July
1916, forced the Germans to withdraw some of their artillery from Verdun to counter the combined
Anglo-French offensive to the north.
By the autumn, the German troops were exhausted and Falkenhayn had been replaced as chief of staff by Paul von Hindenburg (Prussian Army) and his co-commander
General Erich Ludendorff (Bavarian Army).
The French launched a counter-offensive on 21 October 1916.
Its architect was General Nivelle. It combined heavy bombardment with swift infantry assaults. The French bombarded Fort
Douaumont with new 400 mm guns (brought up on rails and directed by spotter planes), and re-captured it on 24 October. On 2 November the Germans lost Fort Vaux and retreated. A
final French offensive beginning on 11 December drove the Germans back to their starting
positions.
Casualties
It was crucial that the less populous Central Powers inflict many more casualties on their adversaries than they themselves
suffered. At Verdun, Germany did inflict more casualties on the French than they incurred—but not in the 2:1 ratio that they had
hoped for, despite the fact that the German Army grossly outnumbered the French.
France's losses were appalling, nonetheless. It was the perceived humanity of Field
Marshal Philippe Pétain who insisted that troops be regularly rotated in the face
of such horror that helped seal his reputation. The rotation of forces meant that 70% of France's Army went through "the wringer
of Verdun", as opposed to the 25% of the German forces who saw action there.
Significance
The Battle of Verdun—also known as the 'Mincing Machine of Verdun' or 'Meuse Mill'—became a symbol of French determination,
inspired by the sacrifice of the defenders.
The successes of the fixed fortification system led to the adoption of the Maginot Line
as the preferred method of defense along the Franco-German border during the inter-war years.
See also
Notes
- ^ Alistair Horne, The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 (Viking-Penguin, 1991)
p.1
- ^ Holger Afflerbach: Falkenhayn. Politisches Denken und Handeln im
Kaiserreich (München: Oldenbourg, 1994); "Planning Total War? Falkenhayn and the Battle of Verdun, 1916," in Great War, Total
War: Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914-1918, Roger Chickering and Stig Foerster, eds. (New York: Cambridge,
2000)
References
- Clayton, Anthony. Paths of Glory - The French Army 1914-18., ISBN 0-304-36652-8
- Foley, Robert. German Strategy and the Path to Verdun., ISBN 0-521-84193-3
- Horne, Alistair. The Price of Glory., ISBN 0-14-017041-3
- Keegan, John. The First World War., ISBN 0-375-70045-5
- Martin, William. Verdun 1916. London: Osprey Publishing, 2001. ISBN 1-85532-993-X
- Mosier, John. The Myth of the Great War., ISBN 0-06-008433-2
External links
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