By the end of 1915, the Central Powers faced
a dilemma. German and Au stro-Hungarian forces had pushed back the Russian army that summer,
while Bulgaria helped them finally crush Serbia in the fall. But the long-term picture was
still not good, since the Entente had more resou rces and more men. Something had to
be done, but if the Germans attacked, the French trench systems might stop them just
as they stopped the French offensives in 1915. If they waited, the Entente’s strength in
numbers would begin to tell. This was the riddle the Chief of the German General Staff
Erich von Falkenhayn tried to solve by launching the Battle of Verdun in February 1916. It
would become the longest and most iconic battle of the First World War, but ultimately, Germany
would fail. In December 1915, the German High Command
debated where to attack: they could advance in Russia, but the Russians might just retreat
again and keep fighting. They could attack at Salonica, but this front was secondary.
The potentially decisive front was the West, and Falkenhayn chose to strike the French
at Verdun. Verdun was the most fortified sector of the French line, with an extensive network
of forts and supporting works, and formed a dangerous salient. To complicate matters,
Falkenhayn believes that a breakthrough in trench warfare is impossible.
The German battle plan has been long debated by historians. For decades, most accepted
Falkenhayn’s post-war memoirs where he wrote that his intention was to inflict unsustainable
losses on France, to “bleed the French white.” But most historians now argue that the original
plan was more likely for Crown Prince Wilhelm’s 5th Army to take the Meuse Heights dominating
the city, and possibly even the city itself in a short, sharp, operation. According to
this argument, Falkenhayn switched to a strategy of attrition after the initial plan went wrong,
and then lied about it after the war. If the Germans eliminated the Verdun Salient,
it would deal France a major blow, and eliminate any threat to German lines and the town of
Metz. Even if Verdun didn’t fall at first, the Germans atop the heights could rain destruction
on any French forces below – in the words of Falkenhayn and Prussian War Minister Adolf
Wild von Hohenborn, “not even a mouse” could survive.
Beyond that, it’s not clear what Falkenhayn had in mind as a strategic goal.
Historians debate to what extent he and other German leaders expected the French to collapse
or negotiate, after giving up Verdun or sustaining heavy losses in counterattacks. Partly, this
expectation was based on many German leaders’ ideas of the French national character as
hysterical or emotional. It’s also possible that Verdun was meant to be the first phase
in a larger offensive that would be planned as the first attack was underway.
In early 1916, Crown Prince Rupprecht didn’t understand how a limited offensive could win
the war: “[Falkenhayn isn’t clear] what he actually wants, and he is waiting for a
stroke of good luck, which would bring an advantageous solution. He wanted the decision
in spring, but explained that a breakthrough was impossible […] how else can we force
a shift from trench warfare to mobile warfare?” (Afflerbach 194)
5th Army Chief of Staff General Konstantin Schmidt von Knobelsdorf and other officers
wanted to attack on both banks of the river, since only attacking in the east would expose
advancing troops to flanking fire, but Falkenhayn decided to attack on the east bank only – there
is another historical debate about possible disagreements between 5th Army and the General
Staff. Operation Judgment was to begin February 12, 1916, using as little infantry as possible
to save reserves, but supported by overwhelming artillery firepower.
French General Headquarters, meanwhile, had decided that Verdun’s forts weren’t critically
important as a siege defence. Belgian, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian forts had not done well
earlier in the war, so Commander in Chief Joseph Joffre removed many of the Verdun Fortified
Region’s artillery and garrisons for use elsewhere – even from important forts like
Douamont and Vaux. Colonel Emile Driant, a local battalion commander and politician,
argued in vain for better defences. In purely military terms, French High Command felt Verdun
didn’t have to be held at all costs, or even at all. What it could do was anchor the
line as long as it made operational sense. So Germany planned to attack towards Verdun
with the goal of removing the salient, but without a clear long-term strategic goal.
It seemed the French might not take the bait, but that would change once the battle began. In January 1916, the German air force aggressively
patrolled the skies above Verdun with 270 aircraft, to prevent the 70 available French
aircraft from conducting reconnaissance. The Germans brought up 1250 guns, giving them
a 2 to 1 superiority to pound French positions and suppress French batteries with gas shells.
German guns would fire 2 million shells in the first week alone. In the area of attack,
the French had about 30,000 men from weak units to oppose the 60,000 Germans in the
first waves. Then, winter weather delayed the offensive,
and several Alsatian deserters revealed the coming attack – allowing the French a few
days to prepare. Finally, on February 21, German troops stormed French positions and
Operation Judgment began. At first they advanced cautiously, trying to infiltrate French lines
and avoid strongpoints in an early use of stormtrooper tactics. Colonel Driant’s battalion
put up a determined defence of the Bois des Caures, which delayed the Germans, but on
the 22nd the wood fell and Driant was killed. Falkenhayn was optimistic: “Sehen Sie, mit
dem Angriff habe ich mal wieder das Richtige getroffen - See, with the attack I was right
again.“ (Afflerbach 199) Then on February 25, German patrols reached
Fort Douamont, the lynchpin of the French defences but nearly undefended due to a French
command and control mistake. The few dozen French gunners present surrendered without
a fight. German newspapers trumpet its capture as a great victory, though several German
officers argued for decades over who actually accepted the surrender.
By February 28, the Germans had advanced up to 8km but ran into trouble. Joffre now decided
Verdun must be held, and he put General Henri-Philippe Petain’s 2nd Army in charge of the defence.
The French rushed in reinforcements, and stopped the Germans in their tracks. One of the French
soldiers moving up to the front was doctor Louis Maufrais, who witnesses the evacuation
of local civilians: “In front of us a long convoy of refugees in carts arrives. It’s
always the same misery: one or two horses in the traces, the cows tied at the back,
the dog between the wheels. In the cart, suitcases, and on top of them, sacks, oats, hay, […] and
the elderly, the kids, and a tarp covering it all.” (Maufrais 195)
Most historians think that if Falkenhayn had allotted more infantry divisions to this initial
offensive, the Germans could have completely taken the heights on the east bank – but
now the Germans didn’t have the numbers and the French did. Falkenhayn himself began
to have doubts, according to Wild von Hohenborn: “Falkenhayn is very nervous because of the
impasse and heavy losses.” (Afflerbach 201) Those doubts are not evident to Doctor Maufrais,
who experienced the power of a German heavy shell hitting his underground first aid post:
“The shock was terrifying. Those who, like me, were sitting, were lifted out of their
seats, and those who were standing collapsed. […] I felt a violent blow to my stomach
and head. The lights all went out […] The door resonated like a struck gong, and, underneath,
was engulfed by a cloud of dust and burnt gas that seared our throat and nostrils. No
one breathed a word. We heard the big chunks of earth raining down on the shelter [above
us], and then after a long minute, the noise slackened.” (Maufrais 209) So after dramatic German gains in the first
days, they failed to take the eastern heights, and found themselves in the very trap 5th
Army had feared. The Germans now held an untenable line – they
didn’t command all the high ground in the east, and hadn’t attacked in the west – so
French artillery on the western heights could rain down devastating fire on the exposed
German positions across the river. So, the Germans attack on the west bank on March 6.
The French though, stop them again, this time on two hills that would become infamous for
brutal fighting and horrendous conditions: Hill 304 and Mort Homme, Dead Man’s Hill.
The shelling is so intense that by the end of the battle, Mort Homme is 20 metres lower
than before. The French High Command decision to hold Verdun
was exactly what Falkenhayn later said he had wanted – but it cost him dearly. Petain
quickly established a defence-in-depth and improved his desperate logistical situation.
Thousands of trucks snaked along the road from Bar-le-Duc that became known as la Voie
Sacree, a lifeline that required constant maintenance by army engineers. This was one
of the first instances of mass supply by motor vehicles and a foreshadowing of the motorized
Allied armies of 1918. The French also built an extra railway line to supply the front,
partly negating the Germans’ earlier advantage of a much closer railhead.
Petain also introduced the Noria rotation system, which brought units out of the line
before they could be completely destroyed. This meant that about ¾ of the army saw action
at Verdun, including future presidents Charles de Gaulle, Pierre Lebrun, and René Coty.
The Ger man 5th Army, on the other hand, often kept units in the line until they were totally
exhausted, with predictable effects on morale. The Noria system was part of the reason why
the battle became a propaganda symbol. When it seemed like Verdun might be lost in the
first few days, French papers downplayed its importance, but once the line held, the media
equated its defence with the national will to resist. Petain’s famous order of the
day, “Courage, we will get them” and General Robert Nivelle’s “Ils ne passeront pas
– They shall not pass” became morale-boosting slogans on the home front.
German propaganda found itself in a difficult position as the battle wore on, since the
news of a great victory in the early days raised expectations. Now, German papers like
the Kriegsecho focused on enemy losses: “Our attack is progressing, with difficulty
but irresistibly; Verdun is an immense furnace where the best of France’s strength is burning.”
(Krumeich 28) The paper went on to say the battle was like
a Moloch eating France’s children. For the men in the trenches, conditions were
unimaginable, as hundreds of guns pulverize the relatively small battlefield. The wet,
winter mud was turned into a soup, and trenches collapsed – the front line was often just
whatever shell holes the men can find. This swamp was also strewn with tens of thousands
of corpses. French soldier Hervé Lambert wrote home:
“A couple of lines from the trenches and mass graves where we are. […] from my squad,
there are still 4 of us, out of 9. […] As to the view I have in front of me, it’s
overwhelming. Corpses are touching one another, piled up on top of one another, with a smell
of decomposing bodies that sticks in your throat. It’s horrific with craters so large
you could put a tram in them. I won’t say any more.” (Lyons 81)
Medical services hardly functioned, and wounded often had to fend for themselves. Drinkable
water was in short supply, causing soldiers to take deadly risks:
“We had to walk 1000m to fort [douamont from a ravine]. It was raining and mud was
everywhere. […] One passed a water hole, from which water was trickling. This corner
was where earlier the village of Douamont had been. But before you got to the [water],
you had to clamber over dozens of corpses. The French knew about the water source and
shelled it regularly. There lay infantrymen, pioneers, all in piles on top of each other.
Every one of them wanted water but got none.” (Osburg 21) So the French managed to stop a second German
attack, which led French commanders to conclude the German offensive was over as little more
could be gained by attacking again. But the Germans weren’t done yet. In April and May, the fighting raged back
and forth, but the lines didn’t move much. More and more units on both sides were sent
into the inferno, and losses mounted. On May 8, munitions caught fire and exploded inside
Fort Douamont, killing nearly 700 Germans in an instant. The Germans did inch the lines
forward in spite of French counterattacks, and managed to s urround the Fort de Vaux
in early June. The French garrison was completely cut off for nearly a week. Fort Commander
Sylvain Reynal later recalled the suffering of his men:
“Men were overcome with vomiting, for so wretched were they that they had reached the
point of drinking their own urine. Some lost consciousness. In the main gallery, a man
was licking a small wet streak on the wall.” (Hart 205)
Reynal surrendered the fort on June 7 – 101 days after the Germans had planned to take
it. A major German attack on June 23 made some progress and captured the ruins of the
village of Fleury with the help of phosgene gas shells.
The battle had raged for months, and the Germans had finally wrestled Mort Homme and Hill 304
from the French, but still hadn’t taken the eastern heights – a far cry from the
initial plan for a swift attack. In early April, Falkenhayn even floated the idea of
breaking off the attack: “Certainly it will then be said we had not
won the battle of Verdun. But that is being said even now and we can and must accept that.
If we win the battle, our chances to end the war very much increase. If we do not win the
battle […] our final victory will be delayed but not impinged if we decide not to uselessly
bite our teeth out at Verdun.” Afflerbach 203.
On May 8, he even admitted to the Kaiser that the battle had reached an impasse. Why then,
since the Germans had clearly lost several teeth already, did Falkenhayn persist?
5th Army command, especially Schmidt von Knobelsdorf, reasoned they could still prevail and avoid
the embarrassment of withdrawing. Falkenhayn agreed, partly as a result of wishful thinking
and faulty intelligence. German reports wildly overestimated French losses, putting them
at 525,000 or even 800,000 killed and wounded to 225,000 German by mid-summer. (Afflerbach
204) The Germans misunderstood the French rotation system, and thought that each new
division they saw meant the one it had replaced had been decimated. Falkenhayn was so confident
after the gains of late May and June that he predicted the war would be over by the
end of the coming winter – he even lied to Chancellor Bettman Hollweg about German
casualties. In reality, the French had only lost about 10% more men than the Germans.
But German leaders had begun to lose faith in the Chief of the General Staff. General
Max von Gallwitz sarcastically remarked that at this rate they’d reach Verdun by 1920.
Admiral von Müller wrote of the growing doubts in his diary:
“Great unhappiness with the Kaiser, who doesn’t understand the gravity of the situation,
and with Falkenhayn, who thinks ‘everything is normal’ at Verdun.” Afflerbach 205
Falkenhayn tried one last offensive in July, against the last French strongholds on the
eastern heights, but it failed. Berlin removed him in August and replaced him with Paul von
Hindenburg, who declared an end to offensive operations at Verdun. So after months of grinding death and the
French still holding on to the heights, the Germans gave up at Verdun. But for the French,
the battle wasn’t over. The French High Command had also made changes.
Joffre replaced Petain with artillery General Robert Nivelle in May. By late June, Joffre
correctly concluded that German offensive strength at Verdun was spent, and shifted
forces north to the coming offensive on the Somme. For more than three months, grinding
tactical fighting continued, pushing men like French soldier Marc Boasson beyond their limits:
“This is not heroism. This is ignominy. What kind of a nation will they make of us
tomorrow, these exhausted creatures, emptied of blood, emptied of thought, crushed by superhuman
fatigue?” (Horne 340) Boasson was later killed. German soldiers
had it no better, like German-Danish soldier Jeppesen, whose mind played tricks on him
at night: “Suddenly I saw a monster right in front
of me […] it was standing and beckoning me to it […] I could feel the hairs standing
up under my steel helmet […]. I drew my revolver, flipped the safety off, and crawled
forward. But when I got to the ‘monster,’ it turned out be one of the small ponies used
to pull the carts. It had died here during an explosion, and it had been raised on its
rear. Now all the flesh was peeled from it, and the moonlight shone through the skeleton.”
(Eberholst 70) Finally, the French were ready to launch a
massive counterattack. Heavy rain slowed preparations, but they brought up 650 guns to smash a limited
section of German line with a quarter of a million shells. They also used innovative
tactics, faking the start of the attack to get German batteries to reveal their positions
and then hitting them with counter-battery fire – putting over 40% of German batteries
completely out of action. The new rolling barrage, creeping just in front of the advancing
infantry, kicked off the attack on October 23. French infantry showed much improved small
unit tactics, and were better armed with specialized close combat teams, and more light machine
guns. And the enemy they faced was weak. German
troops were miserable, wet, cold, and exhausted from their long stays at the front. French
infantry broke deep into German lines, and thousands surrendered. French colonial troops
recaptured Fleury and Fort Douamont on October 24, after the German garrison left when 400mm
super-heavy shells smashed in the roof and started a fire. The French then took the abandoned
Fort de Vaux on November 3. The attackers overran German William Hermanns’ unit at
night, and as he ran from them he fell into a large crater:
“Eight or ten huge men rose before me, one with a rifle pointed at my head. I was still
in a half-kneeling position. I cried ‘Pardon, je suis votre prisonnier!’ Somebody drew
back the hand of the man with the gun […] I stammered in French, ‘I don’t hate you.
I don’t hate anyone.’ And then I collapsed.” (Hart 209)
In a few days, the French captured much of what the Germans had taken months to conquer.
In December, the French launched a final offensive and pushed back the front line 3 more kilometres,
to a safer distance from the city. The Germans were just as incapable of stopping it as they
were in October, although Generals Nivelle and Charles Mangin developed a reputation
for wasting French lives. Verdun was now firmly out of reach for the Germans – if they intended
to take it in the first place. Hindenburg drew a pessimistic conclusion at
the end of the year: “On this occasion the enemy hoisted us with
our own petard. We could only hope that in the coming year he would not repeat the experiment
on a greater scale and with equal success.” (Horne 317) The longest battle of the First World War,
the Blutpumpe of Verdun, was over. It had started with a swift German advance and French
commanders choosing, as Falkenhayn later said he wanted, to defend the city at all costs.
Why then, did the German army fail? One problem was the lack of a clear strategic
goal. As much debate as there has been about when Falkenhayn did or did not commit to the
Bleeding France White concept, there is no consensus that he had a clear idea of what
this might actually achieve in practice – and his secretive communication style left others
in the dark. He seems to have hoped France would collapse if he applied enough pressure.
While French losses were higher in the early phases of the battle, the final casualty count
was 377,000 killed and wounded for the French, and 335,000 for the Germans. Terrible losses,
but not enough to knock France out of the war.
The Germans also overestimated their own abilities, especially the supposed superiority of their
troops compared to the French, and underestimated French resolve, skill, and strength. As the
initial plan failed and the battle dragged on, the German high command proved all too
willing to believe unrealistic casualty estimates of French losses, since it confirmed their
bias that they were winning the battle of attrition.
Operationally, the chances of taking the heights quickly disappeared within the first week,
since Falkenhayn didn`t have enough infantry to push through French reinforcements. Falkenhayn
himself also admitted after the war that not attacking on the west bank from the start
was a mistake. Potential differences between the General Staff and 5th Army, if they existed,
would not have helped matters. Crown Prince Rupprecht even pronounced the battle lost
on March 20: “after a lovely early success…everything bogged down and the operation so much as failed.”
(Afflerbach 203) Verdun can be considered, from February to
August, to have been a tactical success for Germany, and from then to December a tactical
success for France. But it was a strategic German defeat and, arguably, a French defensive
victory. France didn’t collapse, and though weakened, still attacked on the Somme alongside
the British and held the majority of the line on the Western Front. The German army wasted
valuable reserves and fought a costly 10-month battle its leadership planned to avoid. Falkenhayn
hadn’t consulted the Austro-Hungarians in advance, so they didn’t undertake any supporting
attacks, and eventually needed help to stop the Brusilov Offensive. At the end of 1916,
Germany’s strategic position was worse than it was before Verdun. Verdun also left a lasting legacy after the
war. It came to represent the worst of trench warfare and the suffering of the soldiers
in the minds of millions – and for many, the cruel futility of the First World War.
French Lieutenant de Mazonod worried about the future: “This war has marked us for
generations. It has left its imprint upon our souls. All those inflamed nights of Verdun
we shall rediscover one day in the eyes of our children.” (Horne 340)
For many others in France, it became a symbol of the unbreakable national will to resist
German invasion, to not let them pass. The battlefield is now littered with monuments,
memorials, and cemeteries, and literature and film have turned to Verdun time and again
in the past century. After World War Two, it even became a place of reconciliation between
France and Germany. In December 1916 though, all that was in the
distant future. Nivelle’s success at Verdun caused Paris to make him the new Commander-in-Chief.
He was convinced he had solved the riddle of trench warfare, and determined to win the
war in spring 1917. The battle of Verdun is often viewed as the
iconic battle of the First World War which exemplifies the suffering of men in industrialized
warfare. The war itself caused historic social changes and dramatically altered the map of
Europe after it was over. Fans of altern ate history often like to ponder how it could
have ended differently or even been avoided in the first place. And grand strategy games
are a popular way to play out your own version of world history. Gilded Destiny is a new
and upcoming grand strategy game that wants to innovate the genre. Let’s say you find
yourself in a comparable situation like the Battle of Verdun or maybe the Crimean War
or Franco-Prussian War; one that requires military prowess, sure, but the scale of warfare
will also affect your economy and can even cause social problems down the line. In Gilded
Destiny, warfare is not just a progress bar, you are free to intervene and issue commands
directly to units. Terrain and logistics will affect them, while large-scale issues such
as wounded veterans and trade disruption will challenge you with the social as well as the
tactical impacts of warfare. Can you keep your economy running, your supply chains intact?
Can you keep the various groups of your society under control as new ideologies rise and rapid
transformation leaves some of them behind? If you want to put yourself into the shoes
of a leader during the Industrial Revolution on a massive 1.6 million tile map, check out
Gilded Destiny. Right now, their Kickstarter campaign is running which gives you access
to the game's upcoming Alpha and offers the base game at a discounted price. For your
support, you can also get a few goodies like the Greater Austria German Unification Medal
– which should give every connoisseur of the German War of 1866 a good chuckle. You
can also help the developers by wish listing the game on Steam. We want to thank Aquila
Interactive for sponsoring this video. As usual you can find all the sources for
this episode in the video description. If you are watching this video on Patreon or
Nebula, thank you so much for the support. Check out our video on the Brusilov Offensive
for more on the Eastern Front`s biggest battle of 1916. I am Jesse Alexander, and this is
a production of Real Time History, the only history channel that will not let them pass.
