Battle of Verdun
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Battle of Verdun | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Western Front (World War I) | |||||||
 |
|||||||
|
|||||||
| Combatants | |||||||
 France |
 German Empire |
||||||
| Commanders | |||||||
| Philippe Pétain Robert Nivelle |
Erich von Falkenhayn | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| About 30,000 on 21 February 1916 | About 150,000 on 21 February 1916 | ||||||
| Casualties | |||||||
| 378,000; of whom 120,000 dead | 337,000; of whom 100,000 dead | ||||||
| Western Front |
|---|
| Frontiers – Liège – Antwerp – Great Retreat – Race to the Sea – Neuve Chapelle – 2nd Ypres – 2nd Artois – Hill 70 – 3rd Artois – Loos – Verdun – Hulluch – Somme – Arras – Vimy Ridge – 2nd Aisne – Messines – Passchendaele – Cambrai – Lys – 3rd Aisne – Belleau Wood – 2nd Marne – Château-Thierry – Hamel – Hundred Days |
The Battle of Verdun, fought from 21 February to 19 December 1916 around the city of Verdun-sur-Meuse in northeast France, was one of the most important battles in World War I on the Western Front. The battle was fought between the German and French armies.
It resulted in more than a quarter of a million deaths and about half a million wounded. It 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 Somme in Britain.
The battle popularised the phrase "Ils ne passeront pas" ("They shall not pass"), uttered by Robert Nivelle, but often incorrectly attributed to Pétain.
Contents |
[edit] Symbolic value of Verdun
Verdun had great symbolic significance for the French. Into the mists of history, it had played an important role in the defence of the area to its rear due to its strategic location on the Meuse River. Atilla the Hun never succeeded in seizing 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 Paris.
In 1914, Verdun held fast against German attacks, and the fortifications withstood even Big Bertha's artillery attacks. The 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.
[edit] Background
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 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, with terrible casualties being the only result.
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 enough casualties. He planned to attack a position from which the French could not retreat, for both strategic reasons and reasons of national pride, and so impose 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 was looking for a place where the material circumstances favored the Germans. Verdun was isolated on three sides. Communications to the French rear were poor. A German railhead was only twelve miles away while France would resupply by a single road, the Voie Sacrée. In a war where material trumped elan, Falkenhayn expected a favorable Loss Exchange Ratio as the French would cling frantically to a death trap.
Rather than a traditional military victory, Verdun was planning 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. 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 an attrition-centric plan. 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.
[edit] Battle
Verdun was poorly defended because artillery guns 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.
The battle began on February 21, 1916 with a nine-hour artillery bombardment firing 1,000,000 shells by 1,200 guns on a front of 40 km, 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 now 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 defence, 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 centre-piece of France's 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 tonnes of ammunition from the railhead at Bar-le-Duc to Verdun.
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 Petain's guns on the opposite, or west, side of the Meuse valley. When the village of Douaumont was finally captured on March 2, 1916 four German regiments had been virtually destroyed.
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 June 2. 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 June 22, 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. But they were unable to capture Souville, though the fighting around it continued until September 6.
The opening of the Battle of the Somme on July 1, 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 soldiers 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. Fort Douaumont was bombarded with new 400 mm guns (brought up on rails and directed by spotter planes), and captured on October 24. On November 2 the Germans lost Fort Vaux and retreated. A final French offensive beginning on December 11 drove the Germans back to their starting positions.
[edit] 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, however. 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.
[edit] 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 defence along the Franco-German border during the inter-war years.
[edit] See also
- Émile Driant
- French villages destroyed in the First World War which were ruined during the Battle of Verdun, and six of which have not subsequently been rebuilt
- Douaumont ossuary
- Verdun Memorial
- Voie Sacrée
[edit] 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
[edit] External links
- The Battle of Verdun (English-Dutch Site)
- DIE SCHLACHT UM VERDUN - EINE EUROPÄISCHE TRAGÖDIE
- Info from firstworldwar.com
- Verdun book excerpt
- Verdun - A Battle of the Great war.
