Verdun did do enormous damage to the French forces.
The French armies had largely been humiliated and on the backfoot until Verdun and their victories there, no matter how small or costly, symbolised their devotion to resisting German aggression. It also became a symbol of French resistance. Flamethrowers were used for the first time as was phosgene gas, the artillery barrages were continuous and absolutely massive and the casualty rates are among the worst suffered. Even by WW1 standards, the horror that the men faced at Verdun was extreme. That said, by the end of the German offensive the French had only a single fresh brigade in reserve so had the hostilities continued, who knows what would have happened.Īs to why the battle was such a significant event, I would argue that it is because it was so damned horrific. The continued back and forth continued until December of 1916 when hostilities in the sector finally subsided thanks in part to the Battle of the Somme which required Germany to divert forces to repelling the British offensive. While the French rotated their units out of the lines and replaced them with fresh ones, the German units were kept in the line and suffered continuously. This casualty rate was particularly troubling for the Germans. The offensive began in February, 1916 and by May, more then 200,000 German and French soldiers had become casualties.
#Battle of verdun summary series#
What eventuated was a series of attacks and counter-attacks that ultimately resulted in very little being achieved but at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. Petain also organised a continuous line of supply to keep his artillery well stocked with shells and ammunition for his infantry. Coordinating the artillery, Petain brought heavy shelling down on the attacking German forces, doing exactly what Falkenhayn had planned to do to the French. However, a French officer named Phillipe Petain was given command of the situation and swiftly turned things around. The French defenders in the region panicked when news of this spread and it seemed as though a retreat was imminent. The greatest of Verdun's defensive fortresses, Douaumont, was captured by a single German sergeant who bluffed the few defenders into surrendering. The initial stages of the battle went well, German artillery saturated the forward lines and French positions were overrun. Falkenhayn hoped to recreate the devastation wrought on the French forces that the German artillery had inflicted during a series of battles in the Champagne region the year before. Falkenhayn, the commanding German officer, hoped to capture a number of French positions, forcing the French to counter attack to retake them, leaving them open to bombardment from German artillery positions.
The battle lowered into a matter of prestige for the two nations, and started being fought for the sake of fighting and honor, according to German command Paul Von Hindenburg. From a strategic point of view, there can be no justification for these terrible losses.
The battlefield was not even a square ten kilometres. The battle, which lasted from 21 February 1916 until 19 December 1916, caused over an estimated 700,000 casualties (dead, wounded and missing). There were many attacks and counterattacks one small village changed hands 16 times. Never before or since has there been such a long battle, involving so many men, fought on such a tiny piece of land. The Battle of Verdun is considered the biggest and longest in world history. They also speak about the Hell of Verdun or the Blood pump. Never before was industrialisation so visible in war.
Both sides lost about 337,000 soldiers each. It ended on December 18 of that year but the front line had not changed very much. It started when the German Fifth Army attacked French positions, near Verdun, on February 21, 1916. The Battle of Verdun was a battle of the First World War.
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