The Battle of Verdun was the longest and most costly battle of the First World War. It would dominate much of the fighting of 1916, forcing France's allies to fight battles that might otherwise not have been fought, or to alter the timing of their offensives to provide indirect aid to the French. By the end of the battle the French and Germans between them had lost close to one million men.
At the end of 1915 Verdun was in a quiet section of the western front. During the fighting in 1914 it had formed the pivot of the French line as it had bent back under the German onslaught. When the front line stabilised, Verdun found itself at the south eastern corner of the great German salient that bulged out toward Paris, while to the south east the Germans held the St. Mihiel salient. The only lines of communication into Verdun from the rest of France ran south west of the city.
The German war plan of 1914 had been designed to reduce the dangers of a two front war. At the outbreak of war, German armies had swept through Belgium and into north east France, with the aim of surrounding the French armies on the Franco-German border, thus forcing France out of the war. Only then would German armies head east to deal with the Russian steamroller. The events of 1914 had negated this plan. The German sweep through France had been stopped at the First Battle of the Marne, while the Russians had mobilised quicker than expected and threatened an invasion of East Prussia. The defeat of this invasion at the battles of Tannenburg and the Masurian Lakes had raised the profile of Field Marshal Hindenburg, the commander in East Prussia. When the German high command gathered to decide what to do in 1915, the easterners won the debate. The German armies in the west would stand on the defensive while the armies in the east would attempt to knock Russia out of the war.
Read Full Article »
