1. The Germans designed Verdun to be a battle of attrition.
World War I battles often started with tactical objectives and devolved into bloody stalemates, but most historians believe that Verdun was intended to be a “meat grinder” from the very beginning. In late-1915, German General Erich von Falkenhayn wrote a memorandum to Kaiser Wilhelm II in which he argued that the war would only be won by inflicting mass casualties on the French army and sapping its will to fight, which would then force the British to sue for peace. Rather than outmaneuvering them or breaking through their lines, Falkenhayn planned to lure the French into a trap that would force them to throw troops into a battle of attrition where the conditions favored the Germans. “If they do so,” he wrote in his memo, “the forces of France will bleed to death.” Falkenhayn called his ruthless scheme Operation Gericht—a term loosely translated as “judgment” or “place of execution.”
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