In all, the Germans had gained a few miles of shattered terrain overflowing with rotting corpses. Indeed, the front was pretty much where it had been in February. By the time the last French effort to regain lost ground was halted on December 17, Paris could proudly say they had kept the enemy out of Verdun. Both armies kept at it all through the year. The wrestling match Germany sought turned into a nightmare. Hills and forts changed hands over and over again, with thousands of men falling on both sides in each fight, without changing anything of consequence strategically. The fight around Verdun became mutually attritional. As a result, virtually every division in the French army fought at Verdun at some point in 1916.Įverything thereby went wrong for Falkenhayn. The fury of French counterattacks startled the Germans, and by the spring French generals had established a rotational system, moving units into the Verdun meat-grinder then getting them out before they completely collapsed. Initial German advances were met with dogged resistance, and Verdun quickly became a rallying cry for all France: On ne passe pas-They shall not pass-was the national watchword that year. That part of Falkenhayn’s vision worked as predicted-at least at first. Falkenhayn correctly assessed that France would fight doggedly for Verdun, an ancient fortress-city, thereby allowing the Germans to operate a meat-grinder that would run until the enemy ran out of men. On the orders of Erich von Falkenhayn, Berlin’s top general, German forces initiated the Verdun offensive not to gain ground, not to break through, but simply to bleed France white. German generals accepted this horrific logic first, realizing that the war was now about attrition, not finesse. Victory would come to the army that endured the brutal struggle the longest. A year into the war, it was evident to any wise observer that the conflict had become a stalemate. About half of all casualties at Verdun were killed.Throughout 1915, efforts by the French and British-especially the former, who had lost so much of their territory to the invader in the opening months of the Great War-to regain ground ended in agony, with offensives petering out against German fire and entrenchments. It is estimated that the German Army suffered 434,000 casualties. The French Army lost about 550,000 men at Verdun. Verdun, the longest battle of the First World War, ended on the 18th December. Over the next six weeks the French infantry gained another 2km at Verdun. The French now counter-attacked and General Charles Mangin became a national hero when the forts at Douaumont and Vaux were recaptured by 2nd November, 1916. However, the scale of the German attacks were reduced by the need to transfer troops to defend their front-line at the Somme. The French held this strategic point until it was finally secured by the Germans on 29th May, and Fort Vaux fell on 7th June, after a long siege.įurther attacks continued throughout the summer and early autumn. The Germans advanced 3km before they were stopped in front of the area around Mort Homme Hill. On the 6th March, the German Fifth Army launched a new attack at Verdun. The German advance was brought to a halt at the end of February.
Of the 330 infantry regiments of the French Army, 259 eventually fought at Verdun. He arranged for every spare French soldier to this part of the Western Front.
He gave orders that no more withdrawals would take place. On 24th February, General Henri-Philippe Petain was appointed commander of the Verdun sector. By 24th February the French had moved back to the third line and were only 8km from Verdun. The following day the French was forced to retreat to their second line of trenches. A million troops, led by Crown Prince Wilhelm, faced only about 200,000 French defenders. The German attack on Verdun started on 21st February 1916. Although he admitted he would be unable to break through at these point on the Western Front, he argued that in defending Verdun, the Germans would "bleed the French army white". In December 1915, General Erich von Falkenhayn, Chief of Staff of the German Army, decided to attack Verdun. During the First World War Verdun was a fortified French garrison town on the River Meuse 200km east of Paris.
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