![]() According to records from both sides, somewhere around 60 million artillery shells were fired in this area during the battle: about 150 for every square meter of the battlefield. These two opposing notions led to the death of thousands on a daily basis, as the sides went back and forth, sometimes over a few yards of scorched earth or polluted mud. The French had to hold the town at all costs. On the other side, a loss at Verdun would shatter the French national psyche and destroy the army’s morale. Even if ultimate victory could not be achieved, the Germans would be able to “bleed France white” in a war of attrition, perhaps dissolving French public support for continuing the war. German generals believed if they could achieve a “breakthrough” in the Western Front at Verdun, then the road to Paris (and the end of the war in the west) would be open. Strategically, it also lay along the major route to Paris. Verdun, in the heart of the French province of Lorraine, was psychologically important to the French people. The German High Command’s order for an offensive at Verdun in February 1916 seemed based on sound strategic principles. Arguably the most important battle of the Great War, in the end, the battle itself was a draw. ![]() ![]() Estimates are somewhat inconclusive due to the number of missing on both sides, perhaps as many as 250,000 total. Although some of the final numbers are contradictory, most historians agree that the French army lost over 500,000 (including 150,000 killed in action) and that the German army lost over 450,000 (including over 130,000 killed). On, after 10 months of fighting back and forth over a patch of Earth less than 8 square miles (smaller than many major world cities), the Battle of Verdun was over. Marshall Philippe Petain, Commander of the French 2nd Army, Battle of Verdun, 1916 Their expressions seemed frozen by a wisdom of terror they sagged beneath the weight of horrifying memories." "When they came out of the battle, what a pitiful sight they were. How can people begin to know what that one word - Hell - means." "People will read that the front line was Hell. "You eat beside the dead you drink beside the dead, you relieve yourself beside the dead and you sleep beside the dead." ![]() "To die from a bullet seems to be nothing parts of our being remain intact but to be dismembered, torn to pieces, reduced to pulp, this is the fear that flesh cannot support and which is fundamentally the great suffering of the bombardment."įrench Soldier from the Battle of Verdun, 1916 Men are mad!"įrench Soldier’s diary from the Battle of Verdun, ![]() What a massacre! What scenes of horror and carnage! I cannot find words to translate my impressions.
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