Battle+of+Verdun+Research

=World War I - The Battle of Verdun - Research Page= Script and Audio Page -The **Battle of Verdun** was one of the most important battles in World War I on the Western Front. It was fought between the German and the Fench armies from February 21, 1916 to December 18, 1916 around the city of Verdun-sur-Meuse in northeast France. To this day, it remains one of the longest battles in history, spanning roughly 10 months. -140,000 German troops started the attack. They were supported by 1,200 artillery guns that targeted 2,500,000 shells at the Verdun region. 1,300 ammunition trains were needed to supply these guns. The Germans also had complete air supremacy with 168 planes located in the area - the largest concentration of planes in history up to that point. To start with, the French only had 30,000 troops to oppose the Germans. On the day the battle started, February 21st, 1000 German artillery guns fired on a six mile line along the French front. One French soldier wrote about the artillery bombardment.

The Battle of Verdun popularised the phrase //"Ils ne passeront pas" ("They shall not pass"//) in France, uttered by Robert Nivelle, but often incorrectly attributed to Henri Philippe Pétain.
 * Facts**
 * between the German and French armies from 21 February to 18 December 1916 around the city of Verdun-sur-Meuse in northeast France
 * It remains one of the longest battles in history, spanning roughly 10 months.
 * More than a quarter million deaths and approx. 1/2 a million wounded.


 * History of Verdun**
 * Strategic location on the Meuse River played an important role
 * in 843 the town was made part of the Holy Roman Empire due to the Treaty of Verdun
 * The Peace of Munster in 1648 awarded Verdun to France.

The battle began on 21 February 1916 with a nine-hour artillery bombardment firing over 1,000,000 shells by 1,200 guns on a front of 40 kilometres (25 m), followed by an attack by three army corps (the 3rd, 7th, and 18th). The Germans used flamethrowers for the first time to clear the French trenches. By 23 February the Germans had advanced three miles capturing the Bois des Caures after two French battalions led by Colonel Émile Driant had held them up for two days, and pushed the French defenders back to Samogneux, Beaumont, and Ornes. Poor communications meant that only then did the French command realize the seriousness of the attack.
 * Battle**

On 25 February the German 24th (Brandenburg) Infantry Regiment captured a centrepiece of the French fortifications, Fort Douaumont.

Background
The German Chief of Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, believed that although a breakthrough might no longer be possible, nonetheless the French could be defeated if they suffered enough casualties. He therefore planned to attack a position from which the French could not retreat, for both strategic reasons and reasons of national pride, and so impose a ruinous battle of attrition on the French armies. The town of Verdun-sur-Meuse was chosen for this 'bleeding white' of the French: the town, surrounded by a ring of forts, was an important stronghold that projected into the German lines and guarded the direct route to Paris. Rather than a traditional military victory, Verdun was planned as a vehicle for destroying the French army.

The Battle of Verdun
Verdun was poorly defended because artillery guns had been removed from the local fortifications, but good intelligence and a delay in the German attack due to bad weather gave the French time to rush two divisions to the area.

On 24 February the French defenders of 30th Corps fell back again from their second line of defence, but were saved from disaster by the appearance of the 20th Corps under General Balfourier. Intended as relief, the new arrivals were thrown into combat immediately. On 25 February the German 24th (Brandenburg) Infantry Regiment captured a centre-piece of France's fortifications-Fort Douaumont.

The chief of staff of the French Army, General de Castelnau, appointed General Philippe Pétain commander of the Verdun area and ordered the French Second Army to the battle sector. The German attack was slowed down at the village of Douaumont by the tenacious defense of the French 33rd Infantry Regiment and heavy snowfall. This gave the French time to bring up 90,000 men and 23,000 tonnes of ammunition from the railhead at Bar-le-Duc to Verdun.

As in so many other offensives on the Western Front, by advancing the German troops had lost effective artillery cover. With the battlefield turned into a sea of mud through continual shelling it was very hard to move guns forward. The advance also brought the Germans into range of French artillery on the west bank of the Meuse. Each new advance thus became costlier than the previous one as the attacking German Fifth Army units, often attacking in massed crowds southward down the east bank, were cut down ruthlessly from their flank by Petain's guns on the opposite, or west, side of the Meuse valley. When the village of Douaumont was finally captured on 2 March 1916 four German regiments had been virtually destroyed.

Unable to make any further progress against Verdun frontally, the Germans turned to the flanks, attacking the hill of Le Mort Homme on 6 March and Fort Vaux on 8 March. In three months of savage fighting the Germans captured the villages of Cumières and Chattancourt to the west of Verdun, and Fort Vaux to the east surrendered on 7 June. The losses were terrible on both sides. Pétain attempted to spare his troops by remaining on the defensive, but he was relieved on 1 May and replaced with the more attack-minded General Robert Nivelle.

The Germans' next objective was Fort Souville. On 22 June 1916 they shelled the French defences with the poison gas diphosgene, and attacked the next day with 60,000 men, taking the battery of Thiaumont and the village of Fleury. But they were unable to capture Souville, though the fighting around it continued until 6 September.

The opening of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916 forced the Germans to withdraw some of their artillery from Verdun to counter the combined Anglo-French offensive to the north.

The French launched a counter-offensive on 21 October 1916. Fort Douaumont was bombarded with new 400 mm guns (brought up on rails and directed by spotter planes), and captured on 24 October. On 2 November the Germans lost Fort Vaux and retreated. A final French offensive beginning on 11 December drove the Germans back to their starting positions.

Casualties
In the mathematics of the war, it was crucial that the smaller and more slowly increasing populations of the Central Powers inflict many more casualties on their adversaries than they themselves suffered. At Verdun, Germany did inflict more casualties on the French than they incurred-but not in the 2:1 ratio that they had hoped for, despite the fact that the German army grossly outnumbered the French troops.

France's losses were appalling, however. It was the perceived humanity of Field Marshal Philippe Pétain who insisted that troops be regularly rotated in the face of such horror that helped seal his reputation. The rotation of forces meant that 70% of France's army went through 'the wringer of Verdun', as opposed to the 25% of the German forces who saw action there.

Significance
The battle of Verdun also known as the 'Mincing Machine of Verdun' became a symbol of French determination, inspired by the sacrifice of the defenders.

The apparent successes of the fixed fortification system led to the adoption of the Maginot Line as the preferred method of defence along the Franco-German border during the inter-war years.

Battle of Verdun. In //wikipedia// [Web]. Retrieved 11/12/2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_verdun
 * __Source__**

- German** = = The designer of the German plan of attack was General Erich von, the German commander in chief, who had succeeded Von Moltke in 1914, who's campaign in Belgium and in France had failed completely On December 24, 1915 the decision was made to attack Verdun. The code name for this action was Operation Judgement (in German Judgement means: tribunal, verdict and execution as well). The attack was planned to take place on 12 February 1916. -French Verdun was a garrison-town situated in the Region Fortifée de Verdun (RFV) at the river Muese. It was surrounded by a double circle (largest diameter 50-km) of 20 big forts and 40 medium seized fortifications in a almost impenetrable hilly country, covered with woods, criss-crossed with deep clefts and gorges where the Meuse flows right through.
 * __Phase 1__

__Phase 2__ the original attack on Verdun was planned for Sat. Feb. 12 but due to the weather the attack was cancelled. Monday morning 21 February 7.15 The heaviest bombing that had thus far ever taken place in a war starts over the entire Verdun front on the left and right side of the river Meuse and had a frontal latitude of 40 kilometers. Verdun itself is also heavily bombarded; the entire civilian population is evacuated. The bombardment is the most horrible thus far; a terrible inferno. The muzzling fire from the German guns is one uninterrupted sea of fire. Black grenades fall with a frequency of 40 a minute.

__Source__ Not Available, The battle of verdun 1916 - The greatest battle ever. Retrieved November 13, 2007, Web site: http://www.wereldoorlog1418.nl/battleverdun/index.htm#battle01

 On the 28th of June 1914 the Austrian Crown Prince Franz-Ferdinand and his wife were killed in Sarajevo. The killer was a Serbian separatist, Gavrilo Princip.The murder of Franz-Ferdinand caused Austria- Hungaria to impose an ultimatum to Serbia. The ultimatum was far too heavy, the demands unrealistic. However, Serbia tried to comply with the Ausrian- Hungarian demands. Serbia asked Austria to make a case of the matter to the International Court of Arbitrage in 's Gravenhage, the Netherlands. As a reaction to the Serbian question, Austria- Hungaria declared war on Serbia on the 28th of July. Russia was allied with Serbia, so Russia started to mobilize its army. The complex alliances and hazily-interpreted mutual agreements between countries were set in motion. On one side the 'centrals' (Germany, Austia- Hungary,Turkey,Bulgaria) and on the other side the 'allied' forces. (The British Empire, France, Russia, Belgium, Italy, Serbia and Montenegro) In no time the 2 opposing alliances were at war. Due to nationalistic and patriotic feelings and diplomatic failure the greatest war the world had ever seen was about to start.
 * The eve of the battle of Verdun.**

__**Source**__ P.T. (2001). The eve of the battle of verdun. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from The Battle of Verdun Web site: http://www.xs4all.nl/~verdun/

The German attack on Verdun started on 21st February 1916. A million troops, led by Crown Prince Wilhelm faced only about 200,000 French defenders. The following day the French was forced to retreat to their second line of trenches. By 24th February the French had moved back to the third line and were only 8km from Verdun.

On 24th February, General [|Henri-Philippe Petain] was appointed commander of the Verdun sector. He gave orders that no more withdrawals would take place. He arranged for every spare French soldier to this part of the Western Front. Of the 330 infantry regiments of the French Army, 259 eventually fought at Verdun.

The German advance was brought to a halt at the end of February. On the 6th March, the German Fifth Army launched a new attack at Verdun. The Germans advanced 3km before they were stopped in front of the area around Mort Homme Hill. 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.

Further attacks continued throughout the summer and early autumn. 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 now counter-attacked and General [|Charles Mangin] became a national hero when the forts at Douaumont and Vaux were recaptured by 2nd November, 1916. Over the next six weeks the French infantry gained another 2km at Verdun.

Verdun, the longest battle of the First World War ended on the 18th December. The French Army lost about 550,000 men at Verdun. It is estimated that the German Army suffered 434,000 casualties. About half of all casualties at Verdun were killed. __**Source**__ Simkin, J. (September 1997). Important battles: Verdun. Retrieved November 13, 2007, from Spartacus Educational Web site: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWverdun.htm

The German siege of Verdun and its ring of forts, which comprised the longest battle of the First World War, has its roots in a letter sent by the German Chief of Staff, [|Erich von Falkenhayn], to the Kaiser, [|Wilhelm II], on Christmas Day 1915. In his letter to the Kaiser, Falkenhayn argued that the key to winning the war lay not on the Eastern Front, against Russia – whom he believed was on the point of revolution and subsequent withdrawal from the war – but on the Western Front. He reasoned that if France could be defeated in a major set-piece battle Britain would in all likelihood seek terms with Germany, or else be defeated in turn. In his letter to Wilhelm Falkenhayn believed that Britain formed the foundation of the Allied effort ranged against Germany and that she must be removed from the war. To that end he recommended implementation of a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant shipping, a policy directed squarely at starving Britain. This combined with a knock-out block to France would, he believed, bring about a successful conclusion to hostilities. __**Source**__ Duffey, M. (2000). Battles: The battle of verdun, 1916. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from First World War Web site: http://www.firstworldwar.com/battles/verdun.htm

In all, the Germans moved about 1,200 artillery pieces up to Verdun, over half of them heavy caliber, and equipped them with two and a half million shells, enough for six days of bombardment in a battle they still hoped would quickly prove decisive. Men were deployed on the grand scale as well. By the early weeks of February, the Crown Prince had at his disposal a total of some 17 divisions, or perhaps 300,000 men. They included élite units such as General von Lochow’s 3rd Corps, which had forced the British back from Mons and was in 1916 fresh from success against the Serbs. Rather than digging the jumping-off trenches which so easily betrayed the imminence of an attack to the enemy, these and the other infantry units destined for the front line were concealed in Stollen, underground barracks specially dug deep in the woods. The largest could hold more than 1,000 men, and some lay less than a kilometer away from the French front they would soon be attacking.

The strategic importance of its position had made Verdun a fortress and garrison for many centuries, but the decision to fortify the surrounding hills was of much more recent date. It arose from the disasters of the Franco-Prussian War, which had brought the German border closer to Paris and left Metz, traditionally France’s main bulwark on her Eastern Marches, in the hands of her newly powerful rival. In the early 1870s General Sér de Rivières proposed that the new line of defense should run from Verdun to Toul, Épinal and eventually Belfort. Ironically, the forts were built by Italian laborers who came, as frontaliers, across the new border from the provinces to the east. Across that border, military activities seemed to justify the need to fortify Verdun in particular. Elsewhere less interested in forts than railways, the Germans chose to complete the system round Metz already begun by the French shortly before 1870, naming each of its new bulwarks after victorious commanders in the war.* Following decades saw the Verdun forts periodically elaborated in obedience to crises in Franco-German relations and to advances in technology. As Minister of War in the 1880s and 1890s, the former engineer Charles de Freycinet took a particular interest in bringing Verdun up to date with the changes that had produced artillery shells better capable of shatter- ing stone and reinforced concrete better capable of withstanding them. Thus did France turn la plaie béante, the gaping wound of her eastern frontier, into the “great fortress” that so impressed Schlieffen.
 * __Source__**

Ousby, I. (2002). //The road to verdun: World war I's most momentous battle and the folly of nationalism//. New York, NY: Doubleday.

Though other battles of the First War exacted a higher toll, Verdun came to gain the unenviable reputation of being the battlefield with the highest density of dead per square yard that has probably ever been known. Above all, the battle was a watershed of prime importance in the First War. Before it, Germany still had a reasonable chance of winning the war; in the course of those ten months this chance dwindled away. Beyond it, neither the French nor the German army would be quite the same again; Verdun marked the point at which, among the Allies, the main burden of the war passed from France to Britain, and its influence upon America’s eventual entry into the war cannot be overlooked. Horne, A. (1962). //The price of glory: Verdun 1916//. New York, NY: Penguin.
 * __Source__**

__**Total Sources**__ __encyclopedia__ 1.) Battle of Verdun. In //wikipedia// [Web]. Retrieved 11/12/2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_verdun __Web Page__ 2.) Not Available, The battle of verdun 1916 - The greatest battle ever. Retrieved November 13, 2007, Web site: [|http://www.wereldoorlog1418.nl/battleverdun/index.htm#battle01] 3.) P.T. (2001). The eve of the battle of verdun. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from The Battle of Verdun Web site: [|http://www.xs4all.nl/~verdun] 4.) Simkin, J. (September 1997). Important battles: Verdun. Retrieved November 13, 2007, from Spartacus Educational Web site: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWverdun.htm 5.) Duffey, M. (2000). Battles: The battle of verdun, 1916. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from First World War Web site: http://www.firstworldwar.com/battles/verdun.htm __Books__ 6.) Ousby, I. (2002). //The road to verdun: World war I's most momentous battle and the folly of nationalism//. New York, NY: Doubleday. 7.) Horne, A. (1962). //The price of glory: Verdun 1916//. New York, NY: Penguin.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_Falkenhayn