Verdun 1916

The Deadliest Battle of the First World War

William F Buckingham, William F. Buckingham

• Publisher: Amberley Publishing
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781445641171
• Edition: 0
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War I
• Index: History

Fought on the heights above the garrison town of the same name on the River Meuse, 140 miles east of Paris, the Battle of Verdun lasted for ten months, between February and December 1916, double the length of the Battle of the Somme and over three times the length of the Battle of Passchendaele. Conceived by the Germans as a means of destroying the French army through attrition rather than breakthrough and encirclement, the battle cost 300,000 lives.Massed artillery was employed on a hitherto unprecedented scale; the initial bombardment lasted for nine hours and saw 80,000 shells fall on the French trench line, while on the ground the initial attack saw the combat debut of storm-troop tactics and the man-pack flamethrower. As the battle raged the combatants endured heat and thirst akin to desert conditions together with bottomless mud as bad as at Passchendaele. In addition, fixed defences like the forts of Douaumont and Vaux sparked hellish underground fighting in subterranean pitch darkness that occurred nowhere else on the Western Front.The result was almost 200 square kilometres of ground that had been blasted, ploughed and poisoned into a wasteland by explosives and gas, so much so that the post-war French authorities were unable to return it to its former agricultural use and simply left it to the elements.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Introduction
• 1 - ‘Virodunum: The Fortress That Controls the River Crossing’, Verdun 450 BC – AD 1873
• 2 - Fortresses and Pantalon Rouge: Verdun and the French Army, 1873–1914
• 3 - The Belfort Gap and Plan XVII: Setting the Scene, August 1914 – February 1915
• 4 - Mine Warfare at the Shoulders: Framing the Battlefield and the Evolution of Operation GERICHT, February 1915 – February 1916
• 5 - With Stollen, Flammenwerfer and Artillerie: The First Phase of the Battle, 21 February 1916 – 28 February 1916
• 6 - Le Mort-Homme and Côte 304: The Battle Expands to the West Bank of the River Meuse, 6 March 1916 – 29 May 1916
• 7 - More on Both Banks: Reappraisals and Renewed Effort, 29 April 1916 – 1 June 1916
• 8 - Clearing the Way for the Final Push: The Fight for Fort Vaux, 1 June 1916 – 8 June 1916
• 9 - The Tide Ebbs: The Final German Effort, 8 June 1916 – 12 July 1916
• 10 - Full Circle: French Counter-Attacks and What Came After, 14 July 1916 – 2016
• Picture Section
• Appendix 1: Maps and Battle Plans
• Appendix 2: Approximate Guide to French and German Army Organisations and Strengths
• Notes
• Bibliography
• List of Maps and Illustrations