The Battle of Verdun is now over a month old with no end in sight and over 150,000 casualties
already, but today I’m going to look at it from other angles, today I’ll look at
the history and the defenses of Verdun.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week the Russians launched a huge offensive on the Northeastern front and actually made
attacks along the whole front down to the Romanian border, but these attacks gained
little ground for tens of thousands of casualties. The British advanced in German East Africa,
while at Verdun the carnage continued near Avocourt where attack and counter-attack produced
nothing but corpses.
Okay, the history and the fortress of Verdun.
Back in Roman times, Virodunum was already a fortified camp, once sacked by Attila the
Hun. The Treaty of Verdun in 843 was signed by the three sons of Louis the Pious, the
heirs of Charlemagne. This resulted in the creation of the medieval German kingdom, which
was the largest part of the Holy Roman Empire, as well as the kingdom of France itself. Look
it up; good stuff. Now, the treaty made Verdun part of France, but in 923 it fell under Germanic
rule and remained that way for over 600 years. After becoming French again it was pretty
much besieged once a century until 1916. In 1870 it was the last fortress to fall to the
Prussians in the Franco-Prussian War.
The fortress of Verdun was now supposedly the strongest one on earth, and its reputation
had indeed been tested at the Battle of the Marne. German forces had nearly encircled
it and French commander in chief Joseph Joffre ordered it to be abandoned, but Maurice Sarrail,
who’s now the French commander in Salonika, disregarded the order. The fortress withstood
repeated German attacks and was the anchor and pivot point for the French retreat to
Paris, where they finally stopped the German advance. Had it fallen in 1914, it’s reasonably
likely that Paris- and the war- could have been lost.
The front at Verdun now formed a salient which you might think wasn’t easily defensible,
but on all sides steep hills surrounded it, making a huge natural fort, and many of these
hills had gentle slopes toward the invaders side, but steep reverse slopes, perfect for
Frenchmen to hide behind and then spring out to sweep an enemy with machine gun fire. The
crest of each important hill also had its own fort, and this was the outstanding feature
of the Verdun defenses. If you look at German maps from 1914, there were a full 20 major
forts and 40 more minor forts listed at Verdun.
On the right bank, the forts were sort of in an outer and two inner rings, the outer
was where Forts Douaumont and Vaux lay, and the innermost was on the heights overlooking
Verdun with Belleville and St. Michel. On the left bank there were two lines and the
most important of those was the outer one that was five forts along the Bois Bourrus ridge.
Each fort was situated so it could fire on any enemy approaching its neighbor. The guns
were under heavy steel shells in retractable turrets, so could only really be taken out
by a direct artillery hit. There were machine guns turrets and flanking blockhouses, and
the bigger ones could hold a company of infantry underground who were often protected with
reinforced concrete and earth up to three meters deep.
The most powerful fort, the cornerstone of the whole thing was Fort Douaumont, which
had fallen in February to the Germans without firing a shot, but Fort Vaux, perhaps second
in importance, still remained resolutely in French hands.
Now, back at the beginning of the war, in August 1914, the great Belgian fortresses
like Liege and Namur had fallen quickly to modern artillery and it seemed that the lesson
was that fortresses were a thing of the past. However, the French and Germans were learning
that that lesson was not carved in stone and fortifications, even old ones, could in fact
stand up to intense artillery bombardment, even a prolonged one, and could even back
up trench lines if the fortress was occupied by troops prepared to sit out the shelling
and wait for an assault by unprotected infantry. In a way it was inexperience that was the
downfall of the Belgians a year and a half ago, but the French would now doggedly sit
through the barrages and then repay the German infantry with a wall of small-arms fire.
And on the left bank of the Meuse, the French tactical advantage was growing.
The woods and broken country so favorable to the Germans had been blasted out of existence
the past month and it was now open country. The German flame throwers were now suicide
machines, because as soon as you lit up in the open you’d get shot, and when the fuel
cannisters were hit by shrapnel, they would turn the guy using the flame thrower into
a human torch. But an even bigger problem was flanking fire from the French that stopped
the Germans every time they advanced on open ground. The Germans had tried to eliminate
those flanking guns by spreading the attack across the Meuse, but now THAT attack was
getting hit from French guns on ITS right, from a ridge that was a twin of Mort Homme
called Cote 304. So now the Germans, after the costly failure of attacks on Mort Homme
three weeks ago, decided that they wouldn’t get anywhere until they took Cote 304. The
fighting to get there would happen at the extreme western edge of the Verdun salient,
between the villages of Malancourt and Avocourt.
On the 28th, the Germans attacked Malancourt Village, which fell days later, but on the
29th, the French attacked in the Avocourt woods, and French military writer Lt. Colonel
Henri de Malleray led the attack. He retook part of the wood, but was killed, having both legs severed.
Here are a few numbers from the first month of Verdun.
By end of March, casualties at Verdun were 89,000 French and 81,607 Germans and because
of the compressed area of battle, senior commanders were dying as quickly as the lower ranks.
One French division had three of its four colonels killed just this month. Horses were
also dying at a rapid clip; 7,000 in one day by long range shelling. And what amounted
to an entire division of men was needed to keep the Sacred Road- the French supply route-
going and bringing 50,000 tons of supplies and 90,000 men a week.
That’s a lot of men. Let’s compare it to what’s happening on the Eastern Front.
On March 26th, the Russian 5th army lost 28,000 men on the northern front. The Russian Lake
Naroch offensive, aimed at Vilna, which was in its second week, had managed to throw away
a huge advantage in men and artillery. When I say huge, I mean that Russian had 300,000
men there to only 180,000 Germans (Keegan). But the Russian artillery was still not coordinated
with the infantry very well, which you really saw with scenes like the Second Army attacking
and running into its own artillery fire, and then, when it had taken a salient, German
guns bombarded it from three sides. Three quarters of the infantry, 15,000 men, was
lost in just eight hours, but the offensives continued all week until the thaw on the 29th suspended operations.
And at home in Russia was more disturbing news for the allies.
On March 29th, Alexei Polivanov resigned as Minister of War. Well, he was dismissed by
the Tsar under heavy pressure from the Tsarina and Rasputin. Polivanov was the guy responsible
for saving and rebuilding the Russian army after last year’s disasters so this was
a big blow. He was replaced by Dmitry Shuvaev, whom the Tsarina would also work against.
And here are some naval notes to round out the week:
On March 23rd, a German sub sank the Folkestone-Dieppe ferry Sussex, which it thought was a troopship.
50 passengers drowned, including the Spanish composer Eduardo Granados. On March 30th-
the French hospital ship Portugal, in Russian service with a French crew, was torpedoed
in Black Sea by German sub U33. 115 patients, doctors, nurses, and crew drowned. Total allied
shipping losses for March were 76,769 tons
And that was the week; enormous casualties at Lake Naroch, enormous casualties at Verdun,
and civilians and medical staff being torpedoed at sea.
We’ve seen enormous death tolls often during the war, but they were more often on the Eastern
Front than any other theater of war, and most often Russian, but now we see a new phenomenon;
the casualties on the Western Front as high as those in the East. Although in theory one
life is as valuable as any other, Russia had seemingly endless amounts of men, but Germany
and France by comparison certainly did not. What would that mean for them? Losing astronomical
and irreplaceable numbers of the cream of their youth for no appreciable gain? Would
it continue? Of course it would continue, month after month after month. This was modern war!
Germany had already sent young and inexperienced fresh troops into battle at Ypres and paid
the price for it. Even the enemy British soldiers were shocked by the slaughter. If you want
to find out more about the battle that created the Langemark myth, click right here.
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