By March, Falkenhayn had been
obliged to extend his assault to the
left (west) bank of the Meuse, with the
sinisterly named ridge Le Mort-Homme
a prime German target. This fell at the end
of May but savage fighting on the right
bank still ebbed to and fro.
Falkenhayn made his last big push on
23 June, down the ridge south-west from
Douaumont and against the final defences
before Verdun, using phosgene gas for the
first time. A colour guard and band were
ready to head a ceremonial entry into the
city, and the kaiser waited in the wings.
But, despite the total destruction of the
village of Fleury, that onslaught failed.
Thereafter Falkenhayn pulled back onto
the defensive, increasingly obliged to divert
men and supplies to the Somme, where the
British-French offensive began on 1 July.
Once they were no longer attacking, it
would have been rational for the Germans to
withdraw from the glutinous, shell-pocked
wasteland around Douaumont to stronger
defensive positions. But ceding ground that
had been gained at such appalling cost would
have had, to quote the crown prince, “an
immeasurably disastrous effect” on morale.
So, like the French in February, the Germans
decided that they could not be seen to fall
back. Verdun, one might say, was the
Stalingrad of the First World War.
During the autumn the French, at great
cost, worked their way back towards
Douaumont and on 24 October 1916 the fort
was recaptured after a brilliantly calibrated
creeping barrage. For France, that day of
victory – their most spectacular since the
Marne in 1914, and precise revenge for
25 February – symbolised the end of thebattle of Verdun. But fighting on the right
bank continued until nearly Christmas, while
Mort-Homme and other left-bank strong-
holds were not recovered until August 1917.
The Germans weren’t evicted from their
original gains in the Bois des Caures until
8 November 1918 – ironically, not by French
infantrymen but by American ‘doughboys’.
Total losses are hard to enumerate
precisely but credible estimates suggest
around 375,000 killed, wounded and
missing on each side. So, whatever
Falkenhayn intended, Verdun bled the
Germans as much the French. Putting
Verdun together with the equally inconclu-
sive battle of the Somme, Britain and
France, on one side, and Germany, on the
other, each lost around 1 million men,
including their most experienced junior
officers and NCOs. Although it is reason-
able to say that these losses drained
Germany more than the Entente, the
German army fought on for another two
years and fell apart only after going for
broke in the spring offensives of 1918.
In November 1918 France came out on
the winning side in a war of alliances.
Verdun was both the longest battle of
1914–18 and also the only one that the
French fought entirely alone. So Verdun
came to encapsulate France’s war, or the
war the French chose to remember. ßAKG IMAGES/MARY EVANS
DAVID REYNOLDS IS PROFESSOR OF INTERNATIONAL
HISTORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.WHAT NOT TO MISS ON A VISIT
TO VERDUN
The prime stop of a visit must be
Douaumont where the National
Cemetery and the Ossuary – a bizarre
combination of art deco and pseudo
Romanesque, built to house the
hundreds of thousands of bones that
littered the battlefield – vividly convey the
sacred place of Verdun in French
memory in the 1920s and 1930s. The
best-preserved forts are Douaumont
and Fort Vaux – both offer good vantage
points to grasp the contours of this now
wooded battlefield.
Nine villages détruits were never
rebuilt. Cleared of the rubble, with the
1914 street plans neatly marked out, they
serve as mute but eloquent reminders of
the carnage and chaos. Like the soldiers
in the cemeteries, each village is deemed
to have ‘died for France’ (mort pour la
France) – a designation that has no
parallel in the lexicon of British
remembrance. Douaumont (where
Charles de Gaulle was taken prisoner)
and Fleury are the most evocative.
Close to the latter is the Memorial de
Verdun, built in the 1960s to house
veterans’ memorabilia and celebrate a
passing generation of heroes, but
remodelled for 2016 as a research centre,
an interactive museum and a place of
Franco-German reconciliation.THE BEST BOOKS ABOUT THE BATTLE
Invaluable aids when visiting are the
books by battlefield historian Christina
Holstein, especially Walking Verdun
(Pen & Sword, 2009) and Fort
Douaumont (revised, Pen & Sword,
2014), whose walks and maps have
descriptions of key moments.
Among many accounts of the battle,
The Price of Glory by Alistair Horne,
first published in 1962, is a classic
(Penguin, 1993). Another perceptive
study is The Road to Verdun by Ian
Ousby (Anchor, 2003). Recent works
for the centenary include Verdun by
Paul Jankowski (OUP, 2014).The ‘impregnable’ fort at Douaumont, which Germans
renamed ‘the coffin lid’VERDUN TODAY
How to learn more about the titanic
Franco-German clash 100 years onThe heaped bones of soldiers killed at
Verdun. Some 750,000 French and German
troops lost their lives, were wounded or
went missing during the battle“Verdun, one might say,
was the Stalingrad
of the First World War”