Why Verdun? - Worldwar1.com

Why Verdun?
Vol. 10, Number 2, February 2016
One hundred years ago this month the Battle of Verdun opened — at least the 1916 Battle of Verdun at
Verdun. However, our contributor to this month's issue of Over the Top , Professor John Mosier of Loyola
University of New Orleans, thinks a much longer time frame is needed to understand what Verdun
meant for the conduct of the First World War. Indeed, Verdun was a fixation during the opening
campaigns of 1914 and was not truly secured until the victorious American St. Mihiel and MeuseArgonne Offensives of 1918.
Nonetheless, since we are following the war year by year in our Centennial series, we have asked Dr.
Mosier to focus on the German offensive launched 21 February 1916, specifically, just why the Chief of
Staff of the German Army, Erich von Falkenhayn, decided to mount the effort. I think you will find our
contributor's analysis insightful and surprising.
MH
Some Verdun Details
Verdun Battlefield Today
21 February – 18 December 1916 (302 days)
The battlefield was only about 50 sq. miles (30 sq.
miles on the right (west) bank, 20 sq. miles on the
left.
Over 40 million artillery shells were fired in this area
over the course of the battle.
Casualties at Verdun:
(Estimates vary greatly but are often overstated.)
German:
333,000 – 420,000
(Including 143,000 – 175,000 dead or missing)
French:
378,000 – 600,000
(Including 162,000 – 240,000 dead or missing)
Pétain's policy was to rotate in troops, so about
two-thirds of all French divisions served at Verdun.
The German Fifth Army facing them, however, left
units in place; consequently, a smaller percentage
of German soldiers shared the "Verdun Experience"
than did France's soldiery.
. 2.
Images from Tony Langley's & Steve Miller's Collections
Why Verdun?
by Professor John Mosier
Rare Image of the Opening Shelling at Verdun, Bois des Caures
Fundamentally, all the field commanders of both sides
in 1915 believed in the same thing, the great battle of
annihilation that, with its consequent massive breakthrough, would bring a speedy end to the war and the
defeat of their opponents. But as the months went by,
von Falkenhayn decided that was not going to work.
The only way to win was to destroy your opponent's
will to fight, what the French called his moral, a word
that means something slightly different from its English
equivalent, morale, as it implies a sort of backbone as
well as a state of mind.
Verdun is one of the great battles of the modern era. It
is also one of the most complex and probably the most
misunderstood part of a war only imperfectly grasped,
even today. To begin with, there were battles around
Verdun every year of the war. The first battles took
place in August of 1914. The German stranglehold was
not removed until late September 1918. However, for
this issue of Over the Top, I have been asked to focus
on the 1916 struggle described so eloquently and misleadingly by Alistair Horne in his classic study, The Price
of Glory. Specifically, I have been asked to address why
Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn chose to mount a
major offensive against Verdun 100 years ago this
month.
As the war wore on, German chief of staff Erich von
Falkenhayn was beginning to understand something
that the vast majority of the generals, regardless of
their nationality, failed to grasp. The armies of this
war, backed by the great industries of the combatants,
were simply too large for the traditional idea of warfare to work. Joffre claimed that the Marne was a great
French victory, just as von Hindenburg did for Tannenberg. But both battles were fought in September
1914, and here it was, going on a year of warfare, and
the Germans were still in France and the Russians were
still in the fight. Despite their defeat, despite being on
course to lose the incredible figure of a million men
taken prisoner, and with equally staggering casualties,
the Russians were not disposed to quit the war.
Possibly, von Falkenhayn had gotten this from pondering the American Civil War, as, like all professional
German officers, he had studied that conflict. Or it may
have been the result of his experiences in China, or his
knowledge of how the British, despite their bumbling,
had finally beaten the Boers. The common thread was
that in each case your opponent simply decided to
quit, realizing that nothing was worth the continued sacrifice. The route to success was not
to bash your enemy in some great battle but to make
him realize he couldn't win, that the cost was too high.
.3.
Moreover, the French weren't like the Russians, willing
to take astronomical losses to no avail. At some point
the army was going to crack, reach a tipping point as
they threw themselves against German defensive positions without ever actually conquering them, their only
achievement horrific losses.
The trick was to find that point. What would they risk
to recapture something of real importance, something
whose significance even the dimmest poilu or politician
could grasp? Based on their behavior in the past,
they'd throw every last man into an effort to retake
the lost ground. Verdun was the obvious answer.
Losing it would have an incalculable effect on French
morale; it would be like the collapse of the Liège forts
and Antwerp for the Belgians.
The earlier, bloody French efforts on the flanks of
Verdun, especially the Heights of the Meuse above St.
Mihiel, were also instructive for the Germans. At some
point – after they had carelessly thrown them away –
the French high command realized they were important and mounted attack after attack in a desperate
and determined effort to recapture them. And now, in
1915, the Germans were seeing a repetition of that on
a grand scale, with the virtual abandonment of the
Verdun forts. This was the buttes on a grand scale
indeed.
That was the point – to destroy morale, make the
French realize there was no way they could win. At
some point, the French would realize there was no way
they could win, that all they could accomplish was
killing off their infantry. That was the tipping point –
the realization that a blank wall was staring them in
the face.
There was no way the French could bear the loss of
Verdun. The Army might be willing to write it off, but
the population at large, and the government, wouldn't
stand for it. Poincaré had made this clear to General
Joffre through liaison officer Lt. Col. Émile Herbillon in
September 1914.
THE PLAN BEGINS TO EMERGE
So the opportunity (to go after Verdun in 1916) was
too good to pass up. The staff of the 5th Army was
convinced they had the formula for success; they
would simply repeat what General von Mudra had
been doing in the Argonne, what to a lesser degree
von Mackensen's 9th Army had done in Galicia in May –
a stupefying artillery attack to erase the enemy's
positions, so that the infantry would simply be moving
through the ruins of the enemy positions.
The staff of the Kaiser's 5th Army, commanded by none
other than the Crown Prince, had been agitating for
another attack at Verdun since the success of the St.
Mihiel offensive in September 1914. They kept pointing to the way General von Mudra's corps was steadily
chewing its way through the Argonne. By late August
1915 von Mudra had basically forced the French out of
the forest proper. They were hanging on to positions
on the southern edge, and, instead of reinforcing the
troops there, Joffre shifted his attentions up to the
north and west, and was obviously planning another
senseless dual attack in Champagne and Artois.
The captured heights of the Meuse above the city
would be the basis for a formidable defensive position,
so when the French responded by trying to retake lost
territory, they'd be slaughtered. Given the interdicted
rail lines and the denuding of the forts, the French
would hardly be able to succeed, as their situation
would be considerably worse than it had been when
they tried to retake the buttes on the flank, Vauquois
in the Argonne and Éparges in the heights between the
Meuse and the Wöevre Plain.
That attack was duly made in September, with pretty
much the same lack of results as all the others. All the
Allies accomplished was running up the body count the
same way they had been managing it so far. The point,
insofar as there was one, was the Allied delusion that
they were killing lots of Germans, when in reality it was
the other way round.
Dr. John Mosier is a professor at Loyola University of
New Orleans. He has written extensively on films,
literature, and military history. His World War I
titles include the Myth of the Great War, and
Verdun: the Lost History of the Most Important
Battle of WW1. This article is an excerpt from his
work on Verdun and is presented with his permission. Both Great War works are recommended to
our readers and are available through Amazon.com.
. 4.
The loss of Verdun would strike deep into the heart of
France, and when they realized they couldn't get it
back, that their sacrifices were futile, they'd come to
their senses and agree to a reasonable peace.
Whence Falkenhayn?
Unlike the earlier operations, all of which involved
flank attacks, this one would be a direct frontal assault
on the forts of the right bank. The main weight of the
attack, however, would consist not of soldiers, but of
high explosives, just as had been the case in the
Argonne. The staff planned for a massive artillery
barrage that would simply erase the French positions.
At the same time, the artillery assault would not simply
be aimed at the initial lines, at the forts and the entrenchments in front of them, but would have great
depth, so that the defenders would be unable to
counterattack.
A 38cm gun installed near the village of Duzey north of
the city was the first of a phalanx of heavy weapons.
As the munitions were being shipped in and the gun
emplacements prepared, the troop movements began
as well. General Buat's scrupulous recording of the
movements of German divisions in and out of the
fronts shows a pattern nicely synchronized with the
emplacement and firing of the 38cmgun.
The First Battle of the Marne doomed the German
Army to a long war and ended the career of Chief of
Staff Helmuth von Moltke the Younger in the fall of
1914. Minister of War Erich Georg Anton Sebastian
von Falkenhayn (1861–1922), who would dominate
the German military machine through mid-1916,
absorbed Moltke's job.
In September 1915 four divisions were shifted from
Germany to the Western Front, probably in response
to the Anglo-French offensive in Artois and Champagne, or at least that was General Buat's inference.
Falkenhayn had used his unique blend of detached
analytical thinking, aloofness, and personal charm
to overcome his disadvantageous Bohemian/
Austrian ancestry and be perfectly positioned to
advance when Moltke fell. A courtier of the first
order, his personal magnetism had progressively
won him favor from his days as a junior officer, with
anti-Bismarckian intriguer Count Waldersee, the
Dowager Empress of China, and, later, with both
Wilhelm II and his son, the Crown Prince.
By the summer of 1913 he had risen to the rank of
major general and was appointed minister of war
for Prussia. Falkenhayn supported war in 1914, and
when it came he was the Kaiser's indispensable
man, accompanying the emperor on his numerous
visits to frontline headquarters. After power came
to him, Falkenhayn looked to the east to follow up
on the success at Tannenberg. But 1915 proved to
him that, despite successes, campaigning on the
Eastern Front would be long and exhausting and
that any decision in 1916 would have to come in the
west.
Then, in October, no fewer than 11 divisions were
moved up into line and in November three more were
added, raising the number of divisions on the Western
Front from 107 (in September) to 117. The numbers
don't add up because there were also divisions being
transferred from the Western Front, as the German
high command kept shifting its resources back and
forth, as well as in and out of the line.
However, the most revealing point here is that the bulk
of the troop movements to the west came in October
1915. For the previous year (that is, from September
1914 to September 1915) the average number of
German divisions in the west had fluctuated between
99 and 107. Most months it had been 104.
Now, suddenly, in October, it shot up to the highest it
had been, and in November it climbed another notch.
By contrast, in December and January only one division
was added, and three more were added in February.
.5.
The pattern makes sense when we realize that General
Herr, the French officer in immediate command of the
troops at Verdun, believed he would be attacked on 16
January 1916, nearly five weeks before the actual
attack. Unusually strong winter storms interfered with
the original timetable giving the GQG and the French
local commanders at Verdun ample time to prepare.
He also knew his master's peculiarities, as did everyone
who worked closely with the monarch, so he wrote
with a specific audience in mind. That audience explains both the parts of the letter that subsequently
became infamous, or anyway notorious, and it also
explains the surprising omission.
However, with these reservations, the key paragraph
of the letter is really quite revolutionary.
Aside from General Herr, no one seemed particularly
concerned about the notion of a German offensive. In
Paris, the theaters had finally reopened, although
judging from the diaries maintained by Gallieni and
Abel Ferry, the best theater in town was to be found at
the cabinet meetings. Out in Chantilly, Joffre professed
himself quite satisfied with the state of the defenses.
Even though 1915 had brought the Allies an almost
completely unrelieved strain of checks and disasters,
their feelings in midwinter bordered on a dangerous
complacency.
Moreover, the lessons to be deduced from the failures
of our enemy's mass attacks are decisive against any
imitation of their battle methods. Attempts at a mass
breakthrough, even with an extreme accumulation of
men and material, cannot be regarded as holding out
prospects of success against a well-armed enemy
whose morale is sound and who is not seriously inferior
in numbers.
The "Bleeding France White" Memorandum
This point is exactly the one that neither Joffre nor the
Easterners had yet grasped. Writing to a man whose
knowledge of tactics and strategy was minimal, von
Falkenhayn did not go into the detailed reasons why a
“mass breakthrough” was impossible. For that we must
turn to the musings of French General Fayolle, who
had spelled it out very precisely the previous summer.
Now that the offensive was set, the arrangements
largely complete, von Falkenhayn took the last step. He
notified the Kaiser of the plan. Now clearly, given all
the activity to date, the decision to attack had already
been made, and the preparations were complete. So
the notion implicit in all accounts of this letter is highly
misleading. The letter, which openly hostile writers
seized on, is not a proposal, it is a piece of internal
public relations. Von Falkenhayn knew the importance
of keeping the Kaiser on his side, as his continuing in
the role of chief of staff depended on Wilhelm's
willpower.
In this war it is not sufficient to open a breach. One
must open a gap of twenty kilometers or so, so that
there is no response on the left or right. One must do
this with an entire army, and then have another ready
to pass through the breach. And that is not simple.
38cm (15-inch) Artillery Piece That Fired the Opening Shot of the Battle
.6.
The attitude of the French nation, though (or, more
specifically, the rulers of that nation), was a different matter entirely. Both the country at large and its
elected officials were being fed a steady diet of
soothing reassurance, as epitomized by the slogan on a
widely disseminated French postcard featuring a
suitably heroic looking soldier proclaiming “We are
progressing day by day.” As we have seen, there were
men inside the government itself who were hardly
optimistic, who were beginning to see behind the
comfortable façade. There was not, in fall 1915, any
thought of coming to terms.
Having now dismissed the ideas of the Easterners that
more vigorous action would carry their armies to a
final victory in the west, von Falkenhayn now explained
his idea in very simple terms.
The only way to win in the west was to make the
French realize that there was no way they could ever
hope to prevail, or, as von Falkenhayn put it in the
letter, when “it is clear to the eyes of the French
people that, militarily, they have nothing to hope for.
Then will their limit be surpassed.”
The precise antecedent of “their” is one of the two
most important parts of this often- quoted document.
The word clearly and unambiguously refers back not to
the French Army, but to the French people, and hence
to France itself – or, more precisely, the government
and the people, the two entities that President Poincaré had invoked in July 1915 in another discussion
with Herbillon after listening to the colonel's gloomy
prognosis for the coming campaign.
What if the patient woke up, discovered that instead of
removing his tonsils, the doctors had actually removed
his kidney and his lung? This was the proverbial
elephant in the room, which was such a horrifying
prospect for the politicians of both countries that it
didn't bear thinking about. So they didn't.
To put matters simply, as (given Kaiser Wilhelm) it had
to be, von Falkenhayn proposed to wake them up.
Verdun, he observed, was a position of such importance to France that the nation could not stand to lose
it. It was, just as Pétain would later observe, the “boulevard morale” of the country. After half a century of
fortifying it, after pouring millions of francs into it, the
country simply could not stand for the loss.
By December 1915, the Germans had begun to realize
that the French Army was apparently willing to fight far
past the point of rational calculation. France's generals
had already established that as they ordered assault
after assault on German strongpoints all along the line.
Nor could that loss be concealed. Very few Parisians
knew exactly where Les Éparges or the Hartmannswillerkopf was, and if their knowledge of the obscurities of their national geography was such that they did,
they also knew that these places were rather insignificant. Everyone, though, knew where Verdun was,
and most people had a pretty good idea of the area
encompassed by the great arc of the forts. This was
one elephant in the room that could not easily be
converted into a piece of furniture and covered over
with a rug.
Given the almost total lack of modern heavy artillery
and the shortage of shells, any objective observer
would conclude these attacks were doomed in advance. They all failed, but in each case, the GQG
insisted on more attempts, the local commanders
obeyed, and the slaughter continued.
The assaults on the butte of the Vauquois that began
in 1914 continued into March 1915. That set the
pattern. It was continued all along the line. The attempts on the flanks of Verdun were tactically some of
the most senseless and futile. Indeed, judging from the
accounts of the survivors, the efforts to wrest the
butte of Les Éparges resulted in some of the most
horrific combats of the entire war, but the desperate
and unsuccessful attempts elsewhere were more of
the same. The losses, carefully concealed, were horrifying. The gains, tiny and insignificant at best, were
carefully spun. Well might von Falkenhayn conclude
that his opponents could be baited into destroying
themselves.
So as a result, when von Falkenhayn observed that
“the French leadership would fight to the last man to
get it back,” he analyzed the situation precisely and
rather astutely. Note, however, the abstract nature of
the sentence. There is nothing here about the French
Army; he is speaking about the leadership of the
country. Rightly so: he knew that his opposite number had already written Verdun off, had stripped it
bare, and was ready to evacuate it entirely if need be.
.7.
1915 Dead at Éparges Spur, A Preview of the Fighting at Verdun
And indeed, as we shall see – leaping ahead to those
critical days of February 1916 – that proved to be
precisely the reaction of the French leadership. The
GQG was cheerfully willing to write the whole area off,
but the government realized that if they did, that
would be the end of the war. The country would collapse. Worse still, their careers would be at an end.
part of the letter. Nor is there any particular difficulty
in grasping the point. Anyone with a rudimentary grasp
of rhetoric recognizes this construction. There are only
two alternatives, and either one leads to the same end.
The French cannot afford to lose Verdun. If they fight
for it, their losses will be so heavy that they will have
to quit the war. If they do not fight for it, the effect on
the country at large will be such that they will be
forced to quit the war.
Basically, then, given the situation after over a year of
fighting, von Falkenhayn's appreciation was correct.
Indeed it was perhaps more fundamentally correct
than he realized, so far as the idea of a breakthrough
went. Even when the attack was tactically a success,
resulting in a deep penetration into enemy territory,
that success did not bring the enemy to the bargaining
table. The only practical goal was to create a situation
where your opponent realized the impossibility of
victory and was thus willing to quit.
Now comes the one phrase in the letter that several
generations of Allied apologists have seized upon, have
indeed made the exclusive basis for their appreciation
of the plan. Out of this abstract and sophisticated
piece of grand strategy, they extracted one phrase and
then used it to claim that his aim was to win the war
through attrition – interpretations resting on a series
of basic grammatical, translation, or rhetorical errors.
If the French decide to fight, regardless of the outcome, von Falkenhayn avers, the result will be heavy
losses. Then comes the key phrase: in that case, they
will Frankreichs Kräfte verbluten. Commonly translated
as "bleeding France white," this phrase is the basis for
the whole notion that von Falkenhayn's aim was to win
the war through attrition.
Having established that it was a given that the French
leadership would fight to the last man for Verdun, von
Falkenhayn now made a nice rhetorical flourish. He
wrote two consecutive sentences, each beginning with
the same phrase, the only shift being that the second
sentence uses a negative, so the result is a rhetorical
expression that can be simply expressed as “if he does/
if he does not.”
The rhetorical device is even more important to an
understanding of the plan than correctly parsing the
antecedent for “their.” In fact, it is the most significant
.8.
[Editor's Note: Our readers can enjoy Professor Mosier's rhetorical analysis and dismantling of the common
interpretation of the phrase in his volume, Verdun:
The Lost History of the Most Important Battle of
World War I.]
So the whole idea that von Falkenhayn saw Verdun as
a way to win the war by killing enormous numbers of
Frenchmen rests on one phrase in his letter, which is
then rendered as a rhetorical absurdity.
However, whatever his strategic acumen was, he failed
to grasp two basic points about the governments of his
opponents. Failing to understand civilians and their
institutions is not an unusual failure in generals, of
course, but since his strategy was directed at the
governments, he should have reasoned more closely or
observed them more intimately.
In addition, it has the inordinate difficulty of ignoring
arithmetic. If that was his aim, all he really had to do
was remain on the defensive. Given French losses to
date, he hardly had to go to the trouble of staging a
major offensive.
Von Falkenhayn was extremely naïve to believe that
anything within his powers would bring Paris to the
table. A curious defect, since von Moltke the Elder had
gotten stuck in the quagmire of France in 1870. He had
defeated their armies, captured their leader, had their
capital surrounded, and they refused to quit. That it
took nearly five months before they did should have
suggested the perils of dealing with the French political
class as though they were rational.
Defending von Falkenhayn, or the Germans, is a forlorn
enterprise in which the facts have no particular weight,
given the refusal of so many historians to acknowledge
even the most obvious and fundamental facts, like the
casualty imbalance.
The difficulties, or risks, with the plan had little or
nothing to do with either the morality or the practicality of “bleeding France white.” The idea that it was
possible to get a nation to quit a war without winning
some spectacular battle was sound enough.
Like any document, von Falkenhayn's letter has a subtext of the sort that contemporary literary theorists are
always stretching to extract, but in this case the subtext seems straightforward enough – there was a
narrow window of opportunity for the Germans, and
their only real chance at winning was to exploit it.
The aim here is not to defend von Falkenhayn but to
get as close to actuality as we can. So having said how
his aims were considerably shrewder than his opponents have allowed, and hence that by comparison
with the Allied generals he was a mental giant and a
competent strategist (although given his opponents,
that is not much of an accomplishment either), it
should be said that in several key respects his idea was
extremely risky.
In any case, the Kaiser blessed the scheme, and Operation Judgment opened on 21 February 1916. That the
plan failed to bring about the desired results in the
predicted time does not mean it was doomed or that it
was seriously flawed.
To put it another way, it was no worse than Isoroku
Yamamoto's plan of attack at Pearl Harbor – a gamble.
The Japanese naval genius was dubious about the
outcome of a war with America, which was why he
gambled so recklessly.
Although von Falkenhayn was correct in his assessment about the theoretical possibilities, he erred in
seeing the results as being almost axiomatic. There
was no way that von Falkenhayn could predict that
France would reach its breaking point in the immediate
future as a result of Verdun. Yes, the idea was sound,
and in May 1917 that breaking point actually arrived,
year too late for the German commander's hopes, and
in the army, not the country.
Moreover, von Falkenhayn's plan came considerably
closer to success than Yamamoto's. Verdun really did
shake the French government to the foundations and
set off a chain of events that reduced the country to
dire straights indeed.
Winston Churchill's Ultimate Verdun Question
What can Falkenhayn and his Germans do with
Verdun if they get it? They cannot eat it. . . What
vital difference does it make to the real war making
capacity of Germany or France whether the French
Lines are drawn on one side of Verdun or the
other?
Colliers, 18 November 1916
Therein lies the difficulty. He could predict with confidence the country's response. Although he phrased it
in such a way so that the logic suggested the possibility
that the French might not fight, he clearly assumed
they would, and he was correct.
.9.
Verdun Eyewitnesses
Opening Barrage
Imagine if you can a steadily growing storm raining
only paving stones, only building blocks.
Marc Stéphane with Driant at Bois des Caures
Turning Point
One more effort, said the Commander, and we have
it. They said it in March, April. . . and up to the
middle of July, and then they said it no more.
Arnold Zweig, Education Before Verdun
Suffering Prolonged Bombardment
When you hear the whistling in the distance your
entire body preventively crunches together to prepare for the enormous explosions. . .Even nerves of
the hardest of steel, are not capable of dealing with
this kind of pressure.
March 1916 Letter, Unidentified Poilu
An Artist's Description of Verdun
I climbed up to the top of the gully I am in. Behind
me was Fleury, and in front of me Vaux and
Douaumont. I could see out over an area of ten
square kilometers that had been turned into a
uniform desert of brown earth. The men were all so
tiny and lost in it that I could hardly see them. A
shell fell in the midst of these little things, which
moved for a moment, carrying off the wounded –the
dead, as unimportant as so many ants, were left
behind. They were no bigger than ants down there.
The artillery dominates everything. A formidable,
intelligent weapon, striking everywhere with such
desperate consistency.
Fernand Léger, Verdun, 7 November 1916
In the Line
. . . What you see everyday is enough to break your
heart. Moreover, we're not well because we have all
caught dysentery. You can't eat and I assure you
that we're not very strong here. In short, we hope
that we'll be lucky enough to make it back! ... with
this heat, this stench, and all these unburied corpses
and rotting flesh we think that is what's making us
ill. . .
June 1916 Letter, Unidentified Poilu
Summing Up
An awful word, Verdun. Numerous people, still
young and filled with hope, had to lay down their
lives here – their mortal remains decomposing
somewhere, in between trenches, in mass graves, at
cemeteries.
Letter Home, Unidentified German Soldier
Message from Fort Vaux
We do not hear your artillery. We are being
attacked with gas and liquid fire. We are in
desperate straits.
2000 hrs, 5 June 1916 (Fort Vaux surrendered two
days later.)
.10.
Copyright 2016 © Michael E. Hanlon