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Battle of Loos,
Falkenhayn’s Plan, Reasons for Attacking Verdun,
Main Events of the Battle, Why did the Germans lose the Battle of Verdun?, Results of the Battle
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From 25 September to 8 October, the British fought the Battle of Loos. This is the Wikipedia summary of the battle:
Source A
The French and British tried to break through the German defences in Artois and Champagne and restore a war of movement. Despite improved methods, more ammunition and better equipment, the Franco-British attacks were largely contained by the Germans. The British gas attack failed to neutralize the defenders and the artillery bombardment was too short to destroy the barbed wire or machine gun nests. German tactical defensive proficiency was still dramatically superior to the British offensive planning and doctrine, resulting in a British defeat.
This famous quote from the battle sums up its result:
Source B
From what I can ascertain, some of the divisions did actually
reach the enemy's trenches, for their bodies can now be seen on the barbed wire.
General Henry Rawlinson
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Going Deeper
The following links will help you widen your knowledge:
Basic account from
BBC Teach
More detailed timeline of the battle
YouTube
Verdun: The Longest & Most Horrific Battle of WWI - clear narrative
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In September 1914, after the German Army was defeated at the Marne, Kaiser Wilhelm had dismissed Moltke and appointed instead Erich von Falkenhayn as his Chef of General Staff.
Falkenhayn believed that Germany would lose a war on two fronts, so he had three key aims:
Make Peace with Russia
(he failed: the Russians rejected all his overtures for a peace)
Stop the Austro-Hungarians opening up a third front in Italy
(he failed: the Austro-Hungarian army launched an offensive in May 1916)
Detach France from Britain (whom he saw as Germany’s main enemy)
His suggestion for how to do that is revealed in a document called ‘the Christmas memorandum’:
Source C
Our enemies, thanks to their superiority in men and material, are increasing their resources much more than we are. If that process continues a moment must come when the balance of numbers itself will deprive Germany of all remaining hope…
Attempts at a mass break-through, 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…
If we put [France] out of the war, England is left to face us
alone, and it is difficult to believe that in such circumstances her lust for
our destruction would not fail her.
As I have already insisted, the strain on France has almost reached the breaking-point.
If we succeeded in opening the eyes of her people to the fact that in a military
sense they have nothing more to hope for, that breaking-point would be reached
and England's best sword knocked out of her hand.
To achieve that object the uncertain method of a mass break-through, in any case beyond our means, is unnecessary. We can probably do enough for our purposes with limited resources. Within our reach behind the French sector of the Western front there are objectives for the retention of which the French General Staff would be compelled to throw in every man they have. If they do so the forces of France will bleed to death whether we reach our goal or not.
If they do not do so, and we reach our objectives, the moral effect on France
will be enormous.
The objectives of which I am speaking now are Belfort and
Verdun.
General Erich von Falkenhayn, The German General Staff and Its Decisions (1920)
All the evidence suggests that this ‘document’ is a fake,
made up by Falkenhayn after the war. However, there is also evidence that
it represents
accurately Falkenhayn’s thinking in 1916.
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Consider:
1. Study Source A. Make a list of the features of
the British attack at Loos.
• Study Source B. Make a list of the features
of the attack Falkenhayn proposed to make at Verdun.
Use your notes to write a paragraph explaining
what a 'War of Attrition' involved, and how it was different to the
'War of Movement'.
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Attrition: If we believe
Falkenhayn’s 1920 claims, he invented the idea of attrition warfare – to
wear down the enemy rather than defeating him in battle, to do this to
the French, and to do it at Verdun.
Defence hub: ‘Verdun’ was a complex of French forts at the centre of their defence system. German forces had fairly easily captured the fortresses in Belgium in 1914, so they hoped that they might capture it with
few losses, but then destroy the French forces which tried to retake it.
Joffre: The French Commander had been withdrawing men and equipment from the Verdun forts and sending them into the trench line (he had also decided that forts had had their day); the German attack
was being prepared at a moment when the forts were at their weakest.
Fort Douaumont, the largest and highest fort in the complex, was
defended by just 56 men.
Useful strategically: It was close to German railway lines, and the German 5th Army had captured the main French railway line into the area – so it would be difficult for the French to supply their armies.
‘Salient’ Verdun was a point where the French front line bulged into the German line of trenches
(see map), so the German artillery could fire on it from three sides, but all the
counter-attacking French forces would be concentrated in the one corridor.
Tie up British forces: Encyclopaedia Britannica suggests that the Germans maintained their attacks on Verdun in order to disrupt/delay Franco-British preparations of the Somme attack.
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Did You Know?
On 25 February, a team of ten German engineers approached Fort Douaumont unchallenged and Pioneer-Sergeant Kunze – armed only with a rifle – managed to gain entry via a gun turret, wandered around the fort
alone until he found the French artillery team, arrested them and locked them up..
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21-24 February 1916The German attack (Operation Gericht
- 'Operation Judgement') took the French by surprise and made sweeping
gains on the east bank of the River Meuse; crucially they did NOT,
however manage to take the heights overlooking Verdun.
25 FebruaryIn France, Joffre was blamed
for the defeat and dismissed,
and General Pétain was put in charge of the French Second Army. Before he could reorganise the defences, the Germans captured Fort Douaumont – a massive psychological setback for the French.
March to JuneFurther German attacks captured more of the area, including Fort Vaux (7 June). On 23 June Pétain advised withdrawing; he was ordered to hold at all costs.
June The Russian General Brusilov attacked and drove back the Austro-Hungarians; the Germans were forced to transfer some artillery away from Verdun.
And after the British attack on the Somme in July, the German forces at
Verdun received no more reinforcements, and their offensive simply
fizzled out.
July to August German attacks either failed, or failed to make any progress. They did not attack again after 3 September.
21 October A French attack under General Charles Mangin recaptured Douaumont on 24 October and Vaux on 2 November – though the loss of life was so great that Mangin was called ‘the Butcher’. Fighting petered out in December; historians disagree on when exactly the ‘Battle of Verdun’ ended.
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Source D
They are marching; each step they take brings them nearer that zone where Death reigns to-day, and still they march onwards…
Then fear makes its kingdom of the living flesh. They are afraid; unquestionably they fear. But being afraid, they remain at their posts.
And they fight the flesh, compel their bodies to obedience, because that is
as it should be, and because, indeed, they are men!
Maurice Genevoix
Maurice Genevoix was du to go to an école normale supérieure but was conscripted in 1914.
He fought at Verdun.
Source E
Whoever floundered through this morass full of the shrieking
and the dying, whoever shivered in those nights, had passed the last frontier of
life, and henceforth bore deep within him the leaden memory of a place that lies
between Life and Death.
Editor of the German Reichsarchiven
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Falkenhayn: The historian Alistair Horne (1962) blamed
Falkenhayn. He believed that Germany still had a chance of winning
the war in 1916, but that “Falkenhayn squandered it at Verdun” by his
"indecisiveness [and] almost pathological scretiveness". Winston
Churchill believed that the resources Falkenhayn "lavished vainly in the
attack on Verdun" lost Germany the war.
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Russia
and the Somme: in June the 5th Army had to send some artillery to the
Brusilov Offensive, and received no more reinforcements because of the
Haig's Somme Offensive.
Abandoned the plan: Having made significant gains in February, the Germans did
NOT defend and destroy the French counter-attacks, but continued to attack with huge losses. Historians have written of the disjoint between strategy (Falkenhayn’s plan) and tactics (how the battle was conducted on the ground).
It is known that Crown Prince Wilhelm (who led the 5th Army) and the
Army Commanders did not agree with Falkenhayn’s talk of ‘bleeding France
white’. Instead, it was the French who wore down the German
attack.
Prestige: As Falkenhayn had predicted, the French came to see the battle as an issue of prestige, and the French Army was ordered to recapture Verdun at any price …
i.e. the French won the battle of attrition.
Pétain defended Verdun brilliantly. He used a narrow-gauge railway to transport food
for the men and fodder for the animals of the Second Army, but all the reinforcements and munitions had to be transported by
motorised transport along a road which became known as the
Voie Sacrée (‘Sacred Road’: because it led to death). He cared deeply for the young men going
into the battle, and introduced the
‘Noria’ (waterwheel) rotation system whereby each division only spent three days in the front line; with fewer men, the German soldiers by contrast spent long periods on the front line. Most of all Pétain did NOT, as Falkenhayn had
hoped, throw his men into deadly charges; he realised that a
mass-bombardment achieved little, and used his artillery to destroy the
enemy’s artillery, and to protect advancing troops using a
creeping barrage.
Eastern heights: The 5th Army never managed to capture the eastern heights, so the planned tactic of shelling the counter-attacking French from above was unavailable.
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On 10 Aoril 1916, Pétain issued a stirring order to the troops to resist the invader, finishing with the words on the famous recruitment poster: "Courage! We will have them"
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Did the battle win the war?
After the war, and over the coming decades, the battle was mythologised
in both France (as an inspiration to victory) and Germany (where it
helped the rise of Nazism) … but, at the time, it doesn’t seem to have had any great effect. If anything, it was the French who mutinied in 1917, and it is arguable that it was the German politicians, not the German soldiers, who folded in 1918.
Was it the start of the 'War of Attrition'? Again,
personally, I would say
not. Firstly, was it a battle of attrition? – Even if Falkenhayn wanted it to be, his commanders seem to have ignored him and gone for victories. Secondly, Haig clearly went for a victory on the first day at the Somme. In BOTH these battles commanders started talking about enemy losses
... but only when the initial breakthrough victory had failed to be achieved
(i.e. the talk of 'attrition' was more to cover their backs than a
primary strategy).
Although horrific, the battle was NOT as deadly as the War of Movement in 1914.
However:
It confirmed the ability of ordinary men on both
sides to suffer hardship and death for duty’s sake.
It confirmed the importance of motorised transport in modern warfare.
It was the first battle where
control of the skies was an issue.
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It was the first battle to use
flammenwerfer -
flame-throwers - used by the Germans on 26 February.
It was the first battle to recognise shell-shock.
One of the reasons for the Battle of the Somme was to relieve the pressure on the French at Verdun.
In France, the success of the recapture of Fort Douaumont went to the
military's heads. Ignoring Pétain's cautious/defensive approach, the 'Verdun School'
of Army leaders reasserted the value of attack ... an approach which
drove the French soldiers to mutiny in 1917.
Source F
General Hindenburg's verdict on the Battle Verdun had not fallen into our hands, and the hope of wearing down the French army in the mighty arc of fire which we had drawn round the northern and northeastern fronts of the fortress had not been realized. The battles there exhausted our troops like an open wound.
The battlefield was a regular hell and regarded as such by the troops. When I look back now, I do not hesitate to say that on
purely military grounds it would have been far better for us to have
improved our situation at Verdun by the voluntary evacuation of the ground
we had captured.
In August 1916, however, I considered I could not adopt
that course. To a large extent the flower of our best fighting troops had
been sacrificed in the enterprise. The public at home still anticipated a
glorious issue to the offensive. It would be only too easy to produce
the impression that all these sacrifices had been incurred in vain.
General von Hindenburg, Out of My Life (1921)
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Consider:
1. Consider and criticise/commend the German General
Hindenburg's assessment of the battle in Source F.
2. Verdun was called the 'meat-grinder' - use
your knowledge to explain why.
3. Write your own assessment of the battle and its
significance in 150 words. Remember to take into account the soldiers'
experiences represented in Sources D & E. How does your assessment differ from
Hindenburg's?
4 Did Falkenhayn invent the war of attrition?
- AQA-style Questions
3.
Write an account of how trench warfare on the Western Front developed into a war of attrition.
4. 'In WWI, the side which attacked, lost.' How far do you agree with this statement?
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