The Battle of VerdunRowman & Littlefield, 1 เม.ย. 2016 - 272 หน้า The Great War ate men, machines, and money without mercy or remission. At the end of 1915, the German army chief of staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, believed he knew how to finally kill the beast and win the war. On Christmas day, 1915, Falkenhayn sent a letter to Kaiser Wilhelm II proposing a campaign to demoralize Britain, whose industrial might and maritime power were the foundation of the alliance against Germany, while also knocking France out of the war. He wrote that the “strain on France has reached breaking point …. If we succeed 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.” His plan was to attack a single point the French perceived as so vital that they would be compelled “to throw in every man they have.” Falkenhayn concluded: “If they do so, the forces of France will bleed to death” or, as he put it later, the “French army would be bled white.” Falkenhayn’s target of choice was Verdun, a place that, throughout virtually all of the history of Europe, had been a fortress. Located within a loop of the Meuse River, it occupied a strategic blocking position in the Meuse River valley. As recently as the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, Verdun had been the last of the French fortified cities to hold out against the German onslaught. After that war, it had been vastly augmented, so that it was now a circle of detached forts surrounding a central citadel. The town of Verdun itself, also fortified, was likewise encircled by forts distributed in a five-mile radius. The combined massive complex guarded not only passage through the river valley region, but also dominated a key railroad junction leading to points south, southwest, west, and north in France. Along with the related, but separate, Battle of the Somme, Verdun was among the most deadly battles in history. To understand this struggle is to understand all of World War I, including the principal stated motive of Woodrow Wilson for bringing the United States into the “European War” in April 1917. For him, Verdun proved both France’s determination to win at all costs and the likelihood that, without help, it would be defeated nevertheless. The unparalleled barbarity of Verdun, a product of the Old World, convinced the American president that only the principal nation of the New World could finally alter the grim course of human destiny. While many, both in 1916 and in the decades that followed, saw Verdun as a bloody monument to the inescapable futility of war, Wilson saw in it a hope for fighting what he would call a “war to end all wars.” |
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1 | |
25 | |
Chapter 3The Generals | 50 |
Chapter 4First Blood | 76 |
Chapter 5Blood Judgment | 98 |
Chapter 6The Matter Is Serious | 114 |
Chapter 7The Guns of February | 130 |
Chapter 8Los | 143 |
Chapter 12The Fall of Fort Douaumont | 188 |
Chapter 13Now Everything Is Going to Be All Right | 203 |
Chapter 14Reversals of Fortune | 215 |
Chapter 15Fight for a Dead Man | 231 |
Chapter 16They Shall Not Pass | 247 |
Chapter 17A Regular Hell | 263 |
Chapter 18The First Offensive Battle of Verdun | 278 |
Epilogue | 291 |
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advance Allies artillery barrage assault attrition August Bapst battalion Battle of Verdun Bois des Caures bombardment captured Castelnau casualties Charles Mangin Chasseurs Christmas Memorandum combat corps Côte counterattack Crown Prince Wilhelm defense Division Douaumont Émile Driant enemy entire Erich von Falkenhayn explosive February 21 Fifth Army fighting fire flamethrower flank forces Fort Douaumont Fort Vaux fortifications forts France Franco-Prussian French army French artillery French high command French lines front line Galliéni garrison German army German commanders Germany’s gunners heavy artillery Herr historians Joffre’s Joseph Joffre killed Krupp Langle de Cary left bank Les Éparges Lost History machine gun Mangin Marne Meuse Mort Homme Mosier Nivelle no-man’s-land offensive officer ordered Philippe Pétain Plan XVII poilus Price of Glory regiment right bank Robert Nivelle Samogneux Schlieffen Plan Schmidt von Knobelsdorf shells soldiers Souville strategic tactical territory troops Vaux Verdun sector victory village warfare weapon Western Front WIKIMEDIA Woëvre World