His goal was for the French to be forced to commit so many troops defending their positions at Verdun as to tap their few remaining reserves. In it he documented his plan to launch an assault, based on massive artillery bombardment followed by infantry attacks, on the French. In December, 1915, the Chief of the German General Staff, Erich von Kalkenhayn, wrote a document known to history as the Christmas Memo. The German battle plan was intended to kill the enemy, rather than gain territory The lack of railway transport had delayed the removal of the remaining guns within the RFV.Įrich von Falkenhayn planned the battle to be one of attrition to cripple the French Army.
Earlier fighting had all but isolated the RFV, with only one light railway in place to provide ammunition and supplies to the garrison, which maintained sufficient supplies for six months. Besides the forts and reinforced batteries there was a surrounding maze of machine gun emplacements. The supporting forts and emplacements were on the hilly ground which surrounded Verdun sur Meuse, both east and west of the Meuse River. Several of the forts were manned with maintenance crews, and Forts Vaux and Douaumont had explosive charges emplaced to destroy them if the Germans attempted to advance.
The 18 forts and batteries were stripped until only about 300 guns and minimal ammunition remained by the end of 1915. The French withdrew many of their own heavy guns and field artillery from the Verdun forts. During the first year of the war, before it shifted to trench warfare along the Western Front, the French recognized their enemy’s heavy guns, some as large as those found on battleships, were effective in reducing fortified positions. The forts which made up the Fortified Region of Verdun (Region Fortifee de Verdun, or RFV) had been built over the years, many of them modernized prior to World War One.
1st battle of verdun series#
Verdun was a series of forts and battery emplacements which defended each other Fortresses and fortified batteries on the hills on both sides of the Meuse River surrounded Verdun. The French decided to stand firm because it was important symbolically. They were in the process of doing so when the Germans attacked. When early battles in World War I revealed fortifications unsuccessful in resisting German attacks, the French decided to remove the heavy guns emplaced at Verdun and destroy the forts, denying them to the Germans. They continued to reinforce the defensive emplacements in the early years of the 20 th century. In the 1600s a defensive citadel was erected in the center of the city, and in the 19 th century additional fortifications were built around the town. Attila had failed to capture it in the fifth century. Verdun was an ancient fortress in French history. French troops move forward to attack during the nearly year-long Battle of Verdun. It was one of the costliest battles of human history, as well as one of the longest. For the French the battle was a victory, because they defeated the German attacks to reduce the salient in the front lines which was anchored by the fortresses ringing Verdun, which the French had decided to abandon and destroy before the Germans attacked it. Over 300,000 men on both sides died, an average of 3,000 killed per month. Lasting just three days less than ten months, the Battle of Verdun was a ghastly bloodletting between the German Army and the French Army in 1916.