In fact, the failure of the German army to take Paris was seen as a failure and Moltke was held responsible. As a strategist, Falkenhayn was considered to be cautious and a man who did not want to take risks. This approach was shown in the campaign on the Eastern Front. General von Luderndorff had developed a plan that, if successful, would have trapped and effectively destroyed the Russian army on that front.
As a result, he refused to support Luderndorff and gave his support to a more conservative plan that gave the Russian army plenty of room to evade the German army — and it gave the German army room to withdraw if it went wrong. Luderndorff did not forgive Falkenhayn for rejecting his plan. However, Falkenhayn believed that the war was going to be won or lost on the Western Front.
He believed that he could launch a decisive blow against the French and destroy their esprit de corps by taking out the forts in Verdun that had always offered France defence from attack. These forts had survived intact throughout the German attack. In , Falkenhayn believed that they were ripe for attack. His plan was nothing more than a war of attrition — to wear down the defences of the French and bleed their army white.
Falkenhayn believed that if Verdun was captured, then the whole of France would surrender as Verdun, in the minds of the French, was impregnable. In fact, by the time the battle had ended, German casualties were horrific.
If the French had been bled white, so had the German army. The German army never fully recovered from Verdun and after the war Falkenhayn was blamed for this — especially his overwhelming confidence that his strategy would work as a letter he wrote to William II indicated. Ironically, he found success here conquering the Roumanian army and entering Bucharest in December In late, German General Erich von Falkenhayn wrote a memorandum to Kaiser Wilhelm II in which he argued that the war would only be won by inflicting mass casualties on the French army and sapping its will to fight, which would then force the British to sue for peace.
Rather than outmaneuvering them or breaking through their lines, Falkenhayn planned to lure the French into a trap that would force them to throw troops into a battle of attrition where the conditions favored the Germans. French soldiers coming out of their trenches. Credit: Public Domain. The Germans selected Verdun as their target not only because it was nestled in a salient, or bulge, in the Western Front, but also because it was steeped in political history.
Falkenhayn knew that any threat to it was likely to be fiercely contested, since its fall would come as a serious blow to French morale. Interestingly, the city also had sentimental value for the Germans thanks to A.
French soldiers in front of the Voevre. Battle of Verdun. A staggering 2. Despite the massive engineering project going on right under their noses, the French were largely unprepared for a German attack.
The forts surrounding Verdun had seen little action during the early stages of the war, and many of their garrisons and artillery pieces had been moved to hotter sectors. The French managed to make last-minute preparations after poor weather delayed the German onslaught, but they still found themselves on their back foot during the early stages of the battle.
By February 24—just three days after the initial bombardment—the Germans had advanced several miles and overrun the first two French defensive lines. On February 25, German forces approached Fort Douaumont, the most sprawling of the several dozen French bastions surrounding Verdun. Douaumont would have been all but impregnable under normal circumstances, but its garrison had been reduced to just 57 men in the months before the battle.
After gaining access to the fort through an undefended passage, a small party of Germans led by Lt. Eugen Radtke was able to wander its subterranean chambers and round up French defenders one after the other. They soon captured the entire garrison without suffering a single casualty or firing a shot. It would take eight months and tens of thousands of casualties before the French finally recaptured the fort in October Due to a lack of secure railways and constant enemy bombardments, the French were forced to rely on a lone, foot-wide road to supply their stand at Verdun.
Upon taking command of French forces in late-February , General Philippe Petain took steps to keep the lifeline open.
Troops were put to work laying gravel and making repairs to the roadway, and a fleet of 3, military and civilian trucks was marshaled to serve as transport vehicles. During just one week of operations, more than , French troops and 25, tons of munitions, food and supplies were ferried to the front.
Petain also used the road to rotate more than 40 divisions in and out of the Verdun sector, which kept the French troops fresh and helped combat the effects of shell shock. View of Verdun after eight months of bombing.
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