On 21 February 1916 the German Fifth Army opened its offensive against the French fortified region of Verdun, on the Meuse in northeastern France. A bombardment that began at 7:15 in the morning pounded the French lines for most of the day, and in the late afternoon German assault troops moved forward into the shattered woods north of the city. Four days later they took Fort Douaumont almost without a fight. The battle that began that morning lasted until 18 December 1916 and became one of the longest and costliest of the First World War.
Operation Gericht
The plan came from the chief of the German General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn. The operation was code-named Gericht, usually translated as “Judgment”. The attack itself was entrusted to the Fifth Army of Crown Prince Wilhelm, the Kaiser's eldest son.1
Why Falkenhayn chose Verdun is still debated. According to HistoryOfWar.org, Falkenhayn believed that the French would throw every soldier they could find into the defense of Verdun rather than let it fall, and he meant the battle to be one of attrition. The Verdun Memorial notes that this aim comes from Falkenhayn's postwar memoirs and is still disputed by historians: some see a battle of attrition, others an attempt to force the French out of Verdun and open the way to peace talks, and whatever Falkenhayn himself intended, taking the city was the goal his subordinates adopted. The German Historical Museum describes a double aim: either a breakthrough or the breaking of France's will to fight.2
The attack was due on 12 February, but bad weather held it up for more than a week. From January 1916 French reports on German activity grew alarming. Even so, most of the guns in the Verdun forts had been removed in 1915, and Fort Douaumont, the largest of them, was held only by a small garrison of about fifty men.3
The first day
The bombardment began at 7:15 a.m.. The number of German guns is given differently. The Verdun Memorial counts nearly 1,200 pieces including trench mortars, HistoryOfWar.org 1,200 guns, and the French Ministry of the Armed Forces about 850 German guns against 270 French on the main sector of the attack. According to the Verdun Memorial, General Passaga said he heard the bombardment at his command post in the Vosges, 160 km away.4
At about 4 p.m. the guns lifted, and a limited German infantry assault followed.5
The hardest fight of the first two days was in the Bois des Caures, a wood held by the 56th and 59th Chasseur battalions under Colonel Émile Driant, about 1,200 men according to the French ministry and the Verdun Memorial. Driant had warned that an attack was coming. His men held the wood through the night, but on 22 February, outflanked on both sides, the survivors fell back, and Driant was killed during the withdrawal. Only about 110 to 120 chasseurs got away.6
Douaumont and Pétain
By 24 February the French first and second positions had fallen. On 25 February a small party of German infantry got into Fort Douaumont and captured it with its skeleton garrison. The capture was celebrated in Germany as a great victory, though the German Historical Museum notes that it was of little military importance.7
The next day General Philippe Pétain was given command of the defense. He fed fresh divisions into the line in rotation, and the road from Bar-le-Duc became the lifeline of the battle, later called the Voie Sacrée, the Sacred Way. By the end of February the German advance had stalled: the attackers had outrun much of their artillery, and French guns on the west bank of the Meuse were firing into their flank.8
Ten months at Verdun
The battle went on long after the first week. The fighting spread to the west bank of the Meuse, where the heights of Mort Homme and Hill 304 were fought over for months, and Fort Vaux fell in June. In July the German offensive was scaled back to meet the Allied attack on the Somme. French counteroffensives retook Fort Douaumont on 24 October and Fort Vaux in early November, and by 18 December, when the battle ended, much of the lost ground was back in French hands.9
The losses are disputed. HistoryOfWar.org cites totals of 378,000 French and 329,000 German casualties from some sources and 543,000 and 434,000 from others. The Verdun Memorial counts more than 163,000 French dead and 216,000 wounded and 143,000 German dead and 190,000 wounded, nearly 700,000 casualties in all. The German Historical Museum writes that about 250,000 men died on each side. The sources do not agree on the totals. The whole battle is told in our article on Verdun.10
Also on this day
- 1849: Battle of Gujrat. East India Company forces fought a Sikh army rebelling against British control of the Sikh state at Gujrat, in the Punjab, in the Second Anglo-Sikh War.
