Verdun

by John Mosier

  Possibly, von Falkenhayn had gotten this from pondering the American Civil War, as, like all professional German officers, he had studied that conflict. Or it may have been the result of his experiences in China, or his knowledge of how the British, despite their bumbling, had finally beaten the Boers. The common thread was that in each case, your opponent simply decided to quit, came to the realization that nothing was worth the continued sacrifice.

  The generals on both sides were mesmerized by Waterloo, forgot all that had happened in the previous decade: that despite all his great victories over them, Napoleon’s adversaries had never really quit, had simply regrouped and then come back to rejoin the battle, until finally, at the end of one fine June day, the Corsican had simply given up.

  Increasingly, technology had transformed the battlefield. Everyone paid lip service to that fact, although when the war started the Germans were the only ones who had actually embraced it wholeheartedly. But no one had grasped that there was also a conceptual shift required. The route to success was not to bash your enemy in some great battle; it was to make him realize he couldn’t win, that the cost was too high.

  Of course, the difficulty was in hitting on the means to accomplish that. As with all theories, the difficulty lay in the practical application. The failures of 1914 were proof of that. Von Moltke’s ambitious scheme of a complex double envelopment of the French armies, his own more modest plan of doing the same thing at Verdun, so those grandiose and complex schemes, Conrad von Hötzendorf’s equally grandiose plans, all had been frustrated because of their very complexity.

  By contrast, the old-fashioned and rather primitive ideas of the easterners had been surprisingly successful. The plan for the May offensive had hardly been sophisticated. In that sense Joffre had the right idea; his difficulty was he lacked the means to carry it out. He had the men but not the firepower.

  Moreover, the French weren’t like the Russians, willing to take astronomical losses to no avail. At some point the army was going to crack, reach a tipping point as they threw themselves against the defensive positions without ever actually conquering them, their only achievement horrific losses.

  The trick was to find that point.

  Now, as he pondered the Western Front and how best to win the war, at some point it occurred to von Falkenhayn that there was a way to effect a solution. He was struck by a curiously destructive pattern of French behavior. In September 1914, local commanders on both sides of Verdun had simply vacated important bits of territory, the Vauquois and Les Éparges being the most significant. Nor did the GQG seem to grasp what was happening on both banks of the Meuse until it was far too late. The front to the northeast of Saint-Mihiel had been held by elements of a few reserve divisions, so his plan for the envelopment had been a victory achieved on the cheap.

  But after the fact, the French high command, having grasped the importance of what they had lost—and in some cases simply thrown away—became obsessed with recapturing the territory. The crown prince, nominal commander of the German Fifth Army, had been appalled by the extent of French losses in the repeated assaults. And that was for obscure pieces of real estate the possession of which was only of theoretical importance, if that. Yes, the Vauquois was a key position, but Les Éparges? Yet the French had lost what, the equivalent of two or three divisions of good infantry in suicidal attempts to wrest it from some aging reservists?

  That was definitely food for thought.

  What would they risk to recapture something of real importance, something whose significance even the dimmest poilu or politician could grasp?

  His troops had Verdun in a stranglehold still. The French had been totally unable to relieve the grip, had shifted their attentions to another section of the front. Why not clinch the deal?

  How would the French react if his troops were to seize a big piece, engineer another Saint-Mihiel? Based on their behavior in the past, they’d throw every last man into an effort to retake the lost ground. And since he had both sides of Verdun in his grasp, the result would be another slaughter, Les Éparges on a grand scale.

  It would be like waving a red flag at a bull. The French had spent decades building up the position, making it the center point of their defenses. Nobody in Paris had ever heard of those two buttes out in the wilds of Lorraine, but Verdun was a different matter entirely. Losing it would have an incalculable effect on their morale; it would be like the collapse of the Liège forts and Antwerp for the Belgians.

  That was the point: to destroy morale, make the French realize there was no way they could win. They couldn’t retake the Vauquois. They couldn’t retake Les Éparges. They couldn’t get back Saint-Mihiel. They couldn’t wrest the two key German positions in the Vosges away from the Germans. Their offensives in Artois and Champagne had been costly failures. They couldn’t keep von Mudra from chewing his way steadily through the Argonne.

  At some point, the French would realize there was no way they could win, that all they could accomplish was killing off their infantry. That was the tipping point: the realization that a blank wall was staring them in the face.

  Of course, it was possible that there was a learning curve, that having taken the losses they had been taking these past months, someone in the government would come to his senses and simply walk away. That was the rational decision, and it might happen.

  But if they did, that would come to the same end: the realization that there was no way France could win this war. Besides, if they walked away from Verdun, refused the bait, he doubted the country would stand for it. The government would fall—once again—and finally, eventually, a new government would become sensible, agree to a peace. But then again, if they tried their best, there was no way they could win, and the loss would be an even greater catastrophe. They’d realize the only way out was to quit the war. 1915 wasn’t like 1870; they could come to reasonable terms.

  But time was of the essence. As the French campaigns unfolded elsewhere, it was easy to see Joffre’s idea. Assemble a gigantic army and try to break through the German line. And at some point in 1916 he’d have enough British troops to manage it, probably by early summer. The disaster of the spring offensive in the Woëvre had probably made him realize that early spring was not good, and the GQG had squandered its best shot during the summer, when von Mudra had beaten Sarrail to the punch in the Argonne.

  No, the thing was clear enough. Joffre would lick his wounds and wait until he had enough British troops to mount a huge offensive of the same sort that he’d been trying steadily since December 1914. It was predictable, unimaginative, a useless wastage of valuable infantry.

  So there was a window of opportunity. Wait until the ground was good and hard; then just move in for the key forts of the right bank, attack them directly. Winter was good, because it would make it next to impossible for the French to dig in. Not that they’d try. They’d panic, abandon half their positions, and then mount a desperate attempt to get them back. That was the pattern that had been established.

  The best-case scenario: a whole section of the front would simply cave in, and the Germans would split the French armies in two, and drive deep into the heart of France. The worst case: Joffre’s troops would simply move their defensive line forward, sit there and let the French destroy themselves. Either way, at some point they’d come to their senses and realize they couldn’t win.

  THE SECRET

  Now, to the outsider—to someone in London or Paris—there was an obvious flaw in von Falkenhayn’s notion. It was like the mice talking about belling the cat.

  Verdun was the largest and most powerful assemblage of fortifications in the world. The reinforced concrete carapaces of its key forts were proof against the heaviest German shells. In front of the outer ring was a dense network of lesser defensive positions: three lines of trenches, anchored by concrete blockhouses. In fact, Verdun was the only part of the French side of the Western Front where the
defensive network was comparable to the German one. It was anchored by Douaumont, the largest concrete structure in the world, a position that was the textbook definition of impregnable.

  So how on earth did von Falkenhayn think his plan would succeed?

  The answer is as simple as it is incredible. Gabriel Bichet sums the matter up succinctly and bitterly.

  Douaumont illustrates in effect the errors of the French high command in the matter of fortifications. Not only were the forts not activated during the mobilization in 1914, but a year later, 5 August 1915, a decree practically prescribed their dismantling. In virtue of that decree, the independent fortified complexes were suppressed, integrated into the general disposition of the armies. As a consequence, their armaments, their provisions, were withdrawn. Theoretically, this was done chiefly to furnish the field armies with their artillery—one uses the word as an alibi—because that was lacking. Practically, that recovery only produced a number of guns very insufficient to meet the needs, difficult to adapt to service in the field. But as opposed to that, the fortifications lost the totality of their efficacy.

  In the forts, no more garrisons: the only thing left in place were the guns in the turrets, weapons with a short range, not usable elsewhere. Finally, orders were given to prepare mines in all the forts, so they could be destroyed in the case of an enemy advance.11

  So von Falkenhayn knew beforehand that his troops could simply walk in and take the forts—provided they could break through the French defenses in front of them.

  Based on the French experiences, that was still a tall order. The first line of trenches was nearly ten kilometers north of Douaumont, and that was only the first line. Getting past all three, and then penetrating the ring of the outer forts, would be a success all on its own, and the GQG reckoned it was impossible.

  But there again, von Falkenhayn had reason to be confident. Over on the left bank, in the Argonne, von Mudra’s reliance on massive firepower had been steadily forcing the French back, as their divisional commanders admitted. But thus far, von Mudra’s high-explosive offensives had been choked off, owing to the needs of the gunners in other parts of the front.

  But there was nothing wrong with the concept: Simply scale it up, use even more heavy guns, and the infantry would be able to work its way through the devastation before the French could rush in reinforcements. Uniquely on the Western Front, the German lines were closer to the outer ring of forts than those forts were to where the bulk of the French troops were.

  And von Falkenhayn’s staff, working with Fifth Army, was proposing an artillery barrage in depth. The massive arsenal of heavy guns the plan called for required prepared sites, ammunition bunkers, tethering points for the observation balloons, quarters for the gun crews. And a great deal of concrete.

  In the late summer, Captain Hans Marguerre, an engineering officer, began laying out an enormous development deep in the forest to the northeast of Verdun. Ultimately Camp Marguerre would cover some 50,000 square meters, a sprawling complex of concrete buildings: living quarters, ammunition bunkers, repair facilities.

  Marguerre started, sensibly enough, with a concrete plant, so the building materials could be fabricated on-site. Although rarely if ever mentioned by historians, the remains of Camp Marguerre still exist, and we know from contemporary photographs that buildings were going up by August of 1915.12

  By September, the Germans had set up a 38-centimeter gun in the Bois de Warphemont. Guns of this size were hardly mobile. The site was approximately 25 kilometers to the northeast of Verdun, slightly to the south of the village of Mangiennes, a few kilometers outside of the tiny hamlet of Duzy.13

  “Big Max,” as it was known, fired a 750-kilogram shell containing 183 kilograms of explosive over a range of 35 kilometers, so it could easily range over the entire right bank. The dense forest shielded the construction from aerial surveillance, and indeed it remained unscathed throughout the war, and was finally abandoned in October 1918.

  Now, this installation was a serious affair. The gun itself was mounted on a circular concrete platform about 20 meters in diameter and five meters deep, enabling it to have a wide angle of fire horizontally. The cavity is now partly filled with water, so it is difficult to give its exact dimensions, but the installation is impressive. In addition to the enormous concrete base and pit for the gun, there are three separate bunkers to store the ammunition, and a narrow-gauge trolley line to convey the assembled shells to the gun.

  Once the installation was complete, in October, the gun began firing shells. As was often the case when it came to heavy artillery, although the French observers realized what was being lobbed at them, they apparently didn’t understand the procedure, chalked up the shelling as yet another instance of German barbarism, since many of the shells landed in the town itself.

  Unfortunately, no one bothered to keep a chart of the hits, so the information is scanty. But we do know that one of them hit Fort Vaux, knocking a good-size chunk out of it—and confirming what the engineers already knew: that even the heaviest artillery was not going to make much of a dent on the newer forts.

  The others hit in areas likely to be used by troops moving up into the heights of the right bank. This detail is usually overlooked. But troops coming up from either the south or the west, headed for the heights on the right bank, would have to go directly through the town itself. The relatively steep slopes of the heights looking down on the city meant that shells fired from any reasonable distance would pass harmlessly over troops as they ascended the heights. This natural feature of the terrain, which gunners referred to as a dead angle, meant that the only effective way to interdict reinforcements moving up to the defensive positions on the heights was to shell the city streets. That accounts for where the 38-centimeter shells landed: the gunners were checking the range. After firing 16 rounds, the shelling stopped—until 21 February 1916, when the gun began firing again.

  A brief consideration of the distances explains the reason why the gunners were so interested in the environs of the town. The French decree of 5 August meant that the forts were not only stripped of their artillery, but were abandoned. It was a good ten kilometers as a crow flies from Douaumont to the northernmost command post of the infantry in the forward positions. So the infantry holding the trenches in front of the forts would be left up in the air, deprived of any artillery support, since the forward trenches would be out of range of French guns. Nor would there be any counter battery fire from the French side: minus the observers in the fort and the heavy guns behind them, the distances were simply too great.

  The abandonment of the forts meant that instead of sheltering infantry in reserve behind the initial position, reinforcements would be located another ten or more kilometers behind the outer forts. The infantry would have to make its way up into the heights either from the town or from positions along the river to the north of it—two equally unpleasant prospects, if there was an in-depth artillery barrage.

  And the Germans were definitely planning for such an event. In addition to two more 38-centimeter weapons, whose positioning required the longest lead time, they assembled 11 of the Austrian 305-centimeter weapons, and 13 of the big 42-centimeter German ones.14 Nor was that all. In addition, Fifth Army deployed 400 howitzers of 15 and 21 centimeters, and another 100 howitzers in smaller sizes, together with about 100 guns of 10, 12, and 13 centimeters. It was a vast arsenal, but the plan was to saturate the entire area in depth, simply annihilate the defenders in one massive blow, and make sure that the attacking infantry could get through the defensive positions well before a counterattack could develop.

  THE PLAN BEGINS TO EMERGE

  The staff of the Fifth Army had been agitating for another attack since the success of the Saint-Mihiel offensive in September 1914. They kept pointing to the way von Mudra was steadily chewing his way through the Argonne. By late August, he had basically forced the French out of the forest proper. T
hey were hanging on to positions on the southern edge, and instead of reinforcing the troops there, Joffre had shifted his attentions up to the northwest, and was obviously planning another senseless attack in Champagne and Artois.

  That attack was duly made in September, with pretty much the same lack of results as all the others. Strategically, the offensive was senseless. There was no important objective behind that section of the front. All the Allies could accomplish was to run up the body count the same way they had been managing it so far. The point, insofar as there was one, was the Allied delusion that they were killing lots of Germans, when in reality it was the other way around.

  But the lack of any meaningful objective meant that when the attacks failed, they could quit, claiming they had done something important. And in that sense, time was on their side. The French and the British, with their vast colonial possessions, had unlimited manpower, and thus far it appeared that they were nearly as callous as the Russians about squandering it.

  But these bloody French efforts on the flanks of Verdun were instructive. At some point—after they had carelessly thrown them away—the French high command realized they were important, mounted attack after attack in a desperate and determined effort to recapture them.

  And now, in August, the Germans were seeing a repetition of that on a grand scale, with the virtual abandonment of the Verdun forts. This was the war for the buttes on a grand scale indeed. There was no way the French could bear the loss of Verdun. The army might be willing to write it off, but the population at large, the government, wouldn’t stand for it, just as Poincaré had told Colonel Herbillon in July 1915.

  So the opportunity was too good to pass up, and the staff of the Fifth Army was convinced that they had the formula for success, and would simply repeat what von Mudra had been doing in the Argonne—what to a lesser degree von Mackensen’s Ninth Army had done in Galicia in May: a stupefying artillery attack that would completely erase the enemy’s positions, so that the infantry would simply be moving through the ruins of the enemy positions.