Verdun

by John Mosier

  THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOSS OF SURPRISE

  Like any document, von Falkenhayn’s letter has a subtext of the sort that contemporary literary theorists are always stretching to extract. But in this case the subtext seems straightforward enough: there was a narrow window of opportunity for the Germans, and their only real chance at winning was to exploit it.

  Everyone knew that the British forces in France were steadily expanding, that the shipments of munitions from the United States were increasing. The thousands and thousands of hectares of fertile Ukrainian land that the easterners were conquering would suffice to keep them in food indefinitely. But manpower and armaments were a different matter.

  If von Falkenhayn had been as calculating as his critics and subsequent historians (the former and the latter being the same) claim, arguing that he could win the war by killing more Frenchmen, he was a remarkably stupid fellow: the manpower resources of the two Allied empires was even greater than that of Russia. Germany’s only real hope lay in the next few months.

  That militated for an attack at the earliest possible moment, but the weather refused to cooperate. January came and went, and by February the French were alarmed. Although the initial German success was such that there is often an undercurrent in accounts of the battle suggesting that the French were surprised, even by then they had no idea the Germans would attack the right bank at all. That idea is yet another part of the propagandistic narrative of the war, in which the only German successes (which, according to the Allies, were very limited) came as the result of surprise or some sort of wickedness, such as poison gas or the violation of Belgian neutrality.

  On the contrary, both the local commanders and their superiors had a wealth of information indicating that the attack was imminent. As the analyst who made a careful examination of the French intelligence data makes clear,

  Not only were the troops holding the Verdun front perfectly aware of the imminent nature of the German attack, but in addition (and this is much more interesting), the officers had a perfect account of certain details of the actions along the front in their sector, multiple indices received by ground observers who give us proof that is undeniable.32

  Of course, one problem inherent in depending on ground-based observation was that the observers were unable to look down into the area behind the lines, so they couldn’t see for themselves what was being built where.

  From the very start of the war, the Germans had made heavy use of aircraft to direct artillery fire. One French gunner described this technique with a certain professional admiration: “The enemy has perfected his aerial arm to the degree of virtuosity, and unfortunately our seventy-fives are almost useless against them.”33 Very early on, both the French and the Germans made heavy use of aerial photography.

  The problem on the French side was not, therefore, an absence of photographs that would reveal in detail the enormous expansion of German positions and hence allow for accurate counter battery fire. It was a serious lack of men to interpret them. Nor were the divisional staffs trained to make use of them. In fact, it was not until February 1916 that the GQG got around to creating topographic sections even at the corps level.34

  Failures of this sort make pretty clear the extent to which neither Joffre nor his subordinates really grasped the nature of modern warfare, just as they never really understood the employment of heavy artillery. At a postwar conference arranged for Swiss army officers, Henry Corda explained that “the most important tactical lessons of Verdun concern artillery and aviation”; having failed to grasp the importance of either one, Verdun was a rude shock that promptly became a disaster.35

  However, within the framework of a somewhat stunted imagination, Chantilly did what it could. Joffre was concerned sufficiently with Verdun to visit it once a month during 1915. In January 1916 he was reassuring his nervous subordinates that all was well, and he was worried enough about the offensive to order the Thirtieth Army Corps, consisting of the 39th and 153rd divisions, to move up in mid-February. When the offensive was launched the forces were still deploying at Bar-le-Duc, and thus were 53 kilometers south of the city of Verdun, with the only way to get there a narrow country road. In the event, most of them went into combat on foot.

  Given the forces at Verdun, this was a substantial reinforcement. The left bank was held by the Seventh Army Corps, but its two infantry divisions, the 29th and the 67th, had only arrived there in early February. Curiously, given the section of the front they were holding, corps headquarters was all the way down the Meuse at Souilly, 22 kilometers from Avocourt. By contrast, the headquarters of the entire German Fifth Army, downstream from Verdun at Stenay, was only a kilometer or so farther from their side of the front. French corps commanders, removed from their troops both physically and psychologically, were simply too far back to be able to direct their units in the event of an attack.

  On the right bank, the main section of the front was held by the Thirtieth Army Corps. This unit was a considerably more powerful corps than its colleague on the left bank, as it consisted of the 14th, 51st, and 72nd divisions, plus the 212th Brigade of territorial troops. Its headquarters was thus considerably closer to the front, as it was located at Fort Souville. At less than ten kilometers behind his troops, General Chrétien was thus in theory able to take command in the event of an attack, but his proximity to the front meant that he was also well within the range of the German guns. But again, these troops had arrived at the front only in the last days of January, were still discovering the nature of the defensive network.

  Below the Thirtieth Corps, the front was held by the 2nd, which was very much a mixed bag. The 3rd and 4th divisions were, as their numbers indicate, first-line units; but the 312th was composed of men who really had no business being in uniform, and, like their partners up north, this corps also had a brigade of territorial troops (in this case the 211th).

  When one ponders the dates for the arrival of all these units, one deduction seems difficult to avoid: If the German attack had been delivered on 21 January instead of 21 February, the outcome would have been completely different. In those first weeks of 1916, the GQG did actually make attempts to reinforce the front, one reason why Colonel Herbillon was so sanguine in his assurances to the government, why he soothed their nerves by saying that at most the Germans would penetrate the front lines, just as the French had done in Champagne in the fall.

  ON BALANCE

  The weather had shrunk the German window considerably, thus reducing the amount of time they had to effect the great sea change von Falkenhayn desired. At best he had five months, but now he only had four—a significant reduction. A less cautious general would not have delayed, would have said weather be damned.

  On the other hand, the fact that the French were moving reinforcements into Verdun was by no means bad for the plan. On the contrary, it meant their resources were already stretched, even before the fighting started.

  Once again, it must be pointed out that the French problem in manpower is not very well understood. As far as men and guns went, Joffre absolutely did not have the resources necessary to mount an in-depth defense. Indeed, this is the point of departure Pétain takes in his own account of the 1916 fighting.

  This rather dry and laconic accounting strikes to the root of France’s problem. In a few sparse pages the marshal lays bare the roots of the stunted final victory.

  At the end of 1915, Pétain observes, six Belgian and 39 British divisions were holding a 180-kilometer stretch of the front.36 Against those 45 divisions, the Germans opposed only 32. Moreover, there were four French divisions in the Belgian sector, and 14 in the British, leaving only 87 for the other 500 kilometers of the front.

  So, sensibly enough, the French tried to keep a substantial force in reserve, the result being that the front line was actually only held by 58 divisions, since 29 were being held back. Although the Germans had roughly the same number of divisions opposite the Fre
nch (80 to 87), their superiority in armaments and in concrete, their methodical construction of successive lines of defenses, meant that they could afford to hold far fewer units in reserve. The end result was that when units holding the fronts were considered, the Germans actually outnumbered their opponents decisively: Pétain’s estimate is 70 to 58.

  Now, applied to Verdun, what the French weakness in manpower meant was this: at any one point on the line, the Germans would always have a local superiority. The only way the French could match that was to commit their reserve units. But the more they committed in one area, the less they had available in the others.

  The situation was exacerbated by the asymmetry in firepower. In consequence, the Germans didn’t need some crushing superiority in men; that was more than compensated for by the artillery available to them.

  At Verdun, the German Fifth Army had carefully assembled the greatest concentration of modern heavy weapons that had yet been seen: 246 15-centimeter howitzers, 140 of the extremely effective 21-centimeter howitzers, and thirty of the superheavy guns in sizes greater than 28 centimeters, for a total of 800 pieces, none of them the relatively ineffectual 7.7-centimeter field gun.

  In sheer numbers, the French situation seems reasonable: over 600 guns of all types on both banks, evenly divided between left and right, while on the right bank there were approximately 100 pieces of heavy artillery.37

  However, the raw numbers conceal a horrifying imbalance. What the positions on the right bank actually consisted of was 245 of the 75-millimeter field guns, 35 of the elephantine long-recoil 155-millimeter howitzers, and 34 genuinely heavy weapons of various types and vintages, whose chief characteristic was their enormous weight and consequent immobility. The rest consisted of antiques from the 1870s. Basically, without stretching the point, when it came to heavy weapons, the French were outgunned by the ratio of about 20 to 1, which was definitely not good.

  But in January 1916, that was basically all the French had available, in terms of both firepower and men. On the key 10– to 12-kilometer section of the right bank where the commanders supposed, correctly, that the main thrust of the attack would fall, there were 12 battalions distributed in centers of resistance (reinforced concrete shelters and command posts). As the GQG reckoned such things, this was an ample force. The weakness was of the usual sort: of the 131 field guns deployed there, 42 were antiques from the last century, while of the 140 guns that could technically be called heavy artillery, only 14 were in any sense modern, which suggests the true nature of the disadvantage.38

  Compounding the problem was the fact, carefully concealed until long afterward, that the defensive positions on the right bank were very sketchy. When Colonel Herbillon had assured the government that at most the Germans would get into the first line of trenches, he forgot to add—probably because he didn’t know himself—that there really wasn’t much else on the right bank behind the first line.

  As Pétain recalls in his typically understated and laconic way: “Between the forts and beyond, everything was in a state of dilapidation. Trenches had collapsed, the network of barbed-wire . . . was in pieces, roads had turned into swamps, and matériel lay scattered about.”39

  There were bits and pieces of a second line, but the third line was nonexistent, just marks on a map. If the Germans broke through the first line of trenches, could work past the outermost forts, the defenders would be in a very awkward position indeed. Lacking mobile artillery with the correct angles of fire for the heights of the Meuse, and heavy guns in general, they would be forced to resort to the same tactics they had been using since the start of the war—again, not a very promising position to be in.

  So although the plan was a gamble, a calculated risk that the Germans could make the French quit the war before the lumbering Joffre and his dim-witted British colleague managed to organize their great summer offensive, it was by no means an act of desperation. That the plan failed to bring about the desired results in the predicted time does not mean it was doomed, or that it was seriously flawed.

  Or, to put it another way, it was no worse than Isoroku Yamamoto’s plan of attack at Pearl Harbor was a gamble. The Japanese naval genius was dubious about the outcome of a war with America, which was why he gambled so recklessly.

  Moreover, von Falkenhayn’s plan came considerably closer to success than Yamamoto’s. Verdun really did shake the French government to the foundations, set off a chain of events that reduced the country to dire straits indeed. And as France went down, it took Great Britain with it.

  Prince Barnhard of the Netherlands, speaking of Operation Market Garden in September 1944, remarked sarcastically that his country could never withstand the “luxury” of another such “success.”40 Another Verdun would have destroyed France, and it was no real fault of the German chief of staff that finally, the fates conspired against him.

  But then again, as Napoleon observed, victory can depend on a dog or a goose.

  8

  The Most Famous Battle:

  February–March 1916

  Frenchmen love an heroic legend.

  —Paul Lintier1

  The German assault began on 21 February 1916, with a massive artillery barrage of the sort that nowadays we associate almost exclusively with the Great War. The geysers of the earth and the moonscape of craters that resulted are visually striking. To a great extent they epitomize the war.

  In actuality, however, 21 February was the first of the great artillery attacks. But then, this bleak February day saw a number of other firsts as well. For the first time, tactical bombing was coordinated with ground fire. In the infantry assault that followed, German troops appeared for the first time wearing their now famous steel helmets, and, more horrifyingly, began the first systematic and widespread use of the flamethrower.

  The new hardware was accompanied by new tactics. As with much else about this war, hardly any of this penetrated, although in defense of the French, it must be said that the chaos of the opening battle and the virtual annihilation of the defenders were a considerable obstacle to understanding what had happened.

  THE BARRAGE

  Although the barren and cratered landscape is probably the most memorable image of the war, the process that led to that end is imperfectly understood, even today. A few Allied officers had grasped the point of the tactic early on, even though the scale was in no way commensurate with what happened at Verdun in 1916. On 8 September 1914, General Fayolle had confided to his diary, “The method of the Germans is simple: to eliminate our ability to respond through their heavy artillery fire.”2 It was only necessary to paralyze your enemy, not to destroy him outright.

  Moreover, such total destruction was not a very likely outcome. Although direct hits from explosive shells landing on earthen works at steep angles could destroy them, just as shells bursting in air directly above the trench could kill or maim the soldiers huddled there, direct hits of that sort demanded a level of precision that was extremely difficult to achieve at ranges of 5,000 and 6,000 meters or more. Statistically, if you fired enough shells, some of them would land on the trench; some would fall short of the target; others would land behind it. Indirect fire at any distance was not in any way the same as aiming a rifle or a pistol. Small variations in the actual amount of explosive in the shell, the condition of the barrel, even currents of air, all had an effect. This was so even if the gunners were using modern guns with hydraulic recoil mechanisms. With the older weapons, putting accuracy and indirect fire in the same sentence is an oxymoron.

  One of the calculations artillery officers made was to try to figure out how many shells had to be fired at any given target in order to destroy it, and what sort of target they could actually destroy. Trenches were one thing; reinforced concrete bunkers, often dug into the ground, were quite another, and the modern forts were basically an impossibility, as the Germans had discovered in their sporadic shelling during 1915.

 
The difficulty, then, lay in the damage done by all the shells that missed, as the majority of them did. The craters that would now lie in front of the first line of the defensive trenches would create serious obstacles for the advancing infantry. They had to proceed from their lines to the enemy lines on foot. Fire enough shells to obliterate your opponent’s initial positions, and your infantry’s already hazardous and physically exhausting trek would degenerate into the worst sort of obstacle course.

  Although we often speak in a way that implies that each side had one line of trenches, as we have seen, there were supposed to be three successive lines, each anchored by strongpoints that were impervious to artillery fire. So the shells that landed between the successive lines only made the assault even more difficult.

  Given the large number of shells that missed their targets entirely, an artillery barrage could almost be said to have been a case where the cure was worse than the disease—as far as the infantry were concerned. They had to work their way through this obstacle course in order to occupy the enemy trenches. The defenders only had to emerge from their strongpoints and shoot them down as they clambered across.

  It should also be remembered that although vast craters are visually impressive, most of them represent misses. When a shell explodes, the forces generated spread out in a sphere. To be optimally effective, the shell should explode in the air slightly above the target. The shell that creates a big hole in front or behind does nothing but impede the infantry advance.

  Gunners were aware of this problem. The preferred shell therefore had a timing mechanism so it would, in theory, explode to do maximum damage. But these shells were delicate and expensive, and the Allies had very few of them. The vast majority of French shells operated on a much simpler principle: when the nose of the shell impacted a hard surface, it ignited the explosives in the warhead. A hard surface: concrete was ideal, a rock or boulder would do, and soft earth was not so satisfactory.