Verdun

by John Mosier

  19Stephan Ryan, in his excellent and well-researched Pétain the Soldier (Cranbury, New Jersey: Barnes, 1969), argues that it was a result of negotiations between the two sides, which is to say treason, probably brought about by defeatism (93–94). Buffetaut argues that it was panic (71).

  20Henry Morel-Journel, Journal d’un officier de la 74e division (Montbrison: Brassert, 1922), 327.

  21Figures Georges Blond, Verdun, translated by Francis Frenaye (New York: Macmillan, 1964), 165. It always seems that historians assume that Allied units in these situations were at their theoretical strength. This was hardly likely.

  10. Revanche and Revision: October 1916–August 1917

  1Speaking to the Chamber of Deputies, as reported by Paul Allard, Les dessous de la guerre révélés par les comités secrets (Paris: Les Éditions de France, 1932), 15. Actually, they were considerably less, particularly when the British and Belgian losses were added to the French.

  2The quote is found in Book 5, chapter 7, of Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, translated by Aylmer Maude (New York: Norton, 1966), 406–7.

  3Kaiser Wilhelm II, Ereignisse und Gestalten aus dem Jahren, 1878–1918 (Berlin: Koehler, 1922). See the detailed index (294–309). By contrast, von Hindenburg gets an entire paragraph.

  4The New York Times Current History, The European War (New York, 1917), 7:iii.

  5The arguments made in the chamber are to be found in Allard, Les dessous.

  6Louis Gillet, La bataille de Verdun (Paris: G. Van Ouest et cie., 1921), 201.

  7Heeressanitätsinspektion des Reichsministeriums, Sanitätsbericht über das deutsche Heer in Weltkrieg 1914/18 (Berlin: Reichsministerium, 1935), 3:140–41. The difference probably derives from the fact that the medical services apparently adhered to an absolute month-by-month computation. A soldier wounded in March who died in July would appear on the total for July. Medically, that obviously makes sense. However, if we’re trying—vainly—to assign deaths back to actual engagements, obviously it presents a problem.

  8As reported in detail by Jules Poirier, La bataille de Verdun, 21 février–18 décembre 1916 (Paris: Chiron, 1922), 294.

  9Michel Huber, La population de la France pendant la guerre (New Haven: Yale, 1931), 420.

  10A direct translation of the expression “bien organisée”; interestingly, in June of 1994, a French grounds supervisor at the cemetery of St. Thomas en Argonne used the same phrase in a conversation in which he was describing the administration of German military cemeteries versus his own.

  11Bernard Serrigny, Trente ans avec Pétain (Paris: Plon, 1959), 101.

  12See the charts in Edmond Buat, L’armée allemande pendant la guerre de 1914–18 (Paris: Chapelot, 1920), which record the movements of German divisions from front to front, identifying each one. June–November 1916 (113).

  13See the marker on the wall of the fort. This division also had a number, 38, which accounts for the apparent contradiction on the plaques. The top plaque speaks of the colonial infantry and the 46th Battalion of the Senegalese and Somalis; the bottom references the 38th Division. From what we know happened to the African troops in the April 1917 offensive on the chemin des dames, they were probably used as cannon fodder in the assault.

  14The source is Colonel Serrigny, the exact words: “We have the formula! We will beat them with it!” Bernard Serrigny, Trente ans avec Pétain (Paris: Plon, 1959), 113.

  15The mutiny was greatly exaggerated. First, as noted, it began at the top, with generals refusing to order more attacks and demanding Nivelle be replaced. The French term collective indiscipline is a more accurate designation. The units remained at their posts; they simply refused to charge off and get killed. Proof positive: There were approximately 700 soldiers executed during the war; about 50 were as a result of the “mutiny.” But since the army refused to let anyone look at the records until the 1960s, the confusion is understandable. Nor is it clear that the records are very helpful. The standard French account is by Guy Pedroncini, Les Mutineries de 1917, 3rd edition (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1996). See the careful summary in David Englander, “Mutinies and Military Morale,” World War I, edited by Hew Strachan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 191–94.

  16Jean Dutourd, Les Taxis de la Marne (Paris: Gallimard, 1956), 13.

  17There are only two accounts of this offensive: Louis Gillet, La Bataille de Verdun (Paris: G. Van Ouest et cie., 1921), 253–74; and [Colonel] Fernand Marie Chaligne, Histoire militaire de Verdun (Paris: Charles Lavauzelle, 1939), 214–19. Gillet, like many French writers in the immediate postwar period, had access to much data since destroyed, and the battlefield was still largely intact, so his recapitulations are invaluable. Chaligne’s brief summary is more restrained, but gets to the heart of the matter, particularly in his conclusions.

  18The pedant inclined to quibble is advised to consult any one of the standard French dictionaries used by high school students. The illustration of how the verb is used in the text is taken straight from the pages of the Larousse poche 2008 (Patis: Larousse, 2007), 218.

  11. The Last Battles: September–October 1918

  1Herbert Bayard Swope, Inside the German Empire (New York: Century, 1917), 113. Hopefully it is clear that Swope is referring to an incident that happened before America entered the war in 1917.

  2The best account of the Americans in France is John S. D. Eisenhower, Yanks (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002).

  3In the midst of the spring 1918 German offensives, the Allies had finally decided they needed a joint commander in chief. They chose Foch. However, although he was the supreme commander, he did not have the authority to order the commanders of the three main armies to do anything—neither Haig, Pétain, nor Pershing. Foch’s supremacy was thus largely fictional, but then, so was Foch.

  4Amazingly, a whole series of British and American historians have bought into this bizarre notion, attributing to Foch and Haig a level of military competence hardly supported by their records as generals, but certainly consistent with their press releases. See, among the many, the sympathetic account of what Foch was proposing in Donald Smythe, Pershing: General of the Armies (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1986), 174–75, a classic instance of how the failure to understand geography leads to errors in evaluating strategy. See the extensive analysis in James H. Hallas, Squandered Victory, The American First Army at St. Mihiel (London: Praeger, 1995), especially 261–65.

  5See the entertaining summary in Smythe (Pershing, 187), who quotes the impression of a German officer who said that Ludendorff was “so overcome by the events of the day as to be unable to carry on a clear and comprehensive discussion.” The reader who has been led to believe that Ludendorff was the key figure is advised to study his record after 1918. Von Hindenburg went on to be elected president. Ludendorff was too weird even for Hitler and the National Socialists. The German general from the Great War who marched alongside Hitler in the early days was not Ludendorff; it was August von Mackensen.

  6It is easy to tell where the Americans got to: They erected distinctive six-foot obelisks with pointed tops, like dark miniatures of the Washington Monument, each with a red diamond plaque and the unit indication. In this case, there is marker for the 4th Division posted on D903 right outside the hamlet on Nanteuil, due east of the city of Verdun, and proof positive that the Americans got there.

  7The best discussion of these sorry episodes is in Smythe (Pershing, 180–202).

  8The American data is a jumble of confusion. See Leonard P. Ayres, The War with Germany: A Statistical Summary (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1919), 120.

  9The journalist was the experienced veteran George Seldes. Held up by the army censors, it was published ten years later in You Can’t Print That! The Truth Behind the News, 1918–1928 (Garden City, New York, 1929), 24–40. The interview was then reprinted in a final collection of his reportage, Wit
ness to a Century (New York: Ballantine, 1987), 96–101.

  10This, the key quote, is found both in Seldes, You Can’t Print That, 34–37, and in Witness to a Century, 98–99. Interestingly, Hitler believed American intervention was decisive as well. See Ernst Hanfstangel, Hitler: The Missing Years (New York: Arcade, 1957), 40–41. At the end of a lecture I gave on the Second World War, a historian asked me whether I still believed that the Americans had won the First World War. When I replied by quoting von Hindenburg, she retorted dismissively, “Oh, he just said that,” thus confirming some of Voltaire’s more sarcastic jibes about intellectuals. An interesting approach to writing history: Just ignore whatever you don’t like.

  12. A Conclusion of Sorts: The Temptations of Myth

  1Johann Peter Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe (Stuttgart: Philip Reclam, 1998), 311.

  2The famous Viennese literary critic Karl Kraus made this advertisement the subject of one his sarcastic essays, entitled “Promotional Trips to Hell”; it appears (in English) in Karl Kraus, In These Great Times, edited Hary Zohn (Manchester: Carcanet, 1984), 89–94. The translators mistranslated the German word granaten in the final sentence, rendering it as grenades—a common error. I have changed the word accordingly.

  3Transcribed from a personal copy of the letter (in English, but with French capitalization) in my possession. The emphasis is in the original.

  4Michel Huber, La population de la France pendant la guerre (New Haven: Yale, 1931), 413. There is no contrary data in the Service Historiques des Armeés, Inventaire Sommaire des Archives de la Guerre (N24 and N25) (Troyes: La Renaissance, 1967).

  5In the French original, the words are in capitals, just for emphasis. Yves Buffetaut, La bataille de Verdun, de l’Argonne à la Woëvre (Tours: Éditions Heimdale, 1990), 90.

  6Joseph Bedier, L’effort française (Paris: Renaissance du livre, 1919), 16.

  7See the extensive discussion, together with the sources referenced in this paragraph, in John Mosier, The Blitzkrig Myth (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 28–42. There are numerous articles now available on the Czech fortifications; unfortunately they are all in that language.

  INDEX

  *The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. To find the corresponding locations in the text of this digital version, please use the “search” function on your e-reader. Note that not all terms may be searchable.

  Baden, 169

  Abteilungen, 245

  Aerial observation, 132, 234, 245, 286, 305, 309

  Africa, 25, 124

  African troops, 47, 304

  Aire River, 95

  Airpower, 43–44, 90, 245–48, 328–29

  Alamo, the, 91

  Alsace, 33–35, 38, 44

  American aid, 123–24, 153, 161, 233

  American Civil War, 2, 3, 26, 60, 63–65, 91, 154, 205, 324

  American Expeditionary Force (AEF), 319

  American forces, 132, 133, 167, 313–21

  André, Louis, 78–79, 186, 200, 265, 271

  Antwerp, 60, 124, 152, 198, 207

  Apremont, 143

  Ardennes, 13–14, 51–54

  Argonne, 13–16, 23, 31, 52, 54, 56, 57, 60, 95, 101–9, 111, 117, 118, 125, 129, 145–50, 198, 200, 207, 208, 213, 214, 218, 249, 254, 278, 290, 315, 317–21, 327

  Artillery. (see also Weapons)

  advances in, 59, 64–76

  problems with, 168–74

  Artois, 5, 14, 15, 28, 29, 146, 148, 158, 175, 194, 198, 207, 213, 215, 218, 278, 302, 311, 316, 317, 327

  Aubreville curve, 106, 117, 119

  Austerlitz, Battle of, 42, 295

  Austrian forces, 97, 98, 101, 111, 114, 201–4, 221, 294, 295

  Avocourt, 235, 245, 267, 277, 283

  Baden, 169

  Bagatelle, 104, 110, 148

  Balfourier, General, 259, 266

  Balkans, 24, 25, 184, 200, 204, 284, 294

  Bar-le-Duc, 95, 118, 132, 235, 254, 268

  Barnard, Charles Inman, 19, 20

  Basler Nachrichten, 324–25

  Batteries, 50

  Bavarian forces, 97, 100, 111, 113, 134, 140–41, 143, 187, 195, 283

  Bayonets, 63, 330

  Bazelaire, General, 266

  Beaumont woods, 310

  Bédier, Joseph, 330

  Belfort, 4, 35, 59

  Belgian forces, 177–79, 204, 207, 236

  Belgium, 13, 36, 51, 53, 54, 59–60, 88–91, 98, 100, 123, 164, 311

  Belle Epine, 58, 267

  Belleau Wood, Battle of, 91, 319

  Belleville, 57, 84, 267

  Belrupt, 267

  Berlin, Battle of, 3

  Bernhard, Prince of the Netherlands, 239

  Bernier, Jean, 2, 9, 31, 64

  Berry-au-Bac et Ribécourt, 115, 192

  Berthelot, General, 192

  Besançon, 49

  Béthincourt ridge, 272, 274, 276

  Bezonvaux, 254, 260

  Bichet, Gabriel, 6, 8, 11, 16, 56–57, 63, 209

  Binarville, 147

  Bismarck, Otto von, 33–41, 227, 333

  Bloch, Marc, 248

  Blockade, 226–27

  Blücher, Gebhard Leberecht von, 324

  Boer War, 205

  Bois Bourrus, 57–59, 267, 273, 279, 280

  Bois d’Ailly, 31, 143

  Bois de la Gruerie, 106

  Bois de Marfée, 330

  Bois de Warphemont, 210

  Bois des Caurières, 310

  Bois Le Prêtre, 31

  Bombing, 226–27, 246–48

  Borodino, Battle of, 42

  Boucheron, Georges, 127–28, 130, 139, 145, 146

  Boulanger, Georges-Ernest, 78, 186

  Boulevard moral of France, Verdun as, 51, 91, 220

  Boureuilles, 130

  Bourguignon, 13

  Brabant, 253, 272

  Brandeis, Lieutenant, 261, 287

  Breech-loading weapons, 65, 66

  Brialmont, Henri-Alexis, 53, 59

  Briand, Aristide, 189, 190, 196, 270, 281

  Brieulles, 320

  British Army handbook, 81–82

  British Expeditionary Force (BEF), 102, 161, 320

  British forces, 153, 155, 162–65, 170, 174, 177–79, 181, 183, 205, 208, 213, 224, 233, 236, 307, 311, 313–21, 330

  Brun, Jean, 77

  Brusilov, Alexei, 287, 288

  Buat, General, 215

  Bucharest, 89

  Buffetaut, Yves, 113, 326

  Bukovina, 202

  Bull Run, Battles of, 2

  Bullets, 66

  Bussy-la-Côte, 95

  Buttes, 60

  Buzy, 112, 113, 119

  Cailette, 261

  Calonne, Charles Alexandre de, 143

  Camp des Romains, 59, 96, 112–15

  Camp Marguerre, 210–11

  Camp retranché de Verdun, 56

  Carré, Jean-Marie, 146

  Casements de Bourges, 87, 88

  Casualties, 24–25, 30, 31, 93, 110, 113, 118, 128, 130, 131, 133, 137, 138, 142, 144–45, 148–50, 154–57, 160–61, 174–86, 204, 206, 218, 219, 224, 249, 252, 262, 264, 270–71, 275–78, 279, 282, 283, 287, 291, 296–300, 319–20, 324–28, 330

  Caures, 251, 252

  Cavalry, 29, 170

  Cavour, Count of, 36

  Cazin, 139

  Cemeteries, 10, 11, 15–16, 319–20, 327

  Censorship, 19–21, 219

  Chaligne, Colonel, 253, 310

  Champagne, 5, 13–15, 28, 29, 147–50, 149, 151, 158, 175, 185, 194, 195, 196, 198, 207, 213, 215, 218, 252, 278, 291, 307, 310, 317

  Chana, 268

  Chapels, 41, 42, 83
, 172

  Charleville-Mézières, 51, 54

  Charmes, 59, 60

  Charny, 59, 267

  Chasseurs, 48, 136, 187, 251, 260, 306

  Chasseurs alpins, 48

  Chaume, 310

  Chauvoncourt, 113

  Chemin des Dames, 308

  Cher River, 94

  China, 205

  Choisel, 267

  Chrétien, General, 235

  Churchill, Winston, 30, 152, 181–83, 226, 297

  Clemenceau, Georges, 319

  Coal, 123

  Collignon, Henri, 140

  Combres, 134, 135, 139

  Commercy, 95, 117

  Communards, 48, 78

  Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur, 22, 165, 173, 203, 225

  Cons-la-Grandville, 98

  Consenvoye, 250

  Corbeaux woods, 176

  Corda, Henry, 234

  Côte d’Oie, 277

  Côte du Poivre, 260

  Côte du Talou, 255, 260, 273, 310

  Côtes de Meuse, 54, 60

  Côte 304, 16, 273

  Coup de bélier (great hammer blow), 162, 174, 187

  Coutanceau, Michel, 99

  Crapouillots, les, 105

  CSG (Conseil Supérieure de la Guerre), 77, 80, 83

  Cunmières, 276–77

  Czechoslovakia, 35, 331

  Dardanelles expedition, 188

  De Bange, Charles Ragon, 67, 69

  De Bange guns, 67–69, 86, 121

  De Castelnau, Noël-Édouard, 97–98, 108, 195–96, 257, 266, 270, 271, 285

  De Langle de Cary, Fernand, 255–57, 260, 266, 267

  Départements, 13, 17

  Déramée, 267

  Des Bruyères, 267