1 Bethmann Hollweg had from the beginning been the focus of opposition to Falkenhayn within the German ruling clique. It was he who had forced Falkenhayn to surrender, in 1915, his post as Minister of War.
1 See illustrations.
1 During the last fortnight in May, French casualties were in fact considerably higher than for any other period since the initial German onslaught, and 9 out of 17 divisions in the line had to be relieved.
1 ‘R’ stands for ‘Retranchement’.
1 In fact, as a later inquiry showed, despite warnings as early as March about the inadequacy of Vaux’s water supply, nothing had been done, and the cisterns appear to have been half-empty when Raynal assumed command. It was a piece of negligence on a par with the failure to garrison Fort Douaumont.
1 Neither Pétain nor his men could of course appreciate the fantastic difficulties that had faced unmilitary Britain in building up a twentieth-century war machine from virtually nothing. With an effort unparalleled in her history, she had already increased her original six B.E.F. divisions (which had been virtually annihilated during the Mons retreat in 1914) to fifty-two; but none of this was visible to the sore-tried men at Verdun.
1 Although the merits of Conrad’s proposal are of little concern to this story, at least one outstanding German military critic, General von Hoffmann, felt that Conrad was right, and that a Caporetto-style defeat in 1916, instead of 1917, might easily have brought Italy to collapse and struck a serious prestige blow at the Allies, while freeing troops for other fronts.
1 By comparison, the whole Battle of Alamein in twelve days cost only 13,500 British casualties, dead, wounded and missing, and — according to Second World War standards — it was not a ‘cheap’ battle.
1 French gas fatalities on the 11th are said to have totalled little more than half-a-dozen.
1 Alas, Nicolai, who also took part in this attack, now promoted Lieutenant-Colonel and decorated with the Légion d’Honncur for the capture of Douaumont, was killed by a German sniper.
1 It is again worth recalling that at Alamein Montgomery lost 13,500 men.
1 A generation later, amid the catastrophe of 1940, Gamelin (who in 1916 was Joffre’s Chief of Operations) was to share with Joffre the experience of being sacked from the Supreme Command.
1 Typical of the chaos, in one hospital there were reported to be only four thermometers for 3,500 beds.
1 So much so, that its demoralisation had been reported by the GQG Liaison Officer at Second Army HQ. (See page 270.)
2 The first units to threaten to march on Paris apparently came from III Corps; the unit Nivelle had commanded on his arrival at Verdun in April 1916, and some of the worst disorders took place in Mangin’s old division, the 5th. III Corps, unlike most of the other units principally involved in the mutinies, had not in fact been in the line for several weeks, and the insurrection began while the Corps was at rest camp.
1 Figures of ‘missing’ on both sides also included those taken prisoner.
1 They were almost the sole exceptions.
1 Champions of Falkenhayn see proof in his Rumanian Campaign that, under any but the impossible stalemate conditions of the Western Front, he was indeed a great commander. They ignore however that the actual strategy in Rumania was devised by Hindenburg-Ludendorff, not Falkenhayn, and that, for veteran German troops, rounding up the Rumanians (never the world’s most intrepid warriors) was not far removed from Kitchener’s annihilation of the Khalifa’s Fuzzy-Wuzzies at Omdurman.
1 In 1918.
1 Hitler, the corporal-turned-strategist, fought on the Somme but not at Verdun; nevertheless, he seems to have had some fixation about the Battle. At least one of his generals (Blumentritt) was convinced that he wanted to emulate Falkenhayn at Stalingrad, and draw the Russian armies into a ‘bleeding-white’ battle there—with results even more disastrous than those which overtook Falkenhayn.
1 As a major, Pétain had been rejected by the father of the woman he wanted to marry on the grounds that he seemed to lack prospects of advancement. She married another, was widowed by the war, and eventually married Pétain—now a Marshal of France—in 1920.
1 Subsequently abbreviated RA (13), etc.
The Price of Glory Page 47