Verdun - The Background and the Plan

Battles of the First World War Podcast

Mike Cunha

History

4.8 • 812 Ratings

🗓️ 1 March 2018

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Battle of Verdun has been likened to a “microcosm of the entire First World War in itself:” in 1916 over 10 months on an approximately 125-square mile battlefield the French and German armies poured in some 40,000,000 artillery shells in order for the Germans to push the frontline in 6 miles and for the French to later push it back 6 miles. The casualty count topped 700,000. At the end of the battle, like at the end of the war itself two years later, both the attacker and the defender were exhausted with no clear victory won or lost.

In this first episode we will explore the background and lead up to the battle, from the opening battles on the Western Front in 1914 to the bloody stalemate trench battles of 1915 and development of the German plan to attack the French at Verdun.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	There remains only France.
0:04.0	Within our reach behind the French sector of the Western Front,
0:08.0	there are objectives for the retention of which
0:11.0	the French general staff would be compelled to throw in
0:15.0	every man they have.
0:17.0	If they do so, the forces of France will bleed to death.
0:21.6	General Eric von Falkenheim, Western Front, 1915.
0:27.6	The Hello and welcome to the Battle of Verdun podcast episode one, the background and the plan.
0:57.0	The Battle of Verdun was the turning point of World War I and the high watermark of the German effort to grasp some kind of victory over the French and British.
1:09.0	In 1916, after 20 months of fighting to no effect on the paralyzed Western Front, Germany
1:17.3	needed to do something.
1:19.8	Germany was in her nightmare scenario of fighting a two-front war, having been unable to knock
1:25.8	out either Russia or France in 1914.
1:30.3	Additionally, the offensives on the Eastern Front in 1915 had pummeled the crap out of Russia, but that bear, amazingly enough, continued to hold on.
1:41.3	Russia proved again and again how it could absorb ridiculous losses in
1:46.7	men and territory, yet continued to put up a fight. In the West, Germany faced the combined
1:53.3	armies of the French, British, and Belgians who slammed themselves bloodily and recklessly
1:59.7	against the 475-mile-long trench line that was the Western Front.
2:05.6	One of these fronts needed to be eliminated.
2:09.6	So the German army came up with a plan to eliminate the Western Front.
2:14.6	It would attack the French army at a place where it would be sure to respond ferociously.
2:21.3	This new plan would break the French, their army, and their ability to continue fighting the war.
	...

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