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The Verdun Regiment

Author: Johnathan Bracken

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2018-07-30

Total Pages: 437

ISBN-13: 1526710315

This book on French soldiers during WWI is “a first-class narrative with an abundance of personal testimony from the officers and men of the regiment” (The Great War Magazine, Editor’s Choice). Although the French fielded the largest number of Allied troops on the Western Front in the First World War, the story of their soldiers is little known to English readers. The immense size of the French armies, the number of battles they fought, and the enormous losses they incurred, make it difficult for us to comprehend their experience. But we can gain a genuine insight by focusing on one of the defining battles of that war, at Verdun in 1916, and by looking at it through the eyes of a small group of soldiers who served there. That is what Johnathan Bracken does in this meticulously researched, detailed and vivid account. The French 151st Infantry Regiment spent fifty days under fire at Verdun in 1916 and another thirty-five in 1917 and lost 3,200 soldiers killed or wounded. Yet their ordeal was no different from that of hundreds of other infantry units that fought and endured in this meat-grinder of a battle. Their diaries and memoirs tell their story in the most compelling way, and through their words the larger human story of the French soldier during the war comes to life. “The book recounts the horror of intense artillery bombardments and men mown down in great waves. None of this is particularly pretty and the accounts do much to scatter notions of war as a glorious, thrilling experience. It was vicious and brutal utterly cruel.”—War History Online

French Soldier vs German Soldier

Author: David Campbell

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-03-19

Total Pages: 81

ISBN-13: 1472838165

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On 21 February 1916, the German Army launched a major attack on the French fortress of Verdun. The Germans were confident that the ensuing battle would compel France to expend its strategic reserves in a savage attritional battle, thereby wearing down Allied fighting power on the Western Front. However, initial German success in capturing a key early objective, Fort Douaumont, was swiftly stemmed by the French defences, despite heavy French casualties. The Germans then switched objectives, but made slow progress towards their goals; by July, the battle had become a stalemate. During the protracted struggle for Verdun, the two sides' infantrymen faced appalling battlefield conditions; their training, equipment and doctrine would be tested to the limit and beyond. New technologies, including flamethrowers, hand grenades, trench mortars and more mobile machine guns, would play a key role in the hands of infantry specialists thrown into the developing battle, and innovations in combat communications were employed to overcome the confusion of the battlefield. This study outlines the two sides' wider approach to the evolving battle, before assessing the preparations and combat record of the French and German fighting men who fought one another during three pivotal moments of the 101⁄2-month struggle for Verdun.

The Price of Glory

Author: Alistair Horne

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2007-06-28

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0141937521

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The battle of Verdun lasted ten months. It was a battle in which at least 700,000 men fell, along a front of fifteen miles. Its aim was less to defeat the enemy than bleed him to death and a battleground whose once fertile terrain is even now a haunted wilderness. Alistair Horne's classic work, continuously in print for over fifty years, is a profoundly moving, sympathetic study of the battle and the men who fought there. It shows that Verdun is a key to understanding the First World War to the minds of those who waged it, the traditions that bound them and the world that gave them the opportunity.

Verdun 1916

Author: William F. Buckingham

Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited

Published: 2016-01-15

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1445641178

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A gripping narrative of the most infamous Western Front battle of the war. The British remember the Somme, Russia the Brusilov Offensive, and France and Germany remember Verdun

Verdun 1916

Author: William Martin

Publisher: Greenwood

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 104

ISBN-13:

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"On 21 February 1916, German General Erich von Falkenhayn unleashed his hammer-blow offensive against the French fortress city of Verdun. His aim was nothing short of the destruction of the French army. He was sure that the symbolic value of Verdun was such that the French would be 'compelled to throw in every man they have.' He was equally sure that 'if they do so the forces of France will bleed to death.' The massed batteries of German guns would smash the French troops in their trenches and bunkers. However, the French hung on with immense courage and determination and the battle became a bloody battle of attrition"--Page 4 of cover.

Verdun

Author: Paul Jankowski

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014-01-06

Total Pages: 976

ISBN-13: 0199316910

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At seven o'clock in the morning on February 21, 1916, the ground in northern France began to shake. For the next ten hours, twelve hundred German guns showered shells on a salient in French lines. The massive weight of explosives collapsed dugouts, obliterated trenches, severed communication wires, and drove men mad. As the barrage lifted, German troops moved forward, darting from shell crater to shell crater. The battle of Verdun had begun. In Verdun, historian Paul Jankowski provides the definitive account of the iconic battle of World War I. A leading expert on the French past, Jankowski combines the best of traditional military history-its emphasis on leaders, plans, technology, and the contingency of combat-with the newer social and cultural approach, stressing the soldier's experience, the institutional structures of the military, and the impact of war on national memory. Unusually, this book draws on deep research in French and German archives; this mastery of sources in both languages gives Verdun unprecedented authority and scope. In many ways, Jankowski writes, the battle represents a conundrum. It has an almost unique status among the battles of the Great War; and yet, he argues, it was not decisive, sparked no political changes, and was not even the bloodiest episode of the conflict. It is said that Verdun made France, he writes; but the question should be, What did France make of Verdun? Over time, it proved to be the last great victory of French arms, standing on their own. And, for France and Germany, the battle would symbolize the terror of industrialized warfare, "a technocratic Moloch devouring its children," where no advance or retreat was possible, yet national resources poured in ceaselessly, perpetuating slaughter indefinitely.

Great War, Total War

Author: Roger Chickering

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2000-09-11

Total Pages: 544

ISBN-13: 9780521773522

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World War I was the first large-scale industrialized military conflict, and it led to the concept of total war. The essays in this volume analyze the experience of the war in light of this concept's implications, in particular the erosion of distinctions between the military and civilian spheres.

Battle Story: Verdun 1916

Author: Chris McNab

Publisher: The History Press

Published: 2013-03-01

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 0752492578

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The Battle of Verdun was one of the bloodiest engagements of the First World War, resulting in 698,000 deaths, 70,000 for each of the 10 months of battle. The French Army in the area were decimated and it is often most tragically remembered as the battle in which the French were 'bled white'. A potent symbol of French resistance, the fortress town of Verdun was one that the French Army was loath to relinquish easily. It was partly for this reason that the German commander chose to launch a major offensive here, where he could dent French national pride and military morale. His attack commenced on 21 February, using shock troops and flamethrowers to clear the French trenches. Starting with the capture of Fort Douamont, by June 1916 the Germans were pressing on the city itself, exhausting their reserves. The French continued to fight valiantly, despite heavy losses and eventually rolled back German forces from the city. In the end it was a battle that saw much loss of life for little gain on either side.

German Strategy and the Path to Verdun

Author: Robert T. Foley

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2005-01-06

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780521841931

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Almost 90 years since its conclusion, the battle of Verdun is still little understood. German Strategy and the Path to Verdun is a detailed examination of this seminal battle based on research conducted in archives long thought lost. Material returned to Germany from the former Soviet Union has allowed for a reinterpretation of Erich von Falkenhayn's overall strategy for the war and of the development of German operational and tactical concepts to fit this new strategy of attrition. By taking a long view of the development of German military ideas from the end of the Franco-German War in 1871, German Strategy and the Path to Verdun also gives much-needed context to Falkenhayn's ideas and the course of one of the greatest battles of attrition the world has ever known.

Walking In the Footsteps of the Fallen

Author: Christina Holstein

Publisher: Pen and Sword Military

Published: 2019-04-30

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1526717077

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A visit to the battlefield of Verdun is usually dominated by the forts of Douamont and Vaux, the museum at Fleury and the striking, huge Ossuary. Although this gives a flavor of the horrific fighting that took place in the area, particularly in 1916, the visitor will be hard pressed to get much more than an impression from such places. This book seeks to guide the battlefield pilgrim into parts of the battlefield that get rarely visited by means of a series of walks, a number of which include the major sites. The four tours have been carefully walked. All are practicable for a reasonably healthy adult; the tours vary in length, most taking a half day to complete and the longest (the last) a day. In a twist to the usual walks to be found in the Battleground series, Christina makes full use of the numerous field graves and isolated memorials that are to be found on the Verdun battlefield, a number of which will bring visitors to the most visited sites. In the course of these walks many physical remnants will be found, such as gun positions, bunkers and trench systems, the significance of which is fully explained. The walks have not been chosen at random; by following these the tourer will get a far greater understanding of why the fighting at Verdun developed as it did and why such places as Fort Vaux were so significant to both sides. The field graves and memorials to the combatants, very often of individuals, provide an opportunity to give their story and the unit action in which they were fighting when they were killed. Verdun is a battlefield where the story of units and individuals can easily become lost in the horror of the incessant fighting that raged over ten months; and over ground which is extremely difficult to read because of the post war forestation program. Profusely illustrated and with excellent mapping, a hallmark of Christina Holstein's books, a visitor who follows the walks in this book will be left with a far clearer idea of the men who fought and died here and of the features of the battlefield and their significance in this battle that so challenged the endurance of the armies of two nations.