PREVIEW： Epochs #235 ｜ The Battle of Verdun： Part II
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Summary
The Battle of Verdun is the longest battle in WWI, lasting almost 9 months, and lasting the longest in terms of time, it's the Deadliest Battle of the First World War. And it all started at 4am on the morning of the 21st February 1916.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome back to Epochs. Last time if you remember we were talking all about the Battle of
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Verdun, the lead up to the Battle of Verdun and this time we're going to actually jump straight
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into the full events, how it actually played out and if you remember last time as well I told you
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it lasted for a very long time, in fact it's the longest battle of World War I, something like
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nine months, give or take, depending exactly how you measure it, exactly when it ended. So it starts
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in February, it certainly starts at an exact moment, 4am, exactly on the dot, 4am on the 21st of
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February 1916 is when it opened and it starts with a German attack which lasts something like
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four months and then there's the French counter-attack which lasts something like another
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four months, five months. So yeah it doesn't end until December, basically December of 1916. Okay
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so a couple more things to say before we talk about what happened at 4am on the 21st of February is that
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the Germans managed to build up a giant army and a giant number of guns, artillery pieces, in almost
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complete secret, I mean not 100% secret because that's not really possible, the French still would
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have some idea that something was coming but they had, it seems that the French had no idea quite what
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the Germans had built up. Now on the German side of the lines, I mean we're in France but it's quite
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close to the German border, the Germans had multiple rail heads, multiple you know rail tracks leading up to
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the Verdun sector on their side of the lines. So they could get and did use these multiple railway lines,
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what's it, six, seven, eight of them, to get a crazy amount of materiel to the front lines.
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Thousands and thousands of guns, heavy guns and obviously thousands and tens of thousands of men
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and everything that they need, right, food, victuals, water, just ammo for their small arms, boots,
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uniforms, everything right and they managed to do it in almost complete secret. The French certainly had no
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idea that a giant, giant offensive was about to happen. As I say, they knew something was in the
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air, there'll be some like deserters, there'll be the odd spire, there'll be the odd observation balloon
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but by and large, somehow, incredibly. Well one of the reasons why the Germans were able to do it is
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because we're still in the very, very, very early period of radio, they're not really using radio much
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at all, they use more telegraph lines basically. So by the age of World War II there's this whole idea
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of signals intelligence, this whole idea that you can tap into your enemy's radio and hear what
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they're saying, tap into your opponent's communications in all different ways. Well you can't really do
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that in World War I if your enemy's just using a very, very simple telegraph wire. I mean it would
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be possible to tap into that but as long as you make sure that your telegraph wire hasn't been tapped
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into, like the one line, sometimes there'll be one line leading from, one telegraph wire leading
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from the front trench back behind the lines, as long as you make sure that all the way along that wire
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it hasn't been spliced with an enemy one and they're listening in, which very much often wasn't the
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case because these front lines, front line trenches and reserve trenches were so impregnable most of the time
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that you did have relatively secure communications from the front line back to your HQ. So whereas in
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World War II for example it was quite difficult for one side to keep something big secret for long,
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not including things like you know the Manhattan Project and stuff like that that are done way back
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in continental United States, even though that wasn't kept secret ultimately. Anyway I digress. The reason why
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the Germans at Verdun in 1916 were able to build up such a large amount, it's a giant army there in
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almost complete secrecy, it's just because signals were so primitive still. So the Germans build up
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this this this giant force and they call it Operation Gericht, which means judgment basically. Operation
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Judgment is quite ominous. Today I'm going to read variously on and off from William F Buckingham's
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Verdun in 1916, The Deadliest Battle of the First World War. And here's what he says about sort of
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this this the very very opening phases. Quote, unlike the preceding nine days, the early morning
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of Monday the 21st of February at Verdun was cold. Yeah apparently it was like bitterly cold. There's
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like snow during the day, it's that cold. Verdun was bitterly cold, generally clear and brightly
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illuminated by a full moon. In the woods north and east of Verdun in excess of 1,200 German artillery pieces
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ranging from 75 millimetres located in the front line to massive 420 millimetre howitzers. If you
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don't know, a 420 millimetre howitzer is insanely large. That's like a naval gun basically. A crazily
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long range, like 20 miles or something. And the shell is like the size of a human. If you put a high
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explosive in that, that's just a giant, sort of an unbelievably huge gun. The massive 420 millimetre
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howitzers were sighted on targets in and behind the French lines. As Alistair Horn put it, quote,
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there was hardly room for a man to walk between the massed cannon and ammunition dumps, and quote,
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Buckingham goes on. Each battery of 77 millimetre field guns had a stock of 3,000 ready rounds
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cached on the guns positions, with a further 3,000 waiting to be brought up. 105 millimetre howitzers
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were stocked with 2,000 ready rounds, and the 210 millimetre and 420 millimetre howitzers
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with 1,200 rounds ready. The first shots of Operation Gericht were fired at 4am by the three 380
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millimetre naval guns belonging to Captain Lieutenant Hans Walter Schultz, marines under commando. So they
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really were naval guns being repurposed. From their emplacements at Sorrel Farm, the Bois de Miserie
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and the Bois de Warifont, 17 miles northeast of Verdun. So these big guns are like 17 miles away.
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They can't be seen by the French, even with like an observation balloon. Well, they weren't, they
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weren't seen. You were able to bring them up quietly under the cover of night and put them under,
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put them in a forest. I mean, the French word for tree or forest, wood,
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is Bois in this, in this story where I talk about different places in and around the Verdun sector.
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A lot of them start with Bois de something, which is the French for forest or wood, wood something or
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other. So yeah, you bring them up under the cover of darkness with sort of radio silence. You put them
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under heavy tree cover. So even if an aeroplane flies over, they won't see it. And suddenly a 380
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millimeter or 420 millimeter gun from 17 miles away is blowing up your positions. It's crazy,
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crazy stuff goes on here. The guns targets included Verdun's railway station and yard
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and the city's bridges across the river Meuse. Because if you can blow up the train station,
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the one train station and the one railhead that the French have got running into Verdun from behind
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their lines, then it stops them or at least very much slows them down from bringing in reserves and
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replacements and material of their own. So that's their first target, basically.
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Blow up the train station and the railway, if you can, as much as possible. So they were trying to
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blow up the railway station and the yard and the city's bridges across the river Meuse,
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but a shell from the first salvo landed in the yard of the Bishop's Palace next to the cathedral.
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This was likely from the newly installed gun emplacement at Sorel Farm, which fired its first round
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on the 21st of February. Whether or not, succeeding shots did reduce the railway yard
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to a cratered ruin and set the station building ablaze in short order, thus interrupting the
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supply of munitions flowing through the city to the front. Other long-range guns sought out French
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headquarters, road junctions and other installations. Nearer the front, Fort Douaumont was hit by the first
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of 62 420mm shells that were to pummel the fort in the first four days of the attack. So here's the
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thing to remind you about, that you've got the actual town of Verdun in the middle of this position
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and around it all sorts of faults. I mean, Verdun is surrounded on more or less on three sides by a
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higher ground and it's not sort of like a proper like saucer-shaped valley like Florence. Florence,
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the city of Florence sort of sits in a saucer, but it's something close to that. On at least three
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sides, Verdun, there's higher ground, right? Hills and long hills, ridgelines. So the idea is from
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the German point of view, if we can take the high ground and they've already got some of it on the
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eastern side of the Meuse, if we can take that and get our artillery up there, just rain down
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artillery on them forever, there's not really anything they can do about it. That, you know,
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it's a classic thing to take the high ground is strategically, tactically vital or important,
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or just gives you a giant upper hand, doesn't it? And so there's all these faults around Verdun and
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some are much more vital than others. Some hilltops, some ridgelines are much more vital
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than others. You know, if the Germans get that particular hilltop, then they can just see down
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onto the next fault and they'll definitely be able to take it. And if they take this ridgeline,
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then they can see down onto Verdun itself or something with long enough ranged artillery pieces.
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And so it becomes a battle for like, yeah, the hilltops or the ridgelines and these certain
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faults. Fault Douaumont is arguably the most important one. It's like probably the top three
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or four. People say it's the most important one. It's one of the biggest ones. I think it is the
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biggest one. The amount of time and energy and money the French had put into building it in the
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first place in like the 1880s, you know, not long after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871.
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The amount of time and energy and money and resources they put into building it.
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And again, this idea that the faults are mutually reinforcing, that they cover each other, right?
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The big guns at Fort Douaumont, for example, aren't really necessarily meant for defending
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Fort Douaumont. They're meant for defending the next fault over or a couple of other faults.
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And then those other faults, their big guns are meant for defending Fort Douaumont. You see what I mean?
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OK, so the thing about these faults that's crazy to know is that by this point, by 1916,
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the French High Command, Supreme Command, had decided that faults weren't that good anymore.
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Now, in hindsight, with 2020 godlike perfect hindsight, we know that that's sort of not
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really right. The thing that sometimes happens in war, because every war that happens is a new one.
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There's the old cliche, isn't it, that generals fight the previous war,
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and they're always taken off guard by the one they're actually fighting in real time.
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But sometimes what happens in war is that something new happens, it's not really ever happened before.
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And the generals, the planners, learn the wrong lesson from it, right?
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For example, for one quick example, very, very broadly speaking here as well,
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bear that in mind, what I'm about to say is a very, very broad strokes of the brush.
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But when tanks, the very, very first tanks were used, they weren't necessarily all that brilliant.
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It wasn't immediately clear that tanks would be the future of warfare, 20th century warfare.
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That wasn't clear at all, because the very first tank designs were kind of crappy,
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and they weren't used in big enough numbers. And there was all sorts of reasons why.
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The very first time tanks were used, everyone didn't immediately think,
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all right, we need to gear all our industry to building tanks and designing tanks, right?
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They didn't learn the lesson right away. So one thing that happened here with faults,
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is that right at the beginning of World War I, in 1914, when the Germans swept through Belgium,
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there was a giant forge at Liège, a giant, giant fault that was supposed to be, you know, impregnable.
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It was supposed to be that you couldn't take it. The Germans would not be able to take it.
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Even their biggest guns wouldn't be able to punch through. And the defences were lined up in such
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a way that it just wouldn't be possible for it to be taken. Well, for various reasons, which I won't
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go into, because that's not really what this story is about. The Germans did take it relatively quickly.
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Okay. That just happened at the edge. Now, the French, well, both sides, but particularly the French
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high command, took the wrong lesson from that. They looked at that and they said, oh,
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war has moved on. War's different now. Faults like that are not as good as we thought,
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or nowhere near as good as we thought. Actually, you know, the lesson they took from this is incorrect,
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essentially. I mean, it's right to degree, but they took it way too far. They thought, oh no,
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faults are just a place where we can get pinned down and surrounded and snuffed out. That's all they are
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now. They thought, you know, we're not living in the age of Frederick the Great or Napoleon. There's no
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point trying to hold a fault like that if all you do is sit there under bombardment for a few days,
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hoping you don't get killed by some giant German howitzer, and then eventually they take it anyway.
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They were thinking, you know, it's best to be more fluid, have more movement. Let's not let ourselves
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get pinned down in one position. If we need to move our line and move back and then we'll do it that way.
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So these giant faults are actually a hindrance, if anything. That's what they thought. That's what
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the French and English planners were thinking at this point, at the end of 1914 and all through 1915.
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They're thinking, you know, it's a shame. It's a waste. We've spent so much time and energy and money
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on building faults all over the place. But they're actually, they're counterproductive,
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if anything, they were thinking. You know, why put loads and loads of artillery and men in these faults,
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only for it all to get captured. Okay. Okay. That was their thinking. The Supreme Commander of the
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French, General Joffre, Joseph Joffre, decided, and he wasn't alone, he had the backing of all the
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French general staff, that we need all the guns we can and all the men we can at various points.
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So instead of stuffing faults like Fort Douaumont and Fort Vaux around Verdun, instead of stuffing them
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with men and artillery and giant magazines of shells, which are never used because the Germans never
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attack there, that's a waste. That's just sitting there being wasted. And we need, we need those men,
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guns and ammo in other places. So they had stripped out most of these faults. They weren't,
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like something like Fort Douaumont, which is a massive, was a massive installation, to garrison
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thousands and thousands of men, of dozens and dozens, hundreds of guns, tens of thousands of
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rounds of ammo. They were sort of sitting empty, almost empty. And we'll get to the details of
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specifically Fort Douaumont later in this episode. But they weren't these crazily strong points that
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everyone thought they were, that the Germans thought they would be. And before I go on, just to say as a
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counterpoint to everything I just said there, the thinking wasn't completely wrong as well, right?
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These faults, although it's better than sitting in a trench, you know, being underground with many,
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many, many meters of concrete above your head, reinforced concrete above your head,
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is better than just sitting in a muddy dugout or even a trench that's open to the air. It is better
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than that. But it can also be a tomb as well. You know, it's not entirely wrong. But okay,
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there you go. It's a bit of both. All right, I'll let Buckingham continue the story of what's
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happening on the morning of the 21st of February, 1916. He says,
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The main bombardment, German bombardment, began between 7am and 7.15. So they'd opened up at 4am,
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but at 7am, it gets even more intense. Controlled by six observation balloons, all 1,200 guns began
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firing along the entire perimeter of the Verdun salient from Le Aparez on the east bank of the
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Meuse to Malencore on the west. Apologies to any French people listening who appreciate that I'm
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butchering some of these words. The ones that are more famous that I've heard people say,
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I can mimic enough, but ones that are a bit more obscure, which I haven't. Probably really badly
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butchering them. Anyway, and the barrage was stretched to include around 50 miles of the front,
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as guns from adjacent formations joined in to confuse the French about the precise location of
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the coming attack. The guns around the salient fired at maximum rate until 8am when they dropped back
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to a more sustainable rate of fire. The resultant concussion was noticeable 100 miles away. General
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Fenelon-Francois Passagar felt it pulsing through the floor and heard the distant rumble and thump of
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the guns in his command post in the Vosges, for example. A long way away. One French participant
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later described how the whole area behind the German lion seemed to be blowing a gale of flame without
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interruption. The bombardment was targeted so effectively that all communications between Verdun
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and the French lion had been cut within an hour of the bombardment beginning. Again, communication
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lions are basically a telegraph wire, not radios. So if you are able to cut that line, either a man
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with the equivalent of wire snips or a high explosive shell can break that line, that one little really,
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really thin cable basically, then yeah. Then the front line guys can't let the reserve trenches and the
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HQ know what's going on. That was very often a thing that both sides would see their enemy trying
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to lay a telegraph wire and snipers and artillery try and kill that one guy as much as they can,
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because that could make all the difference. Very, very dangerous to be one of those guys that lays,
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was replacing an already destroyed telegraph line. The carefully plotted French artillery positions
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were saturated with high explosives and phosgene gas shells against which French respirators offered
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no protection. To say phosgene gas is particularly horrible. French counter fire consequently fell away
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to almost nothing, with the exception of the French guns brought up as part of the last minute
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reinforcement initiated by General de Castilno at the end of January. So as I say, right at the end of
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January, by the end of January, the French realised the Germans were doing something. The Germans
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couldn't keep it entirely secret. They realised that Germans were doing something. There was going
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to be some sort of action there from the Germans, but they, again, they had no idea the scale of it.
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As German artillery observers had not had time to plot their locations, the French, the few, very few
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French counter batteries that there were. French long-range guns thus blew up the regimental paymaster
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of the 24th Infantry Regiment, complete with his cash box at Billy-sur-Manguiennes near the Bois de Wauffermont,
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and another French salvo straddled the 5th Army's forward HQ at Witterville, just as Chief of Staff
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von Klobbeldorf was reporting to Crown Prince Wilhelm. The Crown Prince and his entourage had come
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forward to be closer to the action, but hastily withdrew to their permanent HQ at Stene, 15 miles
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further north. On the other side of the line, in the Bois de Curese, a Captain Pujot, possibly an aviation
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officer on a fact-finding mission for General Ferdinand Foch at the Groupe Mont d'Armie du Nord,
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had driven up to observe the German front lines accompanied by a staff officer from 30 Corps
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headquarters. They too departed swiftly when the barrage began to fall, abandoning a planned visit
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to Lieutenant Colonel Drillon in the process. This Lieutenant Colonel Drillon will come up in a
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moment. I'll tell you all about him because he's interesting and important, and all the history is
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talk about old Drillon. But for a moment, I'll continue this. Similarly, the beginning of the
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German shelling almost caught General Etienne-André Bapt, commander of the 72nd Division of Infantry
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Reserve, who was riding up to inspect frontline positions near Brabant, six miles north of his
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headquarters at Brasser-Muse. His early morning ride up the east bank of the Muse ended two miles short of
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its objective when the curtain of fire descended as he reached Semongo, coincidentally the headquarters of the
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351st Regiment of Infantry. The shelling fell most heavily on the German's chosen attack sector,
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held by 30 Corps, French 30 Corps, and especially the seven-mile stretch of front line running east
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from the River Meuse, occupied by General Bapt's 72nd Division of Infantry Reserve. Each German battery
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had been assigned a specific section of the front line, and the guns worked relentlessly back and
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forth across it like a giant invisible plough at a rate of up to 40 shells per minute, eradicating trenches,
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collapsing dugouts and shelters, demolishing concrete bunkers, and cutting telephone lines.
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One Brigade Headquarters from the 51st Division of Infantry Reserve was obliged to set up a relay of
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messengers spaced at 300-yard intervals to maintain contact with its subunits, with all the risks that
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that entailed. A liaison officer from the 161st Regiment Infantry, attached to the 51st Division of Infantry
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Reserve, described the resultant carnage in the Bois de Hebois on the north-east shoulder of the
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salient. And this is what an eyewitness said, a liaison officer who was there. He said,
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The trees are cut down like wisps of straw. Some shells come crashing out of the smoke. The dust
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produced by the upheaval of the earth creates a fog which prevents us from seeing very far. We have
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to abandon our shelter and go to ground in a deep crater. We are surrounded by wounded and dying men
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whom we are totally unable to help." End quote. So one thing to say that happens in World War One,
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and again, it's a little bit of a broad trend that I'm talking about. It's not every single time what I'm
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about to tell you happened, but as a broad trend, what happens in World War One is that each battle
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is bigger and more extreme. It's not that there aren't smaller battles in between the big ones,
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but broadly speaking, however long a bombardment lasted in 1914, they're bigger and longer in 1915,
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and bigger and longer in 1916, and 1917, and then in 1918. So quite often you'll find that the record,
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sort of the most shells fired in an opening barrage is that the new record gets set all the time. So
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it's the same with Verdun. Never before had there been a barrage quite like this. They thought that
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the big barrage at Champagne in 1915 was the most incredible thing, would never be paralleled ever
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again. There's been nothing like it before and probably never will be again. Well, the battles of
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1916 and 1917 and 1918 just keep raising the bar on that. So here at Verdun, this opening barrage that
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the Germans do is unprecedented, right? They fire something like a million shells, which had just
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never been done before, right? 1,200 big guns, heavy guns firing a million shells over the course of 12
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hours or more in a relatively, onto a relatively small area, about seven miles, about seven mile
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front, a million shells. How anyone survived, and they did, is remarkable. I mean later in a moment
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we'll talk about that, how the Germans were surprised that there was still any Frenchmen alive there when
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they did go to, when the infantry, German infantry, went to walk into those positions. They thought
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certainly there'd be nothing left but, but body parts, if that. But there were quite a few Frenchmen
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survived it, somehow, remarkably. Okay, I'll let Buckingham continue. He says,
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at around midday the barrage paused, just stopped, just stopped, partly to trick the surviving defenders
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into thinking that the ground attack was beginning, and thus draw them out of their cover, and partly
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to allow the German artillery observers to assess the damage they had inflicted. We hope you enjoyed
00:23:54.400
that video, and if you did, please head over to lotusseaters.com for the full unabridged video.
00:24:04.240
Either way or whatever you can watch or otherwise.
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I'd really need to carry on the evening with our memory on the floor to heiß from Canada.
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So now everything is accessible, and here are two holes in the package.