The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Epochs #235 ｜ The Battle of Verdun： Part II

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome back to Epochs. Last time if you remember we were talking all about the Battle of

00:00:25.560 Verdun, the lead up to the Battle of Verdun and this time we're going to actually jump straight

00:00:30.720 into the full events, how it actually played out and if you remember last time as well I told you

00:00:36.440 it lasted for a very long time, in fact it's the longest battle of World War I, something like

00:00:41.140 nine months, give or take, depending exactly how you measure it, exactly when it ended. So it starts

00:00:46.900 in February, it certainly starts at an exact moment, 4am, exactly on the dot, 4am on the 21st of

00:00:53.520 February 1916 is when it opened and it starts with a German attack which lasts something like

00:00:58.880 four months and then there's the French counter-attack which lasts something like another

00:01:03.620 four months, five months. So yeah it doesn't end until December, basically December of 1916. Okay

00:01:10.020 so a couple more things to say before we talk about what happened at 4am on the 21st of February is that

00:01:15.780 the Germans managed to build up a giant army and a giant number of guns, artillery pieces, in almost

00:01:24.540 complete secret, I mean not 100% secret because that's not really possible, the French still would 1.00

00:01:32.080 have some idea that something was coming but they had, it seems that the French had no idea quite what

00:01:39.440 the Germans had built up. Now on the German side of the lines, I mean we're in France but it's quite 0.93

00:01:45.200 close to the German border, the Germans had multiple rail heads, multiple you know rail tracks leading up to

00:01:54.160 the Verdun sector on their side of the lines. So they could get and did use these multiple railway lines,

00:02:00.880 what's it, six, seven, eight of them, to get a crazy amount of materiel to the front lines.

00:02:08.160 Thousands and thousands of guns, heavy guns and obviously thousands and tens of thousands of men

00:02:14.160 and everything that they need, right, food, victuals, water, just ammo for their small arms, boots,

00:02:21.360 uniforms, everything right and they managed to do it in almost complete secret. The French certainly had no 1.00

00:02:27.600 idea that a giant, giant offensive was about to happen. As I say, they knew something was in the

00:02:32.960 air, there'll be some like deserters, there'll be the odd spire, there'll be the odd observation balloon

00:02:39.200 but by and large, somehow, incredibly. Well one of the reasons why the Germans were able to do it is 0.99

00:02:43.760 because we're still in the very, very, very early period of radio, they're not really using radio much

00:02:49.520 at all, they use more telegraph lines basically. So by the age of World War II there's this whole idea

00:02:57.360 of signals intelligence, this whole idea that you can tap into your enemy's radio and hear what

00:03:04.320 they're saying, tap into your opponent's communications in all different ways. Well you can't really do

00:03:12.160 that in World War I if your enemy's just using a very, very simple telegraph wire. I mean it would

00:03:19.200 be possible to tap into that but as long as you make sure that your telegraph wire hasn't been tapped

00:03:24.800 into, like the one line, sometimes there'll be one line leading from, one telegraph wire leading

00:03:30.400 from the front trench back behind the lines, as long as you make sure that all the way along that wire

00:03:35.600 it hasn't been spliced with an enemy one and they're listening in, which very much often wasn't the

00:03:41.920 case because these front lines, front line trenches and reserve trenches were so impregnable most of the time

00:03:46.800 that you did have relatively secure communications from the front line back to your HQ. So whereas in

00:03:55.840 World War II for example it was quite difficult for one side to keep something big secret for long,

00:04:02.000 not including things like you know the Manhattan Project and stuff like that that are done way back

00:04:06.640 in continental United States, even though that wasn't kept secret ultimately. Anyway I digress. The reason why

00:04:12.640 the Germans at Verdun in 1916 were able to build up such a large amount, it's a giant army there in

00:04:19.200 almost complete secrecy, it's just because signals were so primitive still. So the Germans build up 1.00

00:04:25.280 this this this giant force and they call it Operation Gericht, which means judgment basically. Operation

00:04:32.080 Judgment is quite ominous. Today I'm going to read variously on and off from William F Buckingham's

00:04:37.440 Verdun in 1916, The Deadliest Battle of the First World War. And here's what he says about sort of

00:04:42.480 this this the very very opening phases. Quote, unlike the preceding nine days, the early morning

00:04:48.320 of Monday the 21st of February at Verdun was cold. Yeah apparently it was like bitterly cold. There's

00:04:53.360 like snow during the day, it's that cold. Verdun was bitterly cold, generally clear and brightly

00:04:59.040 illuminated by a full moon. In the woods north and east of Verdun in excess of 1,200 German artillery pieces

00:05:07.120 ranging from 75 millimetres located in the front line to massive 420 millimetre howitzers. If you

00:05:14.880 don't know, a 420 millimetre howitzer is insanely large. That's like a naval gun basically. A crazily

00:05:23.600 long range, like 20 miles or something. And the shell is like the size of a human. If you put a high

00:05:28.560 explosive in that, that's just a giant, sort of an unbelievably huge gun. The massive 420 millimetre

00:05:35.360 howitzers were sighted on targets in and behind the French lines. As Alistair Horn put it, quote,

00:05:41.440 there was hardly room for a man to walk between the massed cannon and ammunition dumps, and quote,

00:05:46.800 Buckingham goes on. Each battery of 77 millimetre field guns had a stock of 3,000 ready rounds

00:05:53.040 cached on the guns positions, with a further 3,000 waiting to be brought up. 105 millimetre howitzers

00:05:59.360 were stocked with 2,000 ready rounds, and the 210 millimetre and 420 millimetre howitzers

00:06:05.920 with 1,200 rounds ready. The first shots of Operation Gericht were fired at 4am by the three 380

00:06:13.920 millimetre naval guns belonging to Captain Lieutenant Hans Walter Schultz, marines under commando. So they

00:06:20.560 really were naval guns being repurposed. From their emplacements at Sorrel Farm, the Bois de Miserie

00:06:26.640 and the Bois de Warifont, 17 miles northeast of Verdun. So these big guns are like 17 miles away.

00:06:33.520 They can't be seen by the French, even with like an observation balloon. Well, they weren't, they 0.99

00:06:37.440 weren't seen. You were able to bring them up quietly under the cover of night and put them under,

00:06:41.360 put them in a forest. I mean, the French word for tree or forest, wood,

00:06:45.440 is Bois in this, in this story where I talk about different places in and around the Verdun sector.

00:06:52.080 A lot of them start with Bois de something, which is the French for forest or wood, wood something or

00:06:57.680 other. So yeah, you bring them up under the cover of darkness with sort of radio silence. You put them

00:07:03.280 under heavy tree cover. So even if an aeroplane flies over, they won't see it. And suddenly a 380

00:07:08.720 millimeter or 420 millimeter gun from 17 miles away is blowing up your positions. It's crazy,

00:07:15.200 crazy stuff goes on here. The guns targets included Verdun's railway station and yard

00:07:20.240 and the city's bridges across the river Meuse. Because if you can blow up the train station,

00:07:25.600 the one train station and the one railhead that the French have got running into Verdun from behind 0.93

00:07:31.760 their lines, then it stops them or at least very much slows them down from bringing in reserves and

00:07:38.160 replacements and material of their own. So that's their first target, basically.

00:07:42.320 Blow up the train station and the railway, if you can, as much as possible. So they were trying to

00:07:46.240 blow up the railway station and the yard and the city's bridges across the river Meuse,

00:07:49.600 but a shell from the first salvo landed in the yard of the Bishop's Palace next to the cathedral.

00:07:54.960 This was likely from the newly installed gun emplacement at Sorel Farm, which fired its first round

00:08:00.480 on the 21st of February. Whether or not, succeeding shots did reduce the railway yard

00:08:05.680 to a cratered ruin and set the station building ablaze in short order, thus interrupting the

00:08:10.640 supply of munitions flowing through the city to the front. Other long-range guns sought out French

00:08:15.120 headquarters, road junctions and other installations. Nearer the front, Fort Douaumont was hit by the first

00:08:21.760 of 62 420mm shells that were to pummel the fort in the first four days of the attack. So here's the

00:08:28.880 thing to remind you about, that you've got the actual town of Verdun in the middle of this position

00:08:35.120 and around it all sorts of faults. I mean, Verdun is surrounded on more or less on three sides by a

00:08:41.120 higher ground and it's not sort of like a proper like saucer-shaped valley like Florence. Florence,

00:08:49.040 the city of Florence sort of sits in a saucer, but it's something close to that. On at least three

00:08:54.320 sides, Verdun, there's higher ground, right? Hills and long hills, ridgelines. So the idea is from

00:09:02.560 the German point of view, if we can take the high ground and they've already got some of it on the 0.95

00:09:06.720 eastern side of the Meuse, if we can take that and get our artillery up there, just rain down

00:09:11.760 artillery on them forever, there's not really anything they can do about it. That, you know,

00:09:16.080 it's a classic thing to take the high ground is strategically, tactically vital or important,

00:09:20.480 or just gives you a giant upper hand, doesn't it? And so there's all these faults around Verdun and

00:09:26.240 some are much more vital than others. Some hilltops, some ridgelines are much more vital

00:09:31.440 than others. You know, if the Germans get that particular hilltop, then they can just see down 1.00

00:09:36.720 onto the next fault and they'll definitely be able to take it. And if they take this ridgeline,

00:09:40.960 then they can see down onto Verdun itself or something with long enough ranged artillery pieces.

00:09:46.640 And so it becomes a battle for like, yeah, the hilltops or the ridgelines and these certain

00:09:52.400 faults. Fault Douaumont is arguably the most important one. It's like probably the top three

00:09:57.520 or four. People say it's the most important one. It's one of the biggest ones. I think it is the

00:10:02.400 biggest one. The amount of time and energy and money the French had put into building it in the 0.64

00:10:06.400 first place in like the 1880s, you know, not long after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871.

00:10:13.120 The amount of time and energy and money and resources they put into building it.

00:10:17.200 And again, this idea that the faults are mutually reinforcing, that they cover each other, right?

00:10:23.200 The big guns at Fort Douaumont, for example, aren't really necessarily meant for defending

00:10:27.520 Fort Douaumont. They're meant for defending the next fault over or a couple of other faults.

00:10:33.680 And then those other faults, their big guns are meant for defending Fort Douaumont. You see what I mean?

00:10:39.040 OK, so the thing about these faults that's crazy to know is that by this point, by 1916,

00:10:45.680 the French High Command, Supreme Command, had decided that faults weren't that good anymore.

00:10:51.360 Now, in hindsight, with 2020 godlike perfect hindsight, we know that that's sort of not

00:10:56.720 really right. The thing that sometimes happens in war, because every war that happens is a new one.

00:11:01.920 There's the old cliche, isn't it, that generals fight the previous war,

00:11:04.960 and they're always taken off guard by the one they're actually fighting in real time.

00:11:08.560 But sometimes what happens in war is that something new happens, it's not really ever happened before.

00:11:12.880 And the generals, the planners, learn the wrong lesson from it, right?

00:11:17.440 For example, for one quick example, very, very broadly speaking here as well,

00:11:21.760 bear that in mind, what I'm about to say is a very, very broad strokes of the brush.

00:11:25.200 But when tanks, the very, very first tanks were used, they weren't necessarily all that brilliant.

00:11:30.720 They weren't sort of game changers, right?

00:11:32.880 It wasn't immediately clear that tanks would be the future of warfare, 20th century warfare.

00:11:38.480 That wasn't clear at all, because the very first tank designs were kind of crappy,

00:11:43.360 and they weren't used in big enough numbers. And there was all sorts of reasons why.

00:11:47.360 The very first time tanks were used, everyone didn't immediately think,

00:11:51.040 all right, we need to gear all our industry to building tanks and designing tanks, right?

00:11:56.160 They didn't learn the lesson right away. So one thing that happened here with faults,

00:12:00.000 is that right at the beginning of World War I, in 1914, when the Germans swept through Belgium,

00:12:05.920 there was a giant forge at Liège, a giant, giant fault that was supposed to be, you know, impregnable.

00:12:12.800 It was supposed to be that you couldn't take it. The Germans would not be able to take it. 1.00

00:12:16.640 Even their biggest guns wouldn't be able to punch through. And the defences were lined up in such

00:12:22.960 a way that it just wouldn't be possible for it to be taken. Well, for various reasons, which I won't

00:12:27.760 go into, because that's not really what this story is about. The Germans did take it relatively quickly.

00:12:33.280 Okay. That just happened at the edge. Now, the French, well, both sides, but particularly the French 0.70

00:12:38.480 high command, took the wrong lesson from that. They looked at that and they said, oh,

00:12:43.200 war has moved on. War's different now. Faults like that are not as good as we thought,

00:12:48.400 or nowhere near as good as we thought. Actually, you know, the lesson they took from this is incorrect,

00:12:55.040 essentially. I mean, it's right to degree, but they took it way too far. They thought, oh no,

00:13:00.560 faults are just a place where we can get pinned down and surrounded and snuffed out. That's all they are

00:13:06.800 now. They thought, you know, we're not living in the age of Frederick the Great or Napoleon. There's no

00:13:12.000 point trying to hold a fault like that if all you do is sit there under bombardment for a few days,

00:13:17.920 hoping you don't get killed by some giant German howitzer, and then eventually they take it anyway. 0.96

00:13:23.280 They were thinking, you know, it's best to be more fluid, have more movement. Let's not let ourselves

00:13:30.000 get pinned down in one position. If we need to move our line and move back and then we'll do it that way.

00:13:36.960 So these giant faults are actually a hindrance, if anything. That's what they thought. That's what

00:13:41.600 the French and English planners were thinking at this point, at the end of 1914 and all through 1915.

00:13:48.720 They're thinking, you know, it's a shame. It's a waste. We've spent so much time and energy and money

00:13:52.240 on building faults all over the place. But they're actually, they're counterproductive,

00:13:56.880 if anything, they were thinking. You know, why put loads and loads of artillery and men in these faults,

00:14:02.640 only for it all to get captured. Okay. Okay. That was their thinking. The Supreme Commander of the

00:14:07.040 French, General Joffre, Joseph Joffre, decided, and he wasn't alone, he had the backing of all the

00:14:13.600 French general staff, that we need all the guns we can and all the men we can at various points.

00:14:20.800 So instead of stuffing faults like Fort Douaumont and Fort Vaux around Verdun, instead of stuffing them

00:14:26.880 with men and artillery and giant magazines of shells, which are never used because the Germans never 0.99

00:14:34.960 attack there, that's a waste. That's just sitting there being wasted. And we need, we need those men,

00:14:40.240 guns and ammo in other places. So they had stripped out most of these faults. They weren't,

00:14:47.040 like something like Fort Douaumont, which is a massive, was a massive installation, to garrison

00:14:52.480 thousands and thousands of men, of dozens and dozens, hundreds of guns, tens of thousands of

00:14:57.280 rounds of ammo. They were sort of sitting empty, almost empty. And we'll get to the details of

00:15:02.800 specifically Fort Douaumont later in this episode. But they weren't these crazily strong points that

00:15:08.800 everyone thought they were, that the Germans thought they would be. And before I go on, just to say as a

00:15:13.440 counterpoint to everything I just said there, the thinking wasn't completely wrong as well, right?

00:15:18.560 These faults, although it's better than sitting in a trench, you know, being underground with many,

00:15:23.760 many, many meters of concrete above your head, reinforced concrete above your head,

00:15:28.400 is better than just sitting in a muddy dugout or even a trench that's open to the air. It is better

00:15:34.960 than that. But it can also be a tomb as well. You know, it's not entirely wrong. But okay,

00:15:42.000 there you go. It's a bit of both. All right, I'll let Buckingham continue the story of what's

00:15:46.240 happening on the morning of the 21st of February, 1916. He says,

00:15:49.280 The main bombardment, German bombardment, began between 7am and 7.15. So they'd opened up at 4am,

00:15:57.360 but at 7am, it gets even more intense. Controlled by six observation balloons, all 1,200 guns began

00:16:06.160 firing along the entire perimeter of the Verdun salient from Le Aparez on the east bank of the

00:16:12.320 Meuse to Malencore on the west. Apologies to any French people listening who appreciate that I'm 1.00

00:16:18.560 butchering some of these words. The ones that are more famous that I've heard people say,

00:16:22.560 I can mimic enough, but ones that are a bit more obscure, which I haven't. Probably really badly

00:16:27.360 butchering them. Anyway, and the barrage was stretched to include around 50 miles of the front,

00:16:32.240 as guns from adjacent formations joined in to confuse the French about the precise location of

00:16:37.760 the coming attack. The guns around the salient fired at maximum rate until 8am when they dropped back

00:16:44.800 to a more sustainable rate of fire. The resultant concussion was noticeable 100 miles away. General

00:16:51.680 Fenelon-Francois Passagar felt it pulsing through the floor and heard the distant rumble and thump of

00:16:57.840 the guns in his command post in the Vosges, for example. A long way away. One French participant 0.52

00:17:04.240 later described how the whole area behind the German lion seemed to be blowing a gale of flame without

00:17:10.480 interruption. The bombardment was targeted so effectively that all communications between Verdun

00:17:16.160 and the French lion had been cut within an hour of the bombardment beginning. Again, communication

00:17:21.600 lions are basically a telegraph wire, not radios. So if you are able to cut that line, either a man

00:17:28.720 with the equivalent of wire snips or a high explosive shell can break that line, that one little really,

00:17:34.960 really thin cable basically, then yeah. Then the front line guys can't let the reserve trenches and the

00:17:41.120 HQ know what's going on. That was very often a thing that both sides would see their enemy trying

00:17:45.760 to lay a telegraph wire and snipers and artillery try and kill that one guy as much as they can,

00:17:54.000 because that could make all the difference. Very, very dangerous to be one of those guys that lays, 0.53

00:17:59.760 was replacing an already destroyed telegraph line. The carefully plotted French artillery positions

00:18:05.840 were saturated with high explosives and phosgene gas shells against which French respirators offered

00:18:12.240 no protection. To say phosgene gas is particularly horrible. French counter fire consequently fell away

00:18:18.480 to almost nothing, with the exception of the French guns brought up as part of the last minute

00:18:23.120 reinforcement initiated by General de Castilno at the end of January. So as I say, right at the end of

00:18:30.000 January, by the end of January, the French realised the Germans were doing something. The Germans 0.84

00:18:34.960 couldn't keep it entirely secret. They realised that Germans were doing something. There was going 1.00

00:18:38.240 to be some sort of action there from the Germans, but they, again, they had no idea the scale of it.

00:18:44.880 As German artillery observers had not had time to plot their locations, the French, the few, very few

00:18:50.640 French counter batteries that there were. French long-range guns thus blew up the regimental paymaster

00:18:56.320 of the 24th Infantry Regiment, complete with his cash box at Billy-sur-Manguiennes near the Bois de Wauffermont,

00:19:04.880 and another French salvo straddled the 5th Army's forward HQ at Witterville, just as Chief of Staff

00:19:12.080 von Klobbeldorf was reporting to Crown Prince Wilhelm. The Crown Prince and his entourage had come

00:19:18.000 forward to be closer to the action, but hastily withdrew to their permanent HQ at Stene, 15 miles

00:19:23.760 further north. On the other side of the line, in the Bois de Curese, a Captain Pujot, possibly an aviation

00:19:29.840 officer on a fact-finding mission for General Ferdinand Foch at the Groupe Mont d'Armie du Nord,

00:19:35.120 had driven up to observe the German front lines accompanied by a staff officer from 30 Corps

00:19:40.000 headquarters. They too departed swiftly when the barrage began to fall, abandoning a planned visit

00:19:45.120 to Lieutenant Colonel Drillon in the process. This Lieutenant Colonel Drillon will come up in a

00:19:49.920 moment. I'll tell you all about him because he's interesting and important, and all the history is

00:19:54.000 talk about old Drillon. But for a moment, I'll continue this. Similarly, the beginning of the

00:19:59.040 German shelling almost caught General Etienne-André Bapt, commander of the 72nd Division of Infantry

00:20:06.240 Reserve, who was riding up to inspect frontline positions near Brabant, six miles north of his

00:20:11.200 headquarters at Brasser-Muse. His early morning ride up the east bank of the Muse ended two miles short of

00:20:17.040 its objective when the curtain of fire descended as he reached Semongo, coincidentally the headquarters of the

00:20:23.280 351st Regiment of Infantry. The shelling fell most heavily on the German's chosen attack sector,

00:20:29.280 held by 30 Corps, French 30 Corps, and especially the seven-mile stretch of front line running east

00:20:34.720 from the River Meuse, occupied by General Bapt's 72nd Division of Infantry Reserve. Each German battery

00:20:40.880 had been assigned a specific section of the front line, and the guns worked relentlessly back and

00:20:45.200 forth across it like a giant invisible plough at a rate of up to 40 shells per minute, eradicating trenches,

00:20:52.240 collapsing dugouts and shelters, demolishing concrete bunkers, and cutting telephone lines.

00:20:57.600 One Brigade Headquarters from the 51st Division of Infantry Reserve was obliged to set up a relay of

00:21:03.360 messengers spaced at 300-yard intervals to maintain contact with its subunits, with all the risks that

00:21:09.200 that entailed. A liaison officer from the 161st Regiment Infantry, attached to the 51st Division of Infantry

00:21:15.680 Reserve, described the resultant carnage in the Bois de Hebois on the north-east shoulder of the

00:21:21.360 salient. And this is what an eyewitness said, a liaison officer who was there. He said,

00:21:27.120 The trees are cut down like wisps of straw. Some shells come crashing out of the smoke. The dust

00:21:32.800 produced by the upheaval of the earth creates a fog which prevents us from seeing very far. We have

00:21:38.640 to abandon our shelter and go to ground in a deep crater. We are surrounded by wounded and dying men

00:21:45.440 whom we are totally unable to help." End quote. So one thing to say that happens in World War One,

00:21:51.040 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

00:21:55.840 about to tell you happened, but as a broad trend, what happens in World War One is that each battle

00:22:00.960 is bigger and more extreme. It's not that there aren't smaller battles in between the big ones,

00:22:07.440 but broadly speaking, however long a bombardment lasted in 1914, they're bigger and longer in 1915,

00:22:14.960 and bigger and longer in 1916, and 1917, and then in 1918. So quite often you'll find that the record,

00:22:22.160 sort of the most shells fired in an opening barrage is that the new record gets set all the time. So

00:22:29.600 it's the same with Verdun. Never before had there been a barrage quite like this. They thought that

00:22:35.440 the big barrage at Champagne in 1915 was the most incredible thing, would never be paralleled ever

00:22:41.760 again. There's been nothing like it before and probably never will be again. Well, the battles of

00:22:46.240 1916 and 1917 and 1918 just keep raising the bar on that. So here at Verdun, this opening barrage that

00:22:54.640 the Germans do is unprecedented, right? They fire something like a million shells, which had just

00:23:00.240 never been done before, right? 1,200 big guns, heavy guns firing a million shells over the course of 12

00:23:07.440 hours or more in a relatively, onto a relatively small area, about seven miles, about seven mile

00:23:13.520 front, a million shells. How anyone survived, and they did, is remarkable. I mean later in a moment

00:23:18.880 we'll talk about that, how the Germans were surprised that there was still any Frenchmen alive there when

00:23:23.280 they did go to, when the infantry, German infantry, went to walk into those positions. They thought

00:23:28.960 certainly there'd be nothing left but, but body parts, if that. But there were quite a few Frenchmen

00:23:34.240 survived it, somehow, remarkably. Okay, I'll let Buckingham continue. He says,

00:23:38.640 at around midday the barrage paused, just stopped, just stopped, partly to trick the surviving defenders

00:23:44.640 into thinking that the ground attack was beginning, and thus draw them out of their cover, and partly

00:23:49.200 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.

00:24:06.800 It won't be the case for the middle tool.

00:24:12.640 I'd really need to carry on the evening with our memory on the floor to heiß from Canada.

00:24:24.480 So now everything is accessible, and here are two holes in the package.

00:24:29.680 Now go out to знать questions.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - November 02, 2025

PREVIEW： Epochs #235 ｜ The Battle of Verdun： Part II

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