The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - January 18, 2026


PREVIEW： Epochs #246 ｜ The Battle of Verdun - Part III


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34 minutes

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5,760

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392

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Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

This is the final part of the mini-series on the Battle of Verdun, where we cover the events leading up to the fall of Fort Douaumont and the failure of the German offensive to take the Meuse River.

Transcript

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Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.640 Hello and welcome back to Epochs. This week I shall be finishing the mini-series on Verdun.
00:00:07.500 Many apologies for those who have been waiting for quite a while for it, for various reasons,
00:00:11.060 for interviews and for timing and technical reasons I won't bore you with.
00:00:15.200 We've had quite a long hiatus between the first two parts about Verdun and this final part.
00:00:20.220 So okay, let's just jump straight into it. I believe we left off last time the story where
00:00:24.300 the Germans had just taken Fort Douaumont outside in the environs around Verdun town and that was a
00:00:33.220 really, really important thing, like really, really sort of tactically and strategically and in terms
00:00:37.840 of morale, national morale on both sides. It was a really important thing. The Germans thought
00:00:43.960 they'd basically won the Battle of Verdun and it was on to Paris and they would win the whole of
00:00:49.400 World War I on the Western Front very imminently after the fall of Fort Douaumont. That was their
00:00:55.100 hope. That was their feeling. There was like a national holiday in Germany. Bells ringing all
00:01:00.160 over the country. The French thought, oh no, again, a similar thing, opposite. They thought a similar
00:01:04.600 thing. Oh no, it's all over. We're going to lose Verdun. The Verdun salient is going to fall.
00:01:09.700 You know, the Germans could be marked. There's nothing between them and Paris. We're done for. 1.00
00:01:14.540 It's all over. Although we're still going to try to hold the line as much as possible.
00:01:18.540 It was like a big deal. But turns out, as we all know, the Battle of Verdun ultimately in the end
00:01:24.420 was just one more World War I stalemate effectively. So let's tell the rest of that story.
00:01:31.700 Okay, so the Germans take Fort Douaumont on the 25th of February, 1916. We're in 1916, remember.
00:01:39.980 But by the 27th of February, the overall German offensive had stalled for a number of reasons,
00:01:47.520 classic reasons why a World War I offensive stall. One is sort of the infantry overrun
00:01:52.960 their own artillery protection, right? Artillery, the artillery batteries are used to essentially
00:02:00.860 protect the infantry, keep them covered, keep the heads of the enemies, keep the heads of the
00:02:06.540 French down from the German perspective. You know, keep the French guns from firing. 0.80
00:02:12.640 Anti-battery work, you know, artillery jewels. And so if your infantry go beyond that curtain,
00:02:20.200 that defensive artillery curtain, then they're sort of out in the open, hanging out there with 0.98
00:02:26.680 their asses in the breeze. And so that's one of the things that happened. The Germans weren't 1.00
00:02:32.520 able to move their artillery screen up quick enough. Also, the weather didn't help the Germans.
00:02:39.240 There was some sort of thaw. It was all snowy, right? It's really cold. And there was some
00:02:44.260 sort of thaw and the snow just turns to sludge and mud. And that like really, really hinders
00:02:49.400 the Germans because the Germans are on the offensive, you know, so that's never good for
00:02:53.800 them. And just a few other technical various reasons that the German offensive stalls by just
00:03:02.300 a couple of days between the 27th and the 29th of February, just a few days after they take
00:03:07.260 Fort Duermann. The whole thing sort of basically stalls. But beyond that, there's a bigger question.
00:03:14.280 There's a bigger problem with the German plan on the most meta level, on the most sort of
00:03:19.280 broadly, broad strategic level. There's a problem with it. It's that the Meuse River, the river
00:03:27.760 that runs through this whole region is the Meuse. And von Falkenhayn, I've talked all about him
00:03:33.220 before, remember, the overall commander of the Germans. In the field, that is. Obviously,
00:03:38.840 their overall commander is the Kaiser. But, you know, actually, the military commander on the ground
00:03:43.300 actually gets to make all the real decisions. Von Falkenhayn, he had decided that the German attack
00:03:49.740 should mainly be taking place on the east side of the Meuse only. Because it's difficult to take rivers
00:03:57.360 and cross rivers if the enemy are sort of entrenched and don't want you to. So his feeling was that he
00:04:03.560 didn't, to begin with, right, because we're still relatively at the beginning of this battle, just
00:04:09.100 purely in terms of how many months it goes on. He thought he didn't necessarily need to take the
00:04:13.840 west bank of the Meuse because it just wasn't part of his concept, of his plan. He didn't want to take
00:04:21.020 the whole area. We talked about this before, didn't we, that he didn't actually necessarily want, actually
00:04:25.460 fully take and occupy Verdun. That wasn't the point of the battle. The point of the battle was to force
00:04:31.880 the French to throw all their reserves in, which he would then slaughter. But it wasn't about actually 0.65
00:04:38.140 taking Verdun. It wasn't about actually taking the west bank of the Meuse. However, at this point, once
00:04:45.320 they're, once the first sort of phase, the first phase of the battle peters out, they've taken Fort
00:04:51.000 Duhamel and it just seems to everyone involved, including von Falkenhayn, at this point, that either
00:04:57.360 if we're going to do this thing, if this battle is going to be truly a success for the Germans, we need,
00:05:02.840 we do need to take the west bank because otherwise the French, for various reasons, more like tactical
00:05:07.600 reasons, the French can get the drop on us in various ways. They can command the higher ground and 1.00
00:05:13.300 they can rein artillery down on us. And the whole point to bleed France dry wouldn't necessarily 0.66
00:05:19.180 work. The French could deal out as many casualties on us, the Germans, than we're dealing out 0.93
00:05:24.240 to them. And that, again, that negates the whole point of the battle. So in order to prevent
00:05:28.480 that, von Falkenhayn's got a decision about this time in early March, certainly in early
00:05:33.480 March, 1916. So let's call the whole thing off. We did well. We got quite a lot of, quite
00:05:40.340 a big advance. We took Fort Duhamel and that was a big strategic, well, that was a big morale boost,
00:05:44.960 if nothing else. And we can say we beat the French here in this sector at this time. You know, it's not 0.99
00:05:50.960 a war-winning effort or anything like that, but it's basically a win for us in this battle.
00:05:56.020 And leave it there, call it there. Or push on. And, you know, what pushing on looks like is taking the
00:06:04.300 west bank of the Meuse, crossing the river and taking all the various hills and other
00:06:10.820 faults around Verdun. And, you know, really, really forcing the French to throw in all their 1.00
00:06:19.020 men. Effectively, that's the idea. He's going to bleed France dry. He's going to murder, he's 0.79
00:06:23.540 going to kill as many Frenchmen as he possibly can. You know, it's a really quite dark strategy, 1.00
00:06:30.740 isn't it? Okay. And apparently there was serious thought, you know, from Valkontine,
00:06:36.620 gave it serious thought of calling the whole battle around this stage, cutting his losses.
00:06:42.060 But he decides not to. And that's, you know, that is a fateful decision because it does mean
00:06:47.260 the deaths of hundreds of thousands more of both young Frenchmen and young Germans.
00:06:53.180 Right. In hindsight, in hindsight, there probably shouldn't have been the battle of Verdun at
00:06:58.380 all. And certainly it would have been best for the Germans, or for both, really. It would 0.89
00:07:05.080 have been best if the battle had been sort of called to a halt at the end of February
00:07:09.140 or early March. But it wasn't. And it went on to become the longest battle of World War
00:07:13.940 I. That's one of its monikers. There were a couple of battles that were more bloody, like
00:07:18.320 in terms of sheer number of casualties. But it went on for the longest. It goes on all the
00:07:23.420 way until the winter. It only ends when the snows come again at the end of the year, in
00:07:28.700 like December 1916. It just goes on and on and on. And there's various French attacks,
00:07:35.020 German counterattacks, and back and forth. German attacks. Mostly the Germans are on the
00:07:39.200 attack. Almost entirely the Germans are on the attack. But then there's French counterattacks.
00:07:43.720 Now, some historians have even said, even gone so far as to say, that at this point in the
00:07:49.780 battle, it made, it's easy to say in hindsight, isn't it? But it made absolutely no sense for
00:07:56.440 the Germans to keep going. Absolutely no sense at all. It purely became a matter of, maybe, 0.98
00:08:02.640 it purely became a matter of pride that they'd already tried so hard, pushed so hard, built
00:08:09.060 up so many, you know, guns and ammunition, that to have it not be a complete overwhelming
00:08:16.460 victory, the Germans just sort of couldn't accept that in terms of, like, national prestige
00:08:23.680 and pride. Turns out that, you know, eight months later, seven months later, whatever,
00:08:28.980 they still have to end it and retreat anyway. So, but, you know, it's easy to say these things
00:08:35.260 in hindsight, isn't it? If you were in the German high command in, you know, in the 1st
00:08:41.100 of March, 1916, and you had their mindset, I mean, you might think, no, no, this is our,
00:08:46.780 this is our chance to win. This is our chance to either do what von Falkenhay said, bleed the
00:08:52.700 French army white, or actually, actually push, push through, punch through the line at Verdun,
00:08:58.380 you know, profoundly, and march onto Paris and win the whole war, 1870, 1871 style. You know,
00:09:06.860 if you, if you were one of those men, you might think that was realistic. You probably would
00:09:11.920 think that it's, it's a, it's a possibility. It's worth trying. It could cut the war short 0.68
00:09:17.740 by two years. Of course, they don't know it ends at the end of 1918, but nonetheless, you
00:09:21.620 know what I mean? We could end the war soon. Okay. So the Germans push on and cross in various 0.94
00:09:29.200 points, various ways, cross the Meuse and start attacking all the environs, various small towns
00:09:36.540 and forests and hills around Verdun at great costs to themselves as well. You know, every
00:09:45.200 push, every offensive is always very, very heavy in terms of casualties for those attacking. I mean,
00:09:52.820 in World War I, it's both sides. Well, that's another thing to say that the sort of the horror
00:09:56.680 and the killing is just constant, right? You might think if you read a, if you read a summary of the
00:10:04.260 Battle of Verdun, they will say things like, between this date and this date, there was a German
00:10:08.760 offensive. And between this date and this date, there was a French counter-offensive and so on and so
00:10:12.840 on. And you think, okay, so in between those dates, there's not war going on. The battle isn't going
00:10:19.120 on. Not that many people are dying. No, no, that's not how it is. It's going on constantly all the
00:10:24.460 time. Like there'll be a period where there's a whole month or something where neither side are
00:10:28.820 formally attacking and yet both sides lose 30,000 guys or something in that time. So there's just
00:10:35.500 constant, it's just constant, literally 24-7, depending on where you are on the front. But it's a big
00:10:41.600 front, miles and miles and miles long. It's constant. There's sniping and artillery fire
00:10:45.260 going on the whole time. Mines going off, gas being fired, everything. Absolute nightmare.
00:10:53.280 A lot of the accounts from people that survived or wrote letters home and then died, whatever.
00:10:59.220 The accounts are often things like, and I'm paraphrasing, but they say things like,
00:11:04.880 you can never, like they're writing to their family, you can never understand what this is.
00:11:08.600 You will never be able to understand what it was like here at this time, in this place,
00:11:14.540 in this time in history, that it's complete madness. Every horror you can imagine is going
00:11:20.320 on. If you thought men were mad, if you thought men were capable of monstrous things, you haven't
00:11:27.160 seen anything. You don't know. I can't explain. I barely have the words to explain to you the
00:11:34.760 horror and madness of what's going on here. And yet still, some did try. And yeah, it's
00:11:41.900 just crazy. Like artillery, particularly artillery, does crazy things to the human body. Like
00:11:47.080 sometimes it will, it will flatten the man, like literally flatten him. Sometimes it will
00:11:51.860 rip them all to pieces, rip you from your thigh all the way up your torso to the top of 0.99
00:11:57.140 your shoulder, rip you in half. Um, sometimes artillery will blow up and a guy's just like 0.99
00:12:03.860 near someone and it hasn't wounded him at all. It's like not a scratch on his body, but he's
00:12:09.060 dead. Right. The, the, just the, the concussion of it. It's really weird what artillery does
00:12:15.320 to people. And that's terrifying, terrifying. You know, of course, there's one thing to get
00:12:20.700 a pretty much a nice, neat bullet hole through your chest or through your head and you die 0.99
00:12:26.000 either instantly or quite quickly. You bleed out within a few moments, but artillery can, 0.78
00:12:31.120 you know, like it will just turn your, your leg from the shin down into pulp and you don't
00:12:37.360 die for ages or you only die eventually because you get an infection from it and you're in insane
00:12:42.280 pain for days and days and days or months before you actually die of it. Right. Or it's
00:12:47.640 just like off, not often, but you know, it's not that uncommon that it'll blow your jaw off.
00:12:52.140 The bottom part of your jaw is blown off. Something like that. Something horrific or both your arms
00:12:57.880 and legs are blown off, but you, but you don't die. You're a quadriplegic. Terrifying. Just, 0.98
00:13:03.740 you know, really, really terrifying. A lot of soldiers say, a lot of them, a lot of them say,
00:13:10.060 I don't mind dying. I'm prepared to die. I made that decision when I signed up or volunteered
00:13:15.240 as long as it's quick. I'm prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for my country, but I want it
00:13:23.760 to be quick. Don't have me half ripped apart and then surviving for a long time. Like maybe just
00:13:30.960 surviving in the mud on the battlefield, in the snow and mud, in like a dirty shell crater that's full of 0.99
00:13:37.640 piss and shit and the residue from gas, poison gas. Yeah. I'm prepared to die, but don't make it 0.99
00:13:45.460 hell on earth. Don't make it like torturous. But of course, you know, you're in the lap of the gods 0.60
00:13:52.720 of war. It's why it's so, so sort of terrifying for both sides. Okay. And so the Germans push on 0.73
00:14:00.340 and there's various high points. That's, that's what war is still like very much in world war one,
00:14:06.040 where it's important who controls the high ground. I mean, it's still important to a certain extent
00:14:10.940 nowadays, depending on what type of war you're fighting, right? A war between say, Israel and
00:14:17.980 Iran. It's not, it's not important necessarily who holds the high ground because they do aerial 1.00
00:14:23.360 reconnaissance or even satellite imagery and stuff. But back in world war one, even though they have got
00:14:28.720 aeroplanes, they've definitely got aeroplanes and they've got balloon cores, where you can send up
00:14:34.260 a balloon, an observation balloon, or you can send up one of those rickety, very early aeroplanes and
00:14:40.940 even with cameras and take images of what the other side are doing. Still, regardless of all that,
00:14:46.980 because all that is still relatively primitive, it's important. It's really, really important
00:14:51.900 tactically to be able to hold the higher ground, mainly not just for observation, although that is
00:14:58.640 super, super important, mainly so that you can move your guns up there, your artillery, your heavy
00:15:03.560 guns, the bigger the better, and rain down on the other side. So it's really, really important, I mean
00:15:09.820 vitally important. Who holds the highest ground? Now around Verdun, there's various hilltops. It's quite
00:15:16.360 an undulating landscape, really. There's various hilltops and various ridge lines. And so it becomes a
00:15:23.640 case of, when the Germans cross onto the west bank of the Meuse, it becomes a case of fighting over who
00:15:30.720 controls the various hilltops and ridge lines around Verdun. And that's where the bitterest fighting,
00:15:36.900 where, you know, the majority of the hundreds of thousands of casualties aside, but the both sides
00:15:42.720 suffer, go on fighting over these hills. And they swap hands many times. So in those terms,
00:15:49.520 like one hilltop. For example, there's one hill called Hill 304. Very famous. Hill 304.
00:15:56.680 Changes hands multiple times. And tens and tens and tens of thousands of men on both sides die
00:16:02.960 fighting over this same hill. And the hill has been blasted to smithereens, right? When the Germans 0.98
00:16:10.120 first try and take it in March 1916, they bombard it so heavily, because it's got French positions on it,
00:16:17.180 to begin with, in the first instance, the Germans bombard it so heavily that they reduce the hill itself
00:16:22.700 by something like four metres. Right? At the beginning, it stood about like 304 metres tall.
00:16:28.340 And after their initial bombardment, it was only 300 metres tall. So imagine that. You reduce a hill by four metres.
00:16:34.740 You know how big four metres it is? It's like the size of a, the height of a house almost, you know?
00:16:38.780 Nearly. Not quite, but you know. A lot. To reduce the top of an entire hill like that, just by artillery fire.
00:16:46.940 In other words, they absolutely pepper it. And the fighting over Hill 304 goes on and on, back and forth, back and forth.
00:16:54.860 So if you count it in terms of how much ground was taken or captured per life, right,
00:17:02.140 it ends up coming out the most insane and bizarre and grotesque results. Like, for every inch of ground,
00:17:09.580 won or lost, hundreds of men died. Mad. And for the, for the individual soldier on the ground, again,
00:17:17.020 on both sides, they can't, it's hard for them to understand. You know, like, say you're just an average
00:17:23.220 French, French soldier, and you know that loads of your countrymen and comrades in arms, even people you knew,
00:17:31.160 friends, family members, perhaps, have been thrown into defending and retaking this one hill from the Germans.
00:17:39.060 And now you're going to be thrown in again. And you, you know, the obvious thing to think is, why, why are we doing this?
00:17:44.640 You know, the futility of it all. Why, this is crazy. Why are we wasting the very flower of our youth?
00:17:52.400 Why are we, and the Germans, throwing in the very flower of our youth? 0.99
00:17:58.960 The best and strongest menfolk of our entire nation are being shot and blown to pieces for the sake of this one
00:18:07.680 random hill near Verdun on the Muse. Why are we doing this? Well, because it's much bigger than Hill 304.
00:18:16.960 There was another one called Dead Man's Hill. That was the name of it even before World War One.
00:18:22.560 It just so happened that earlier in the 19th century, a dead body was found up there, a murder victim.
00:18:28.240 Right, long, long before World War One, this one hill near Verdun, a murder victim was randomly found
00:18:34.160 on this hill. And so the hill got called Dead Man's Hill, or Le Morte Homme in French,
00:18:41.440 Le Morte Homme, the Dead Man's Hill. This is another one of these hills, you know, aptly named,
00:18:48.160 like Hill 304, where both the French and the Germans decided, I mean, correctly in battlefield terms, 0.78
00:18:56.080 that it was tactically and strategically important to hold that high ground.
00:19:01.840 If we lose that bit of high ground, it gives the other side a massive advantage. So we must not yield it.
00:19:09.360 We must have it ourselves. Both sides think that. If we are to win the Battle of Verdun,
00:19:15.680 and perhaps the hope is win or lose the whole of World War One. So therefore it all boils down to just
00:19:21.760 these few hills, these few ridge lines. And the slaughter is crazy. We can't really,
00:19:30.240 we can't really properly understand it, I suppose. People that were there struggled to describe it,
00:19:36.640 and get their minds around it. The sheer scale, the numbers, you know. It's easy, isn't it, to sit here and
00:19:43.920 read a book or read a Wikipedia page and just say, you know, 600,000 men died at Verdun in 1916,
00:19:52.480 or something like that. To just say, the French lost somewhere between 278,000 and 330,000 casualties,
00:19:59.840 and probably something like 143,000 were actual combat deaths. And a few 10,000 more just simply
00:20:07.040 missing. Just blown into dust. Blown into a red mist. Just gone. Just to say, you know, just to say that.
00:20:14.800 The Germans may have had 160,000. Well, between 145,000 and 160,000 killed. 215,000 wounded.
00:20:25.520 You just say that and you move on. But, you know, to really, really wrap your mind around that,
00:20:31.440 those numbers. The insanity of it. Look, it's so, each and every one of those is a family ruined,
00:20:40.560 right? A life cut short. Many of them, most of them, maybe all of them, got something to offer
00:20:48.640 the world. Men with hopes and dreams and fears. And most of them, the vast majority of them, young,
00:20:56.880 terribly young kids, really. You know, 20-year-olds, 25-year-olds, younger. And put through,
00:21:04.640 it's not just the horror of artillery, but just living in those conditions as well. That's another
00:21:09.840 thing that comes out from a lot of the accounts from Verdun. Red. Lots and lots of the accounts.
00:21:17.760 That's the thing that I find most sort of interesting or harrowing, is just the real life
00:21:24.560 account. The real, the real words of someone that lived through it. For example, in one of those
00:21:29.680 books, there's a whole chapter, a whole section of one chapter. And it talks about, there's this
00:21:34.160 particular tunnel on the French side. And when I say tunnel, it's a big, big tunnel, not just a small,
00:21:40.560 not just a small alcove carved in the clay by men. It was pre-World War I existing. I think it was like
00:21:47.040 a train tunnel that was big and broad and high. And, you know, a bit like an underground in London,
00:21:54.400 like an underground tube station type thing. Quite a big underground thing. It was deep,
00:21:59.760 pretty deep underground. So even the giant German artillery pieces couldn't just blow you up from
00:22:05.440 above. So in that sense, it was safe, basically. And there was lots of space in there. And it was used
00:22:12.800 as all sorts of things like an ammo depot, a makeshift hospital, just somewhere to shelter if there's
00:22:21.280 like a gas attack and things. But the conditions in there were unbelievably squalid and horrible and
00:22:30.160 smelly and atrocious, you know, loads of bodies, men dying, men suffering, the horror and despair,
00:22:39.920 fear, all these things crammed into this little space. And again, people say the stench,
00:22:44.800 the stench of, again, piss and shit, but also of death, of infection, the smell of the smell that 0.99
00:22:54.320 not enough to kill you, but the smell of previous gas attacks, to smell it in the air. Like one or 0.99
00:22:59.920 two times a fire broke out in there and loads of people died. And like the, the smell of burnt
00:23:05.120 flesh and just, just a horrible hellacious place. And still, you would much rather be there than
00:23:10.000 outside. You, you would give anything to be in there than be in an open trench, anything.
00:23:18.000 And these various faults, not just fault Dumont, there's loads and loads of faults.
00:23:21.760 Another big one would be Fort Vaux, we'll talk about in a moment, we'll talk about a bit later.
00:23:26.880 The same thing in these faults, they smell and they stink and they're actually still quite dangerous
00:23:32.480 because an artillery shell is unlikely to penetrate in. But they, various times, the Germans were able
00:23:39.360 to sort of pump gas in and through the corridors or a fire will break out. Many such times and
00:23:45.440 accidentally a fire will break out. There was one time when in one of the, it might have been Fort Vaux,
00:23:50.560 I might have been doing one when the Germans were holding it. Anyway, it's not uncommon that 0.99
00:23:55.360 they'd started using it as an ammo dump and for whatever reason, by accident, your own ammo dump
00:23:59.600 blows up. And you know, a whole company of men are just wiped out in an instant or something.
00:24:04.800 A fire rips through and a whole company of men are just gone, burnt alive. On and on and on,
00:24:11.200 the horror just goes on and on and on. And it's also really, really bad for the Germans. This is both
00:24:17.600 sides I'm talking about. Because where the French very, very often are like the dug-in party, they're 1.00
00:24:23.520 the defending party, the Germans are the attackers. So as bad as it is to have one of these tunnels or one 0.97
00:24:30.000 of these faults, or even a trench, the Germans quite often haven't even got that. The accounts coming
00:24:37.840 from the German side at Verdun are just as bad, even if not more, even if not worse. They say,
00:24:45.280 they say, we just have to camp out in a forest. And you know, they're experiencing most of the same
00:24:51.680 stuff. The French are bombarding them. The casualties, in the end, despite von Volkenheim's
00:24:57.440 concept, the casualties are very, very similar. The French do lose a few more, a fair few more
00:25:04.640 men than the Germans, but not a fantastic amount more. Von Volkenheim's plan was that he would kill,
00:25:11.520 for every German killed, the French would lose four, five, six, seven, hopefully ten men. That was 0.74
00:25:18.000 the idea. And no, it's very similar. Like, almost one for one. Well, two for one, maybe. Something in
00:25:24.880 that ballpark. So in other words, the Germans are taking massive casualties all the time, just like
00:25:29.440 the French are. And they haven't even got faults, for the most part. They haven't even got faults or
00:25:35.360 decent trenches. They're just sort of basically out in the open. Often. Not always, but often.
00:25:41.520 So it's a hellacious experience for both sides. It really is. That's why Verdun
00:25:48.160 I find so interesting, because it's sort of World War I dialed up to 11. There are other places
00:25:55.200 on the Western Front, the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Ypres. In fact, lots and lots of them,
00:25:59.520 where it's sort of, it's that classic, almost cliched view of what the Western Front was like.
00:26:03.680 But I feel like Verdun is, for me, for many World War I historians and scholars, it's sort of,
00:26:10.320 sort of the quintessential World War I horrific experience. Okay. So the Germans decide they're 0.99
00:26:18.400 going to get stubborn about trying to, you know, really win the Battle of Verdun. And the French
00:26:24.080 decide they will not let Verdun fall at any cost. So from Welkenheim's calculation, at least in that sense,
00:26:30.640 was correct. You know, he gambled that the French would do anything rather than see Verdun fall. 0.96
00:26:37.120 And again, strictly in that sense, he's not wrong. Right? The French political command
00:26:43.760 and Foch, the very, very top of the French military command, send in Pétain,
00:26:51.760 who goes on to be important and famous all through World War I, and even into the interwar years in
00:26:59.440 World War II. Just quickly to say on Pétain, when Hitler invaded France in 1940, in World War II,
00:27:06.000 and he takes Paris quite quickly, and he allows, you know, a Vichy rump French state to exist. We're in
00:27:15.520 the south of France, and he needs a puppet to rule Vichy France. He picks Pétain, and Pétain accepts.
00:27:23.360 So Pétain's actually, ultimately, in the end, got a reputation for being like a Nazi stooge.
00:27:28.640 Anyway, all that's in the future. At this point, he's brought in, he's known as a good defensive
00:27:35.040 commander, Pétain. He's known, although in modern sense, it's probably, it's nowhere near in the
00:27:40.960 modern sense, but he's known as trying to save his own men's lives if he can. It still seems extremely
00:27:47.120 callous to us now, but in those terms, in 1916 terms, he was thought of as kind to the men,
00:27:55.040 his own men. Try not to waste them in offensives you know are certainly going to fail. For example,
00:28:02.080 right? That was seen as clement and kind, just that, just to not do that. But still, still,
00:28:08.960 does seem very, very callow the way even someone like Pétain would use his men and waste their lives
00:28:17.840 in many, many senses. But okay, he was a defensive commander, because one of the French doctrines
00:28:23.200 was whenever the Germans attack, whenever they attack, what we, the French, do is we just form
00:28:29.600 up a counter-attack immediately, as quickly as we can, form a counter-attack and launch the counter-attack.
00:28:35.520 Okay? Regardless, that was their tactic. That was their doctrine. Regardless of whether that
00:28:42.240 counter-attack would work. Right? That's crazy. So say the Germans do a little counter-attack 0.97
00:28:48.880 somewhere, you know, only a few companies or a regiment or two, over just a few hundred yards
00:28:52.720 of ground, say, over a mile's worth of ground, bite and hold. Right? They bite that little bit
00:28:59.120 out of the French line and hold it. And they're able to hold it with, you know, with extreme 0.53
00:29:05.520 confidence and ability. They immediately turn it into a bastion of their own. And any French counter-attack 0.97
00:29:11.280 will fail, because the Germans have set up, you know, perfect machine gun, overlapping machine 1.00
00:29:16.480 gun lists or something or other. Right? So any French counter-attack will fail. But no, it's French 1.00
00:29:21.520 doctrine. It's what we do. Right? The generals and the colonels, that level, they're like, no,
00:29:27.680 what we do, what we always do, what we must do, is form a counter-attack and launch it. And so, what,
00:29:33.920 hundreds, maybe a few thousand Frenchmen die for nothing. And anyone that is reasonable and rational 1.00
00:29:41.120 knew that they would die for nothing. Right? So Petain comes in and says, stop doing that.
00:29:47.040 Let's put an end to that. We're literally 100% wasting men's lives doing that. Let's stop doing
00:29:53.760 that. So he's got a reputation as being good and kind. And the men love him. Nonetheless, nonetheless,
00:30:01.440 he's throwing unbelievable numbers of men's lives into this meat grinder, still. So the Germans just 1.00
00:30:09.760 keep attacking all the way through March and April, all the way into May, really. Losing lots and lots
00:30:18.880 and lots of men in the process. One of the things the Germans would do is they would send in various
00:30:25.280 types of unit, what we would call, you know, companies and regiments and divisions. And they
00:30:31.360 would send them in to Verdun, the Verdun front, the Verdun salient, and keep them there until they were 0.93
00:30:37.760 almost wiped out. Or entirely wiped out. You were there and you fought to the end. That was it. Right?
00:30:45.120 That's very old fashioned, even in 1916, sort of an old fashioned way of doing it. So some outfits
00:30:50.880 might have 90% casualties or 100% casualties, even eventually. But was so the French and 0.98
00:30:57.760 Pétain, who was, you know, as I said, got this reputation for being kindly. He decided to do it
00:31:05.680 another way. He decided he would cycle units, divisions in, through and out of Verdun.
00:31:13.120 So they don't get entirely annihilated. They might still get entirely annihilated if they're in the
00:31:18.640 wrong place at the wrong time during a big German offensive or something. They might still get 0.95
00:31:24.400 completely annihilated. But the idea was that you send in a division, let's say, let's just talk about
00:31:30.160 division level. They send in a division and they're at the very, very front of, on the front lines at
00:31:36.880 Verdun for like a few weeks. And then they're like in a secondary reserve line, second or third
00:31:43.440 trench lines for another few weeks. And then they're cycled away from Verdun entirely for quite a
00:31:50.320 while. You know, maybe, maybe months. Going either on leave or go fight somewhere else on the western
00:31:56.320 front. So your unit, your, your, your regiment, whatever it is, you do, you sort of have to serve
00:32:04.080 your time at Verdun. And obviously, hopefully you survive. And, but some of them, if you do survive,
00:32:10.400 you get cycled through again, like six months later or a year later, your, your men, your unit,
00:32:16.000 has to do another stint at Verdun. And the idea was that individual units, regiments, aren't
00:32:24.720 completely annihilated. And also, if you keep men in, in, in the front line like that, the way the Germans 0.90
00:32:32.720 were doing it, you go to the front line, you stay there till you, till you're dead. It quite quickly
00:32:38.320 kind of destroys men psychologically, emotionally. After a while, you know, each man's got his own
00:32:45.760 breaking point. And after a while, even the strongest of men, doesn't break all men. Some
00:32:50.320 men can do it, you know, indefinitely. But most people, after a while, you suffer terribly from, well,
00:32:58.320 what we would call PTSD, uh, what they would call shell shock. Uh, the idea that you can't just put
00:33:05.280 up with that much pressure, the, the, the, the shadow of death hanging over you. You can't put up for
00:33:12.160 that indefinitely, with that indefinitely, uh, without it damaging your mind, your very psyche.
00:33:18.960 And that really was what the Germans were asking of their men. And at least Petain, on the French 0.93
00:33:24.880 side, realised that, you know, this was a real thing. You know, like, morale, the breaking point
00:33:31.840 of a human is a real thing. So let's take that into account a bit. Okay, so the French were cycling,
00:33:39.200 cycling their men in, through, and then out of again, Verdun. And most of their army, the vast
00:33:44.880 majority of the whole entire French army went through Verdun at least once. Or like, various
00:33:51.680 accounts say different, either two thirds of the French army or three quarters of the French army.
00:33:56.240 X number of millions of Frenchmen did a stint in Verdun at some point, many more than one stint at
00:34:05.120 Verdun. And, and so there were very few French soldiers that didn't see some action one way or another
00:34:12.720 at Verdun. We hope you enjoyed that video. And if you did, please head over to lotusseaters.com
00:34:17.600 for the full unabridged video.