greatwar-1914:December 18, 1916 - The Battle of Verdun EndsPictured - They did not pass.Nine months,
greatwar-1914:December 18, 1916 - The Battle of Verdun EndsPictured - They did not pass.Nine months, three weeks, and six days after it began, the Battle of Verdun ended. General Falkenhayn’s master plan to bleed France dry had cost both nations horribly. Between 350,000 to 540,000 Frenchmen fell at Verdun, with at least 150,000 of them dead. The Germans had been sucked into the meat-grinder just as much: they lost 450,000 men in the battle. It was one of the costliest battles in human history. Had there been a winner after such carnage? British historian Alistair Horne writes that “Neither side ‘won’ at Verdun. It was the indecisive battle in an indecisive war; the unnecessary battle in an unnecessary war; the battle that had no victors in a war that had no victors.” Published in the 60s, Horne wrote against the backdrop of an anti-military mood in academia. Today it is harder to discount that Verdun was a French victory: it had resisted Germany’s great plan to knock it out of the war. The word “Verdun” to this day conjures up in an image of military sacrifice and courage that can never be rivaled. Yet some scars never fade. Just as the Verdun battlefield remains littered with craters and rubble, and infested with unexplored bombs, the post-war French psyche had been traumatized by its national experience. In 1940, many French people could not stomach the idea of another Verdun. -- source link
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