The Legend of Verdun
newstatesman.com
newstatesman.com
Episode IV focuses on Verdun and can be listened to as a stand alone episode but the rest of the series is very much worth the time. http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-53-bluepri...
There is a lot of stuff and it won't end for a few years. Also interesting is they cover things like the infantry uniforms, the guns in use at the time etc.. Highly recommended.
It really isn't by the standards of history books though. It's very readable because it does get into the human reality as opposed to endless facts. It's probably the best single book on WWI that I've come across.
Teasers to get you to listen:
Carlin's comparison of something as simple as the uniforms at the beginning and end is great. The initial movements were with these gauche Napoleonic clothes: Red feathers in tall hats, bright blue coats, shiny shoes and whatnot. At the end, all pretense had left. Modern war and the very functional uniforms were here to stay.
Carlin's recounting of the German march into Belgium. He talks of an American account of a Belgian town on the border with Germany. The army that came though had to do so for over a day. There was a long unbroken march that went on for 24 hours, that was how many troops the Germans had come through just one town. The metal on their boots sparked off the cobblestones causing a drumming march of sparks all night.
His accounts of Paschendale. The gas had turned the mud a toxic yellow. He recounts descriptions of the battlefield as a marshmallow. German boys would just sink into the mud and become unable to be pulled out in the toxic sludge. Their screams would last days as they succumbed to the mud. Carlin goes into some detail of the smell of Pachendale as a result. No more true description of Hell itself can be found.
My god, what a good series to scare any person away from war. It really was as if Hell itself came out of the interior of the earth. It was a giant art experiment or something to as accurately as possible make Dante's Inferno real and then improvise. It really is hard to realize the horror.
I too was disappointed in the speed with which the last two years of the war were covered. Of course being an American I wanted to hear more about Pershing, the Marines and the Battle of Bellau Wood, Frank Duke, Eddie Rickenbacker, etc.
I recall reading/hearing an interview with Carlin prior to the release of the last episode where he explained that they were going to finish the series up even if it meant it was a 15 hour sixth episode. So you're right, I think they were definitely rushing the last couple of years.
I think it's a testament to the complexity of the war, though that the first two years really required 15 hours to explain adequately. I'm on my third listening through and still feel like there's so much I don't have straight yet.
Any incremental part of this region lost to the Germans wasn't just a symbolic loss of ground or a moral defeat, it meant a real long term resource loss which could tilt the balance of the war in Germany's favour. In comparison, the allies were largely unable to strike Germany's industrial centers. It's quite easy to depict all senior commanders of the time as inflexible and stubborn (some of them were, to various extents anyway), but there's more to it than that.
Defence in depth just wasn't an option, and mechanised war was a fiction anyway. With the benefit of hindsight, and ignoring the industrial value of the North, it's easy to jump to simple but wrong conclusions about why the war was fought that way.
Edit: Link to English source illustrating my point http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/raw_materia...
Yes, they had good reason to fight there. But the way the fighting was conducted was more often than not a stilted mess.
Unfortunately technology improved and trucks supply ammo to modern machine guns mean it doesn't work so well anymore.
The excellent /r/askhistorians forum has had some good coverage of this area in the past. Try this overview for a start:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/37epxy/i_kep...
Or this seven-part epic answer regarding Verdun and the Somme more specifically:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/32t8bn/world...
or more from the Western Front section of their FAQ:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/wwi#wiki_western...
The British Expeditionary Force, and lots of the regular French Army, was sacrificed to blunt the initial German advance. British commanders were clear that the completely new army they were building would not be ready until 1916/7 but a mix of politics and necessity meant they had to be sent in earlier. Allegations that Britain would "fight to the last drop of Russian blood" - which had echoes of the Napoleonic wars - threatened to undermine the alliance.
The British attacks during Verdun were to relieve pressure on the French by diverting resources elsewhere. Every German machine gun, soldier and shell diverted away reduced French casualties. Given the horrific conditions and casualties there was a real risk of either a French mutiny or the Government deciding it could no longer pay the price. In the harsh logic of the time the losses at the Somme were a price that had to be paid to keep the allies in the war.
The other main reason is that as the men hardened with experience, not only were they reluctant to participate in a mass suicide, but French officers started to be increasingly killed by "friendly fire", which somewhat tempered their strategy.
One historian I heard (not sure how accurate this is) said the British Army had a parallel but somewhat inverted experience. Before the war the British Army was much smaller than eg the French or German armies, but was very professional and had adapted well to modern weaponry and tactics in both attack and defence.
The trouble was that at the beginning of the war, the war was expected to be over quickly so the British command didn't worry about sending nearly all its officers (and their institutional knowledge) to France for the experience and 'adventure'.
It didn't work out as planned though and after getting bogged down and suffering many casualties very quickly, the huge job of training lots of new officers and soldiers was left to an older generation of ex officers back home who reverted to the older tactics. It didn't take long for the British army to revert to those ineffective suicidal charges too.
1. A traditional story sometimes popularly regarded as historical but not authenticated.
2. The story of a saint’s life.
3. An extremely famous or notorious person, especially in a particular field.
4. An inscription, especially on a coin or medal.
5. A caption.
6. The wording on a map or diagram explaining the symbols used
My initial association was along the lines of 1., and so I was afraid to read an article doubtful of historical consent -- but that was not the case. Neither was the article about a singled-out person which could give rise to 3. The last three definitions clearly refer to a different kind of legend altogether.
Could someone with a better intuition please explain how the title of this article is meant to be understood? and since 3. refers to a single person).
[1] http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/legend
What were the lessons of Verdun, if any? In 1940, Hitler’s smart new generals, such as Heinz Guderian, tackled the problem of static warfare with a blitzkrieg technique of fast-moving armoured attack. They went round the side, and back, of Maginot’s costly fortresses, making them capitulate without firing a shot. Verdun fell in a matter of hours, France after a six-week campaign. But Hitler missed the main point, militarily: never make a fetish of any fortress, any stronghold, so that you become committed to hold it however unacceptable the costs.
The capture of Verdun in 1916 would have been unlikely to have caused France to lose the war. Yet in the Second World War, Hitler’s orders to his generals not to surrender an inch of ground, led to repeated disasters – beginning with the sacrifice of Friedrich Paulus’s entire 6th Army at Stalingrad, which eventually brought about the destruction of the Third Reich.
And yet, in the heart of the French army, the myths and the slogans of Verdun, chimeric as they were, persisted well into the 1950s. Brave young paras died at Dien Bien Phu in the First Indochina War with Verdun on their lips.
The "story" of the Battle of Verdun is definitely quite famous and is part of the larger narrative around WWI. While it's obviously not a person, it has some of the legendary aspects that fit into definition 3.
In general, the popular definition of "legend" includes practically any aspect of popular history.
The way it works is this: many historically-important legends have a basis in important events in a people's history, when bold and resourceful action saved the day, but the story tends to exaggerate the glory. A recent event may be described as legendary if it has those properties to a degree that is normally only seen in legends, and the same goes for the primary actors in those actions. An example that comes to mind is Shackleton and his rescue of his crew, a legend in the history of exploration.
I mention this because of the sentence 'Yet over the interwar years it justly came to be seen as France’s “finest hour.”' (my emphasis.) I think that here, the author is saying that the battle reached legendary status within the French national psyche, without implying that this is a misreading of history.
To be clear, I agree that if Maginot's enthusiasm for forts was a result of Verdun, the author is saying that was a misreading of history. As for Hitler's "no retreat" doctrine, I think the point is that he was, for his own reasons, making the same mistake as the generals at Verdun: I doubt that his attitude owed much, if anything, specifically to that battle (he was at the Somme at the time.)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Price-Glory-Verdun-1916/dp/0140170...
I wouldn't be surprised if future historians view 1914-1989 as one war.
I'm not clear which of my points you disagree with.
Also, there were three Axis Powers in WW2, and two of them had fought against Germany in WW1. It's overly simplistic to say that post-war suffering in Germany was the sole cause of WW2--especially as there were terrible sanctions after that war as well, but Germany has not gone to war again.
Europe was all about Germany being stuck between a rock (the post-war sanctions) and a hard place (the threat of the communist revolution that Germany implanted to defeat the Czar to the money men in Germany). Italy was a sideshow.
The difference in the post-WW2 era, and the reason we didn't have WW3 in 1960 is simple. The US emerged triumphant and essentially occupied or otherwise controlled all of the powers, save China and the Soviet Union. As the US loosened control, mutually assured destruction made WW1/WW2 style "total war" too costly.
The size of the armies was huge and the loss of life was astounding. Which is what you get when attrition is the common strategy employed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfKUd8bvQfc
At this point the US is just getting upset over 128 citizens being killed on the RMS Lusitania when it was sunk during a period of unrestricted submarine warfare. Our entry into the war as an Associated Power won't take place until 6 April 1917.
Wikipedia has a pretty good writeup:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Douaumont
> Kunze and his men reached the fort's moat and found that the wall casemates ("coffres") defending the moat were unoccupied. Kunze managed to climb inside one of them to open an access door. But his men refused to go inside the fortifications as they feared an ambush. Armed only with a bolt-action rifle, the Pioneer-Sergeant entered alone. He wandered around the empty tunnels until he found the artillery team, captured them and locked them up.
> By now, another group from the Brandenburg regiment, led by reserve-officer Lieutenant Radtke, was also entering the fort through its unoccupied defences. Radtke then made contact with Kunze's troops and organised them before they spread out, capturing a few more French defenders and securing the fort. Later, more columns of German troops under Hauptman Haupt and Oberleutnant von Brandis arrived. No shots were ever fired in the capture of Fort Douaumont. The only casualty was one of Kunze's men who scraped one of his knees.