Germany, a military powerhouse, is impressive, with strict military discipline and murderous spirits. And the French give people a romantic feeling, the French army too many times a touch to collapse, giving people a very bad feeling. It is hard to imagine that the French army, too, had defeated the German army on a large scale. In world war I, there was a battle in Verdun, France, which was second only to the Battle of the Somme in casualties and is memorable. The Battle of Verdun was the most destructive and longest-running battle of the First World War. The fighting lasted from February 21, 1916 to December 19, 1916, with more than 100 divisions in Germany and France, killing more than 250,000 troops and wounding more than 500,000.
In 1914 Germany failed to achieve a rapid victory, and the European battlefield formed a stalemate trench warfare on the Western Front, and neither side could move forward. The German Imperial High Command decided to shift the strategic focus westward, verdun was the protrusion of the Anglo-French army front, like a protruding sharp tooth, posing a serious threat to the German flank, where Germany and France had fought many times, but neither the Germans could take the fortress. The German general von Falkingham believed that if the blow against France was intensified, the French army would be forced to invest all its forces, so that France would die of attrition.
He chose the Verdun Fortress on the Meuse Heights as the main point of attack, and if the German army could capture Verdun in one fell swoop, it would definitely hit the morale of the French army hard. Once france had taken it, the remaining British and Russian armies would not be afraid. The attacking force was the 5th Army, commanded by The German Crown Prince Wilhelm, with 7 armies and 18 divisions, more than 1,200 artillery pieces, and about 170 aircraft. The occupation of Verdun also opened the passage of the German army to Paris, and once it occupied Paris, France would not be able to destroy itself.
Falkingham, chief of the German General Staff, drew up a concrete plan. Although he intended to take Verdun, he ostensibly increased his troops to Chambéuni, so that Xia Fei, who was the commander-in-chief of France at the time, was also deceived, and he mistakenly thought that the enemy had abandoned Verdun and wanted to take another way to Chambéni, and made a wrong judgment. As a result of this misjudgment, the strategic location of Verdun was almost lost. In the course of the Battle of Verdun, both the German and French armies engaged in the battle with nearly two million soldiers, and the Germans sent a total of 27 divisions. The French defenders put in 3 armies and 11 divisions and 600 artillery pieces at the Fortress of Verdun, and this large-scale war was undoubtedly a war of great attrition.
Under the fierce attack of German artillery, the French were forced to retreat 6 kilometers, and the French army built 3 field positions on the original fortifications and the main positions composed of permanent fortifications. The disparity in strength made the French unusually passive, but fortunately, the soldiers fought bravely against the enemy, and finally the German army was unable to take Verdun on the first day, which won the best opportunity for reinforcements to arrive. The French continued to counterattack, each position was repeatedly fought, and both sides suffered heavy casualties. The brutal battles cast a psychological shadow over many French troops, and the Battle of Verdun almost brought France to a collapse line, almost causing a rebellion, and the French command at that time rushed to carry out regular rotation of troops and no longer launched an active attack on Germany.
During the four-month-long tug-of-war, although the German Crown Prince personally visited the battlefield and used gas bombs and flamethrowers for the first time, the use of these weapons not only had a major impact on the First World War, but also affected the military operations of the Second World War, but still failed to defeat the Favorable Terrain of the French Army. In order to end the battle as soon as possible, the Germans shortened the transport mileage, recklessly stored more than 600,000 large-caliber shells in the Spankur forest near the battlefield, and loaded more than 600,000 shells with fuses, ready to be transferred to the front line at any time. This trick violated military precepts and caused irreversible damage.
A young, timid French corporal was so frightened that he did not fire his gun and fired a shell indiscriminately without aiming. It was a stroke of luck that from the direction of the deflection of the shell came a series of huge and dull explosions that lasted for more than half an hour. It turned out that this biased shell was shot at the German ammunition supply base in the Spankur Forest, hitting directly from the vent, detonating more than 600,000 large-caliber shells and dozens of tons of ammunition stored there. Not so long ago, there were hundreds of thousands of powerful cannons on the German positions, and now these powerful cannons have become piles of scrap iron.
Without the threat of enemy heavy artillery, france began a full-scale counterattack and achieved the final victory. The Battle of Verdun completely damaged the Morale of the German army and became a turning point in the War I. After that, France took the initiative, and the overall situation of the war gradually became clear. The manpower and material resources invested by the German army in this campaign were greatly depleted, and could no longer be compensated in the later stages, and the combat capability of the German army quickly slipped from the original peak, and the initiative in the war fell into the hands of the Allies. In the end, Germany lost World War I and signed a war surrender agreement.
The battle of Verdun resulted in a French victory, and the french generals who were the victorious powers were all promoted. According to statistics, coupled with the number of civilian casualties more than a million, both sides of the war are tragic casualties, although the French army won the war, but the number of casualties is more than the German army, the French army lost more than 540,000 people, the German army lost more than 430,000 people, the Battle of Verdun became a famous "meat grinder" struggle in the historical war.
The battle of the 'Verdun Meat Grinder' was not as simple as the death of more than 800,000 soldiers, and its impact on future generations of combat was also great. There have been many changes in strategy and tactics, logistics, and weapon selection. Under the site of the Battle of Verdun, there are still buried arsenic-containing substances brought by the war, explosives that have not been detonated, and the skeletons of soldiers, which have been shrouded in this wilderness all year round, and local farmers even often dig up bullets when planting, and the underground soil can only be planted under one meter, which has also caused the abandonment of the old site of Verdun.