forces of France will bleed to death
as there can be no question of a volun-
tary withdrawal whether we reach
our goal or not. If they do not do so,
and we reach our objectives, the moral
effect on France will be enormous.
For an operation limited to a narrow
front, Germany will not be compelled
to spend herself so freely that all
other fronts are practically drained.

"The French lines at that point
are barely 20 kilometres distant from
German railway communications. Ver-
dun is, therefore, the most powerful
point d'appui for an attempt, with a
relatively small expenditure of effort, to
make the whole French front in France
and Belgium intolerable. The re-
moval of the danger as a secondary
aim would be so valuable on military
grounds, that, compared with it, the
so-to-speak 'incidental' political vic-
tory of the 'purification' of Alsace by
an attack on Belfort, is a small matter."

''pHE ATTEMPT TO WOUND FRANCE
1 MORTALLY.

The German command, then, was to
attack at Verdun, while the Austro-
Hungarian command was to invade
Italy from the Tyrol. Verdun was
selected as a spot in the Allied line
where it was believed possible to
inflict a mortal wound upon France,
and furthermore drive Britain into a
premature offensive. This at least
was Germany's first aim, though as the
attack fell short, it became modified
in like degree. When she failed in the
first few weeks to capture Verdun, and
J off re forbade the beginning of the
offensive on the Somme until its
appointed time, German aims then
were merely to pin the French down on
the Meuse so that their assistance in
the British drive would be very slight.
Thus the two great battles on the
western front, during 1916, are closely
interwoven French defense of Verdun
providing needful time for the training
of the British professional army; the
British offensive on the Somme afford-
ing necessary relief for the French
corps that had been so hardly engaged
on the Meuse. Both of these objects
were attained.

434



THE IMPORTANCE OF THE VERDUN
SALIENT.

What were the German grounds for
choosing the fortress of Verdun for
their point of assault? Strategically,
they were sound. Ever since Septem-
ber, 1914, Verdun, with its outworks,
had stood as a salient in the German
line as a salient, moreover, which
had lost its railway communications
for of the two main railroads, the
Lerouville line was cut off at St.
Mihiel and the second, through Chalons,
was under ceaseless German fire. Only
the narrow gauge line connecting
Verdun with Bar-le-Duc remained, in
addition to road communication.
Nevertheless, von Ludendorff in his
Memoirs writes that the fortress was
considered by the German Staff as a
particularly dangerous sally-port, which
seriously threatened their rear-com-
munications, a premonition fully justi-
fied by the events of the autumn of
1918. If then the defenses on the right
bank of the Meuse could have been
gained, the enemy's strategic positions
on the Western Front, as well as the
tactical situation of his troops in the
St. Mihiel salient would have been
materially improved.

There were other reasons: Verdun
was only a short distance from Metz,
the centre of great military activity
and the source of such supplies. It
was dangerously near the valuable
deposits of iron ore in Lorraine, which
the Germans meant to hold whenever
peace might come. The moral factor
involved in the capture of the "Eastern
Gate of France," the "Key to Paris"
was enormous. From a military point
of view, the Germans wished to profit
by certain failures on the part of the
French, who, relying on the nature
of the country, had neglected to
strengthen the fortified positions to
the west of the Meuse, and were known
to be holding the fortress with second
line troops. Lastly, in the examples of
Liege and Namur, the weakness of
the fortress before modern artillery
had been clearly shown. The French
in their defense of Verdun would be
holding a position that had grave
dangers in the event of a forced retreat ;




VERDUN AND SOME OF ITS DEFENSES
This view looks upon Verdun from the direction directly opposite the one below. In the foreground are some of
the forts and defenses of the city; in the background the twin towers of the cathedral, and to the left a part of

Photograph, N. Y. Times



the city destroyed by artillery.




VERDUN THE UNCONQUERABLE

Verdun lies on both sides of the Meuse in a pocket of plain. A famous city since the days of the Romans, it became
the seat of a bishop in the Middle Ages. Under Louis XIV it was fortified by Vauban, and at the French Revolution
showed itself royalist in sympathy. In 1870 Verdun offered stout resistance to the Prussians and after the loss of
Alsace-Lorraine was made, along with Toul and Epinal, one of the eastern bulwarks of France.

435



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



for the Meuse in their rear, wide and
deep and liable to flood, was impassable
save by the Verdun bridges which
could be shell-swept from the heights
on the east. This same river, too,
divided their line in two and made the
question of reinforcements at all times,
a serious problem.

>-pHE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE VERDUN
1 REGION.

The topography of the country
determined the character of the fight-
ing. On both sides of the Meuse, two
plateaux stand in relief. That on the
west falls towards the river in gentle
slopes: from it rise such famous hills
as Le Mort Homme and Hill 304. The
plateau on the east has sharper edges,
both to the Meuse, and to its eastern
limit the plain of the Woevre, over
which the hills tower some 300 metres,
as cliffs above the sea. Innumerable
streams, falling east and west, have cut
deep into the clayey soil and broken
up the eastern mass, especially, into a
tangled mass of little hills and sharp
ravines. These "Cotes de Meuse"
formed the strength of the defense of
the Verdun line, for each hill dominated
the ravine to the north of it, through
which the enemy must advance. The
vegetation is sparse on the somewhat
sterile soil, yet thick woods clothe the
hill -sides and fringe the tops of the
ravines. For the most part, the villages
cluster on the tops of the cdtes (as
their names Douaumont, Beaumont,
Haudromont indicate), and were easily
transformed into small fortresses.

It was on this comparatively narrow
line of the plateau between Woevre
and Meuse, over the hills, across the
ridges, and around the ravines, that
the Germans planned to drive down
upon the Douaumont plateau which
commanded Verdun. Their right wing
was to assault the French wing on the
west of the river, and their left wing
the forts to the east of the cdtes, and
thus bring about an encircling move-
ment which would drive the French
army with its back up against the
river. Attacks from the east, from the
plain of the Woevre, were important
during the struggle; but the nature of
the terrain forbade decision in that

436



quarter. The Battle of Nancy, in 1914,
had already demonstrated the steep-
ness of the plateau scarp. Moreover,
at the time of year when the German
attack began, the surface of the plateau
is impassable for large bodies of troops,
as its clayey soil retains the winter
rains. On the west ran the river; and
the Germans perhaps did not take
sufficient account of the defensive
value of the Meuse to the French.
Dominating its continuous curves, are
projecting spurs; and from at least
three of these, the French could not
only control the crossings of the river,
but also the German position on the
upland beyond.

THE VERDUN OPERATIONS NOT REALLY A
SIEGE.

There is a popular misunderstanding
of the nature of the Verdun operations,
which arises, perhaps, from the use of
the term siege, and the ten months'
duration of the fighting. Actually,
Verdun was never beleaguered, never
cut off from the outside world (al-
though some of its forts were, for
a. while), and the fighting for its pos-
session was as much a battle as that
which took place on the Marne or on
the Somme. Verdun was an immense
intrenched camp, surrounded by an
outer ring of detached forts and bat-
teries, situated on both banks of the
Meuse. The forts were in commanding
positions, from five to ten miles distant
from the town, according to the nature
of the country; those on the south more
distant than those on north and east.
They were built in masonry in 1880,
rebuilt in concrete in 1885, and again
reconstructed in improved material,
which the French call beton armee, in
1911. After the Franco-Prussian War
of 1870-71, Verdun was raised to the
rank of a first-class fortress and formed
part of the fortification of the other-
wise open eastern frontier of France.
German violation of the neutrality of
Belgium in order to avoid it, is
testimony to the skill with which it
was built. The French line in Febru-
ary, 1916, completely protected the
fortress, passing some nine miles to
the north and east of it, until it re-
crossed or touched the Meuse again



HISTORY OF THE WOELD WAR




437



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



at St. Mihiel, twenty miles south of
Verdun.



DIFFERENT PHASES OF THE
J. BATTLE.

The phases, or periods, of the battle
of Verdun, fall into three separate
divisions: the first, beginning at the
end of February and lasting until
April 9, covers the German attacks
upon the centre and on both wings,




GENERAL VON FALKENHAYN



When the struggle began von Falkenhayn was Minister
for War; he succeeded the younger Moltke as Chief-or-
Staff, planning the offensive against Russia (1915)
and France (1916).

which in the early days reaped great
harvest, but later were brought to a
standstill, short of the fort. This
period of German attack was followed
by a time when the enemy sought to
pin the French down upon the Meuse
so as to prevent their aiding British
preparations upon the Somme, and
lasted from April to the middle of
July. The third phase ran to Decem-
ber 13, the period of French fixation,
when the French, in their turn, were
keeping the Germans from reinforcing
their armies upon the Somme; and
ends with the French successes in
October and December, which practical-
438



ly regained all that the Germans had
captured in their first onslaught.

Many correspondents, observers, and
strategists have attempted to tell the
story of Verdun. It is universally
agreed that none has succeeded better,
either in grasp of all the factors of the
situation or in vividness of narrative,
than Lord Northcliffe. We are per-
mitted to use his thrilling account
which follows.

E^RD NORTHCLIFFE'S THRILLING AC
COUNT OF THE BATTLE.

The enemy began by massing a
surprising force on the Western Front.
It was usually reckoned that the Ger-
mans maintained on all fronts a field
army of about seventy-four and a half
army corps, which at full strength
number three million men. Yet, while
holding the Russians from Riga to the
south of the Pripet Marshes, and main-
taining a show of force in the Balkans,
Germany seems to have succeeded in
bringing up nearly two millions and a
half of men for her grand spring
offensive in the west. Troops and guns
were withdrawn in increasing num-
bers from Russia and Serbia, in Decem-
ber, 1915, until there were, it is
estimated, a hundred and eighteen
divisions on the Franco-British-Belgian
front. A large number of 6 in. and 12
in. Austrian howitzers were added to
the enormous Krupp batteries. Then a
large proportion of new recruits of the
1916 class were removed into Rhine-
land depots to serve as drafts for the
fifty-nine army corps, and it is thought
that nearly all the huge shell output,
that had accumulated during the
winter, was transported westward.

THE FIRST GERMAN PLAN OF ATTACK
NOT A SURPRISE.

All this gigantic work of prepara-
tion could not be hidden. But I do
not think the Allied Staffs, in spite
of their various and wide sources of
information, penetrated deeply into
the German plan; for the hostile
Chief of Staff , General von Falkenhayn,
made his dispositions in a very skillful
manner. Out of his available total of
one hundred and eighteen divisions,
he massed his principal striking force
of thirty-two divisions against the



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



British army. Verdun was apparently
only a secondary objective, .against
which fourteen, and later, thirty, divi-
sions were concentrated.

One effect of this massing of German
troops against the new and longer
British line was that the French com-
mander at Verdun, General Herr,
scarcely expected the overwhelming
attack made upon him on February 21,



THE GERMAN ADVANTAGE IN THE AIR
FOR THE FIRST WEEKS.

It is true that one Zeppelin was
brought do\vn by gun fire while trying
to bombard the French railway line of
communication, and two German
aeroplanes were destroyed out of a
squadron of fifteen that bombed
Revigny. But the triumph over the
Zeppelin did not in any way alter the




THE WAR-TORTURED HEIGHTS ABOVE THE MEUSE

In the distance can be seen a shell bursting on the summit of Froide-Terre, a hill surmounted by a fort immediately
to the east of the Meuse and opposite to Charny . It was a particularly strong defensive position because the French
had guns posted on the high land on the west of the river, which swept the German attack with enfilading fire.



1916. General yerr's Staff knew
though he himself obstinately declined
to believe it that the enemy was
preparing a formidable assault in the
woods north of the old French frontier
fort. But though the German airmen
\vere very active throughout January
and February, a good deal could be
seen by the French aerial observers of
the vast work going on amid the misty
tracks of woodland. Lieutenant Im-
melmann, and other crack Fokker
pilots, joined the Crown Prince's army,
and 'for some weeks our allies at Verdun
almost lost the command of the air
above their lines.



effective situation. Our allies were at
a very serious disadvantage in regard
to aircraft during the critical periods
of the German preparations and the
enemy's main attacks. It was not
until the middle of March that the
French recovered fully, at Verdun, the
power of reconnoitring the enemy's
positions and bombing his distant lines
of communication.

The French Staff reckoned that
Verdun would be attacked when the
ground had dried somewhat in the
March winds. It was thought that the
first enemy movement would take
place against the British front in some

439



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



of the sectors in which there were
chalk undulations, through which the
rains of winter quickly drained. The
Germans skillfully encouraged this idea
by making an apparent preliminary
attack at Lihons, with rolling gas-
clouds and successive waves of in-
fantry. During this feint, the veritable
offensive movement softly began on
Saturday, February 19, 1916, when the
enormous masses of hostile artillery
west, east, and north of the Verdun
salient started registering on the French
positions. Only in small numbers did
the German guns fire, in order not
to alarm their opponents. But even
this trial bombardment was a terrible
display of power, calling forth all the
energies of the outnumbered French
gunners to maintain the artillery duels
that continued day and night until
Monday morning, February 2ist.

THE VERDUN REGION SOMEWHAT LIKE
SCOTLAND.

Looking at the country from the
observation point east of Verdun, one
can see why it was chosen by the
German Staff for a grand surprise
attack. As I stood, with the flooded
Meuse and its high western banks be-
hind me, and before me the famous
plateau crowned by the ruins of
Douaumont Fort, I was reminded of
Scotland. Perth on the Tay, amid its
fir-wooded heights, is rather like Ver-
dun in the basin of the Meuse. It
was the evergreen fir-woods that at-
tracted the German Staff, as splendid
cover for their vast artillery prepara-
tions. As their aircraft at last almost
dominated the French aeroplanes, they
completed their concentration of guns
by an arrogantly daring return to old-
fashioned methods. Instead of digging
any more gun-pits, they placed hun-
dreds of pieces of artillery side by side
above ground, . confident that the
French artillery would be over-
whelmed before it could do any dam-
age. A French airman, sent to count
the batteries in the small wood of
Gremilly, gave up his task in despair,
saying there were more guns than
trees.

The method of handling these great
parks of artillery was a development

440



of the phalanx tactics used by von
Mackensen in breaking the Russian
lines at Gorlice; and according to a
rumor, von Mackensen was at Verdun,
with his chief, General von Falken-
hayn, superintending the disposition
of guns and men. The commander
nominally in charge, however, was
Field-Marshal von Haeseler, a tall,
thin man of eighty, of the type of von
der Goltz excellent at drawing up
schemes on paper, and accounted,
before the test of war, the best military
leader in Germany. He had, therefore,
been placed in command of the Crown
Prince's army, so that by his genius he
might win personal glory for the Ho-
henzollern dynasty. In any case, it is
clear that von Haeseler either adopted
and developed von Mackensen's new
system of attack, or that von Macken-
sen in person directed the movement,
with von Haeseler in nominal com-
mand, in order to mislead the French
Staff as to the way in which the move-
ment was likely to develop. Certainly,
General Herr did not anticipate the
character or the tremendous violence
of the assault that opened at dawn on
February 21, 1916.

THE TERRIFIC FORCE OF THE GERMAN
ARTILLERY.

For two days the German heavy
howitzers had been battering at the
twenty-five miles of defensive earth-
works round Verdun, in order to make
so large a gap that the hostile long
range guns of defense behind the third
line could not close the rent by means
of curtain fire. General Herr, and his
Staff, had only two army corps to hold
back the seven army corps that the
Germans first brought forward; but
the high, broken, difficult ground about
Verdun favored the defending forces.
Moreover, the French engineers had
worked in an astonishing fashion to
perfect the natural difficulties of the
terrain. In the low ground, such as
that round the two Ornes heights, held
by the Germans, the French had
tunnels running to a depth at which no
shell could penetrate. In the three im-
portant woodlands between Ornes and
the Meuse Haumont Wood, Caures
Wood, and Herbebois Wood there



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



was all the intensive system of pro-
tection that had been developed in the
Argonne fighting.

General Sarrail had only extended
his lines to the woodlands in the plain
between the Meuse and Ornes in the
spring of 1915, snatching the ground
from the enemy bit by bit, when the
German forces at Verdun were
weakened through sending re-
inforcements to the Cham-
pagne and Lille fields of con-
flict. General Sarrail, however,
seems to have extended his
lines into the low-lying north-
ern woodlands with consid-
erable reluctance. He liked hill
positions himself, and there was
a dispute between him and the
High Command regarding his
manner of fortifying the newly-
won ground. As a result he was
sent to Saloniki, and the defense
of Verdun in the new style was
given to a new man, little
known to the public General
Herr.

THE FIRST LINE TRENCHES ARE
OBLITERATED.

But the phalanx tactics of
the von Mackensen school were
calculated to overwhelm any
system of defensive works,
new or old, in forests or on
hillsides. The German attack
was irresistible, and it was only
the large space of country
available for retreat between
the Meuse and Ornes line and
the Douaumont Plateau that
saved Verdun from rapid cap-
ture.

The enemy seems to have
maintained a bombardment all
round General Herr's lines
on February 21, 1916, but
this general battering was done with a
thousand pieces of field-artillery. The
grand masses of heavy howitzers were
used in a different way. At a quarter
past seven in the morning they con-
centrated on the small sector of
advanced intrenchments near Brabant
and the Meuse; twelve-inch shells fell
with terrible precision every few yards.
The trenches were obliterated. In



each small sector of the six-mile
northward bulge of the Verdun salient,
the work of destruction was done with
surprising quickness. After the line
from Brabant to Haumont was
smashed, the main fire power was
directed against the other end of the
bow at Herbebois, Ornes, and Mau-




FIELD-MARSHAL VON HAESELER

Field-Marshal von Haeseler, the veteran commander who accom-
panied the Crown Prince's forces against Verdun, had a brilliant
reputation before the war, and for this reason, although eighty years
of age, was appointed to bring glory to the house of Hohenzollern.



court. Then when both ends of the
bow were severely hammered, the
central point of the Verdun salient,
Caures Wood, was smothered in shells
of all sizes. In this manner, almost the
whole enormous force of heavy artil-
lery was centred upon mile after mile
of the French front. When the great
guns lifted over the lines of craters,
the lighter field-artillery, placed row

441



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



after row in front of the wreckage,
maintained an unending fire curtain
over the communicating saps and
support intrenchments. (See maps on
pages 437 and 452.)

THE GERMANS ATTEMPT TO ECONOMIZE
IN MEN.

Then came the second surprising
feature in the new German system of
attack. No waves of storming in-
fantry swept into the shattered works.
Only strong patrols at first came for-
ward, to discover if it were safe for
the main body of troops to advance
and reorganize the French line so as to
allow the artillery to move onward.
The German commanders thought it
would be possible to do all the fighting
with long-range artillery, leaving the
infantry to act as squatters to the great
guns, and occupy and rebuild line
after line of the French defenses with-
out any serious hand-to-hand strug-
gles. All they had to do was to protect
the gunners from surprise attack,
while the guns made an easy path for
them, and also beat back any counter-
attack in force.

But, ingenious as was this scheme
for saving the man-power of Germany
by an unparalleled expenditure of shell,
it required for full success the co-
operation of -the French troops. But
the French did not co-operate. Their
High Command had continually im-
proved their system of trench defense
in accordance with the experiences of
their own hurricane bombardments in
Champagne and the Carency sector.
General de Castelnau, the acting
Commander-in-Chief on the French
front, was, indeed, the inventor of
hurricane fire tactics, which he had
used for the first time in February,
1915, in Champagne. When General
Joffre took over the conduct of all
French operations, leaving to General
de Castelnau the immediate control
of the front in France, the victor of the
Battle of Nancy weakened his advance
lines and then his support lines, until
his troops actually engaged in fighting
were very little more than a thin cover-
ing body, such as is thrown out towards
the frontier while the main forces
connect well behind.

442



THE FRENCH WITHDRAW THE GREATER
PART OF THEIR MEN.

The tactical effect of this extra-
ordinary measure was to leave re-
markably few French troops exposed
to the appalling tempest of German
and Austrian shells. The fire-trench
was almost empty, and in many cases
the real defenders of the French line
were men with machine-guns, hidden at
some distance from the positions at
which the German gunners aimed. The
batteries of light guns, which the
French handled with the flexibility
and continuity of fire of maxims, were
also concealed in widely-scattered posi-
tions. The main damage caused by the
first intense bombardment was the de-
struction of all the telephone wires along
the French front. Communications
could only be slowly re-established by
messengers, so that many parties of
men had to fight on their own initia-
tive, with little or no combination of
effort with their comrades.

Yet, desperate as were their cir-
cumstances, they broke down the
German plan for capturing trenches
without an infantry attack. They
caught the patrols and annihilated
them, and then swept back the disil-
lusioned and reluctant main bodies of
German troops. The small French
garrison of every centre of resistance,
fought with cool, .deadly courage and
often to the death.