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By: James Locke

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Verdun is a small city located in northeast France, on the banks of the Meuse River. Below is a map from WWI. Verdun is located at the red mark in the northeast of France.

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The two main forces who fought in this battle were the French and the Germans.

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Below is a map of The Battle of Verdun

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The German's main objective was to exhaust French resources and to capture as much territory as possible.

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By seizing or threatening to capture Verdun, the Germans anticipated that the French would send all their reserves, which would then have to attack secure German defensive positions supported by a powerful artillery reserve.

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The Germans main offensive was to divide the 5th Army across the attack front. The main offensive push would be initiated by preliminary artillery bombardment by the Germans

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The French objective was to retain as much ground as possible while repelling the German offensive.

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In 1915 the French had moved copious  amounts of guns and resources from the Verdun fortifications. In late January of 1916 French intelligence had discovered that the Germans had been beefing up their lines around Verdun, implying an imminent offensive by the Germans. When the French generals heard about this information, there was a scramble to beef up the defenses at Verdun.

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The Battle of Verdun lasted from the 21st of February to the 18th of December, 1916.

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The French army won the battle. We know this because the French army never came close to collapse and triggering a premature British relief offensive. The ability of the German army to inflict disproportionate losses had also been overestimated, in part because the 5th Army commanders had tried to capture Verdun and attacked regardless of loss.

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Over 10 months in 1916, the two armies at Verdun suffered over 700,000 casualties, including some 300,000 killed. The pastoral landscape surrounding the city had been permanently transformed, and nine villages were entirely destroyed. After the war the villages were memorialized as having “died for France”. An area covering some 65 square miles on the Verdun ridge was declared a Red Zone because of the unexploded artillery shells, mines, grenades, etc. Development inside of  the Red Zone was prohibited, and is still prohibited to this day.