The Battle of Verdun (1914-1918)

This is not history written from a safe distance. Published in 1919, while the trenches were still fresh in memory and the wounded still walking, this account captures Verdun as those who survived it understood it: a place where the modern world discovered how completely industrial warfare could devour both armies. The Battle of Verdun lasted ten months, from February to December 1916. German General Erich von Falkenhayn believed he could bleed France white, designing a battle of deliberate attrition that he calculated the French could not refuse. What he miscalculated was his own army's capacity to be dragged into the same grinder. The French, defending fortifications that had stood for centuries, refused to yield ground even as bombardment reduced their positions to lunar landscapes of mud and shattered stone. This volume documents the famous engagements: the fog that briefly saved French lines, the hellish fight for Fort Vaux, the relief that finally came with the Somme offensive. It stands as a period document, written when the full horror was still being counted and the lessons were still being learned.