Verdun 1916

by J E Kauffman

  At the onset of the war, neither side would have imagined that trenches would become the dominant factor in the West. Before long, however, the trench lines stretched across France. They became increasingly sophisticated with the addition of troops and ammunition, shelters, communication trenches leading to the rear and multiple lines of trenches forming a defensive belt. They were reinforced with wood, sandbags and even concrete. Strongpoints, veritable miniature forts, appeared on the trench lines.44 A ‘no-man’s-land’ separated opposing lines. In 1915, the Germans began adding multiple strands of wire in intricate patterns to the original one or two strands. The French direct-fire weapons were unable to break up the wire barriers and wire cutters for the troops were in short supply for many months. Until 1916, only the Germans possessed enough trench mortars and heavy artillery to destroy the enemy’s obstacles. Falkenhayn concluded that his troops had to ‘acclimatize’ themselves to trench warfare on the Western Front, which was not an impediment to sending new units and troops to the East.

  In 1915, Joffre’s ‘nibbling’ tactics, though costly in terms of French lives and generally futile, actually caused Falkenhayn great concern. Even though his losses were considerably fewer than Joffre’s, his resources were stretched to breaking point. He constantly had to maintain a balance and keep his eye on other concerns. During the war’s first winter, Falkenhayn wrote:

  almost every single shot had to be counted in the Western Army, and the failure of one single ammunition train, the breaking of a rail or any other stupid accident, threatened to render whole sections of the front defenceless. The requirements of the Eastern Army were always given the preference on account of its being composed of many units in which the process of consolidation was incomplete.*

  Germany’s Three-Front War

  Shortly before Italy entered the war on 23 May 1915, Falkenhayn, concerned about the situation, had tried unsuccessfully to convince the Austrians to buy off Italy with territorial concessions.45 Meanwhile, neutral Rumania supplied food and other resources to the German war machine, but the Allies continued to pressure it into entering the war. When Falkenhayn eliminated Serbia at the end of 1915 with Bulgaria’s help, he kept Rumania from entering the conflict for many months. The Bulgarian army was sufficient to keep the Allied forces bottled up around Salonika, Greece, for most of the war. As the Allies evacuated Gallipoli, the Germans opened the rail connection to Constantinople, which provided direct support to Turkey. That allowed Austria to redirect its troops from the Balkans to Italy.

  Meanwhile, as the great Eastern offensive ended in the autumn of 1915, Russia began to lose its grip on its Polish salient as its troops evacuated the mid-nineteenth century fortress of Ivangorod on 4 August. The next day, the victorious German troops entered Warsaw. The Russian line of fortresses on the Northwest Front, which had slowed the German advances between Warsaw and Kovno during the first half of 1915, began to crack in July. On 5 August, however, the Russians repulsed the attack of the German 10th Army at Kovno (Lithuanian Kaunas) on the Niemen River. On the Southwest Front, the Austrian 4th Army defeated the Russians north of Lublin. On 10 August, German troops crossed the Vistula at Warsaw, took the suburb of Praga and laid siege to Fortress Novogeorgievsk, which surrendered on 20 August. The Russian forces had abandoned the Polish salient after 16 August and retreated to a line running from the fortress of Kovno to Osovyets (Polish Osowiec) to Brest-Litovsk. Mackensen’s Austrian and German troops rapidly advanced toward the fortress of Brest-Litovsk and chased the retreating Russian forces across the Bug River on 17 August.46 Meanwhile, the German 10th Army finally took Kovno. One fortified position after another continued to fall: Brest-Litovsk on 25 August, Grodno on 2 September and Vilna on 19 September. The Central Powers’ troops continued to advance until the end of September, completing the offensive that had begun in May and that pushed the front 482km (300 miles) eastward. The German and Austrian troops established a front line that ran from east of Riga in the north, through Pinsk in the centre and near Tarnopol in the south. Fortresses once isolated on the Eastern Front had failed to turn the tide for either side and they usually fell, which may have continued to influence Joffre’s thinking on the Western Front.

  While Joffre planned his grand offensives for 1915, he still had to relieve the fortress of Verdun that anchored both his right flank that ran to Belfort and his left flank that extended to the sea. The two main rail lines to the fortress had been cut and the only remaining rail link with the rest of France was a secondary one. Early in year, he tried to eliminate the St Mihiel Salient by ordering the 1st Army to attack in the Woëvre and the 3rd Army to push the Germans off the ridge west of Verdun from which their artillery interdicted the main railroad to Verdun that passed through the Argonne. Both operations served as a diversion from the Champagne Campaign. After the retreat from the Marne, the Germans pulled back from most of the Argonne. In early 1915, their renewed attacks were unsuccesful in regaining the ground they had lost in the Argonne. On 17 February, the French 3rd Army failed to dislodge them from their observation post at Vauquois, marking the beginning of a long stalemate in the Argonne. After late January, the French 1st Army attacked several key points of the St Mihiel Salient. On 18 March, its objectives included the Les Éparges Butte, which gave a commanding view of the Woëvre. Although attacks in March and April were supported by new artillery and the French infantry managed to occupy part of the Les Éparges Butte, the operations failed. Joffre concluded that the artillery must demolish the first and second lines of trenches before the infantry could attack. Between December 1914 and the end of March 1915, the offensives in Artois and Champagne and the operations on the shoulders of the Verdun Salient were dismal failures. The French army lost about ¼ million men. For Joffre, who showed remarkably little compassion for the soldiers who paid the ultimate price, the bloody offensives represented merely his first big experiments in modern warfare.48 Joffre justified the offensives of 1915 by saying they were needed to take the pressure off the Russians when their front appeared to be collapsing.49 However, even though Joffre’s efforts were mostly fruitless and costly, they were a nuisance for Falkenhayn who constantly had to maintain a balance of forces to ensure that he had enough troops to handle the situation.

  Pétain, France’s Rising Star

  Henri Philippe Pétain, commander of the 4th Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division of the 5th Army, had always been sceptical about the idea that elan would lead to victory and the offensive à outrance – the policy of going on the offensive everywhere at all times with whatever means. General Lanrezac, commander of the 5th Army, agreed with him. In mid-August 1914, Pétain’s brigade was engaged in the defence of the Meuse and formed the rear guard during a retreat. His outstanding performance during those engagements did not go unnoticed. As Joffre sacked his ineffective generals one after the other, Pétain was promoted to général de brigade. On 29 August, General d’Espèrey, who replaced Lanrezac, launched a counter-attack near Guise following the doctrine of offensive à outrance. The first brigade went on the attack hoping that elan would carry the day. Pétain’s brigade was the last. Having witnessed the slaughter of their comrades, his troops began to waver, but the general rode on his horse among them calming their fears. He deployed them in a loose formation and ordered the supporting artillery to put down a barrage before the attack. His brigade made good progress until the sun went down.47 When the army began to retreat again, his brigade was once more in the rear guard. On 2 September, he was given command of the 6th Infantry Division, a broken formation at the time. He restored the unit transforming it into an effective force that performed with distinction at the Battle of Marne and later. The result was another promotion.

  In October 1914, Pétain was awarded the Legion of Honour for his heroism and he received the command of the XXXIII Corps. He continued to promote a methodical approach to battle, instead of the offensive à outrance that Joffre employed through much of 1915. On 17 December 1914, the French 10th Army attacked
in Artois and Pétain’s corps entered the fray. The corps on Pétain’s flanks employed the old methods and made little progress leaving his flanks exposed after his corps successfully advanced. Thus, his troops had to fall back. When Joffre attempted to take Vimy Ridge in May 1915, Pétain’s corps led the way again. While the other two corps gained little ground, Pétain’s broke through and advanced 4km taking the ridge thanks to his methodical attack. Since the two corps on his flank failed to advance, they left his troops exposed on both flanks forcing him to pull his divisions back from the ridge. It finally became apparent that Pétain’s strategy was more effective than the one used by the army up to that point. On 21 June 1915, Joffre put Pétain in command of the 2nd Army.

  As Pétain’s reputation spread to the enemy camp, Joffre shifted him around as a decoy. However, Joffre continued to turn a deaf ear to Pétain’s pleas to adopt more effective fighting tactics. While Joffre sent several of his generals to sit out the war at Limoges for alleged incompetence, Pétain’s reputation as one of the few generals who could be victorious on the battlefield grew. In the autumn of 1915, Joffre moved Pétain’s 2nd Army from the front in Artois to Champagne where, alongside the 4th Army, it would spearhead an impending offensive. Joffre hoped to achieve a massive breakthrough on a front of up to 40km wide, eschewing attacks on narrow fronts of only a few kilometres he had tried earlier in Champagne and Artois. The divisions of the 2nd Army breached the first line of German defences only to face a second even stronger line. The other armies were less successful. Pétain needed more time and resources to strike at the second line, but this was not to be. On 7 October, Joffre called off the offensive that had begun on 25 September thus ending major operations for 1915 on the Western Front.

  In the summer of 1915, Pétain had already explained to Joffre that the war had become one of attrition and that the side with the last man standing would win. Joffre was not ready to accept this fact. He did not seem as concerned about the lives sacrificed as Pétain, who cared for his men and who could often be found near the front with his troops, unlike his superior. On the night of 24/25 February, Pétain was absent from army headquarters when his aide came looking for him. When the aide finally located him at a hotel in Paris where he was spending the night with his mistress, he informed him of orders to report to Joffre at Chantilly on the morning of 25 February. Joffre gave him command of the defence of Verdun, which turned out to be the most infamous battle of attrition of the war. Pétain, unlike other commanders, was unwilling to trade the lives of his men for those of enemy troops. He was convinced that this was not a war of men against men, but rather a war of men against materiel. He believed that artillery and other weapons should inflict the main damage. On the other side of the hill, German General Falkenhayn had already come to a similar conclusion during 1915. He carried it to the extreme when he planned his 1916 offensive in the West against Verdun since his objective was to whittle down the enemy army rather than to seize Verdun. Like Pétain, he preferred to inflict the damage with his artillery and other weapons.

  In June, Joffre finally improved his command structure by creating three army groups. He had already created an informal Northern Army Group under General Ferdinand Foch and an Eastern Group under General Yvon Dubail. The Central Army Group was formed under General Noël Édouard de Castelnau. General Pétain took over the command of Castelnau’s 2nd Army, which prepared for a new Champagne offensive that began on 25 September. On the first day, some French units advanced up to 4km and took thousands of prisoners. German counter-attacks pushed them back. The French lost 145,000 men and the Germans 95,000, with negligible changes. Also on 25 September, the BEF launched the Battle of Loos using poison gas, but gained very little terrain despite losing 50,000 men and inflicting 25,000 casualties on the Germans. At the same time, the French 10th Army attacked in Artois following a four-day bombardment that made little headway. The fighting paused in mid-October. The French lost an additional 48,000 soldiers and the Germans 50,000. Since the front lines barely budged, Falkenhayn’s defence in the West proved successful while Joffre’s approach did little to help the Russians. The 1915 campaigns came to a close with both Joffre and Falkenhayn initiating planning for 1916 to break the hopeless deadlock.

  * Joseph Joffre, Colonel T. Bentley Mott (trans.) and Colonel S.J. Lowe (trans.), The Personal Memoirs of Joffre, 2 vols (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1932), Vol. 2, p. 327.

  * Joffre, The Personal Memoirs of Joffre, Vol. 2, p. 327.

  ** Norman Stone, The Eastern Front 1914–1917 (New York: Penguin, 1998).

  * General Erich von Falkenhayn, General Headquarters 1914–1916 (repr. Nashville, TN: Battery Press, 2000), p. 44.

  Chapter Two

  Fortifications and Positional Warfare

  ‘The symbol of the battle was a great fort, Douaumont, which the French had had the sense to abandon’

  Norman Stone, World War One: A Short History (New York: Basic Books, 2007)

  In contradiction to the above conclusion:

  ‘The battle over the last six months has been dominated by concrete and cannon’

  3rd Bureau of Pétain’s Second Army, 1916

  Forts and Fortresses

  Even though the forts at Verdun played an important role during the battle, few history books offer much information about them. Except for the forts of Douaumont and Vaux, none of the other forts is described. The citadel at Verdun, however, is mentioned even though it played a minimal role in the First World War. Actually located in the city, it dates back to the seventeenth century. Its underground galleries, extending 7km in total, were added between 1886 and 1893 and served as a depot for weapons, powder magazines, other stores, kitchens and communications and could shelter up to 2,000 soldiers in addition to civilians. In the twentieth century, the walls of this old fort hardly provided any protection for the city. There were other Vauban era fortifications at sites such as Lille, Montmédy and Longwy, but beyond supporting a garrison and, in some cases, housing a few battery or combat positions, they offered little in the way of modern defence.1

  France and most of the other major powers had continued to improve their fortifications until the beginning of the war. On the Western Front, the French and Germans reinforced their fortresses with new or additional barbed wire obstacles and interval positions only days before the war broke out. The Germans maintained the fortresses of Metz–Thionville and Strasbourg–Mutzig where they expected to receive the brunt of a French attack.2 The French, despite being mostly concerned about their main fortresses between Verdun and Belfort, also worked on the border forts between Maubeuge and Longwy since they expected a German advance through the Ardennes.

  In 1903, the French army had allotted extra funds for ammunition, for work on the fortresses in the east and northeast and for 105mm and 155mm guns.3 In 1904, when Joffre became the French army’s chief engineer, the government underfunded the work on the eastern frontier. This delayed the completion of the programme by twenty years by which time the works would have become mostly obsolete. In 1905, Joffre failed again to obtain the required finances. In 1906, the new Minister of War finally allotted additional funds. In 1911, when Joffre became Chief of the General Staff, he discovered that the French army lagged behind the German forces in weapons and equipment and that the artillery was short of ammunition. If they were to equip the army adequately, Joffre and the War Minister would not be able to give priority to the fortifications, especially since the French war plans called for offensive action.

  The Germans continued to work on their forts even though Schlieffen and his successors believed that they should build more railroads rather than forts. When the war broke out, forts took centre stage in the West more than in the East. In 1915, the Russian fortresses of Ivangorod (Polish Dęblin), Warsaw and Novogeorgievsk (Polish Modlin) secured the Russian Vistula River Line. The fortresses of Novogeorgievsk, Różan, Łomża, Osowiec, Grodno, Olita and Kovno held the Narew, Bobra and Niemen river lines by covering the
major crossings. The Russian defence against German thrusts centred on these fortresses until late July 1915 when the Germans finally overcame them (see Chapter 1). Although some of these fortresses, like Novogeorgievsk, were of equal size as many of the fortresses in the West and included a similar number of forts, they were less impressive because they lacked armoured turrets.

  At the onset of the war, the major powers assigned different roles to forts and fortresses in their plans. Many of the military leaders expected a brief war from which their own armies would emerge victorious shortly after mobilization. Most planned on offensive action supported by fortified sites, which were to serve as assembly and concentration points and shield the army during mobilization. The citizenry of the various countries was convinced that permanent fortifications would prevent invasions. The German military command, however, doubted that their intermittent line of forts in the East would stop the Russians. In the West, they hoped that the French would engage their fortified Metz–Thionville complex and advance into the Vosges allowing the German forces to thrust through Belgium and proceed unimpeded. They were prepared to take up entrenched positions deep inside this territory to halt a French advance.

  Fortifications offered a sense of security to the minor powers, such as Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands, since their armies were too small to consider offensives against a great power. The Belgians were thought to have some of the strongest fortresses in Europe capable of holding would-be invaders, be it Germany or France, until another nation came to their rescue. Except for the water barriers, the Dutch fortifications were less impressive than the Belgian were. The Swiss forts combined with impressive mountain barriers, however, were formidable, but formed a national redoubt that offered little protection to the population centres. The Rumanians built some impressive fortifications near Bucharest, but their main line of defence faced the Russian Empire rather than the Central Powers. Other minor powers from Scandinavia to the Balkans relied mostly on geography and older fortifications.