Why is it that the battle of Passchendaele is so much more well known than Verdun...

You almost never hear about Passchendaele here in France. It's almost always about Verdun or Somme. Or the Marne. So I guess it's a british thing.

I recently did a cycle tour through the Ypres Salient, a lot of war graves and all that but what made an impression on me was the ammount of british and canadian tourists. It was not high season but there were tens of school buses, war memorial tours... in Ypres I only heard english.

Pretty cool.

Is that Ben Affleck?

Are you Canadian?
Here in Germany, the most well known battles are Verdun, followed by the Somme and then by Tannenberg
Passchendaele is irrelevant

Verdun is the symbol of WW1 and its horrors for us.
We even made a pretty good documentary about it recently
youtube.com/watch?v=3b9Wu-WgB04

Nobody in Europe care for Passchendaele. And yes, UK is not European nation anymore.

German here. Never heard of Paschendaele before.

Verdun is a French town. The Somme is a French river, is it not?

As far as I'm concerned, it was all quiet on the Western Front.

I'm surprised Americans have heard of WW1 at all; they were in it for all of three months.

Not sure where you're getting that from. Verduns much more well known in the US in particular

God damnit, I really hate that guy.

same in france except the tannenberg part

In American schools it's rare to spend even a single day talking about WW1. More time gets dedicated to The Revolutionary War, The founding fathers in general, The war of 1812 & the impressment of soldiers, Manifest Destiny, slavery then jim crow & civil rights, The Civil War, and The Roaring Twenties/great depression and occasionally WW2.

History is honestly the worst subject in public school unless you just have a really phenomenal teacher because the textbooks & curriculum are often drawn up by bureaucrats & state legislatures who push for narrative driven material that won't offend anybody.

Probably because the fighting involved British Empire soldiers. Passchendaele is memorable because of the conditions and all the mud.

People confuse the battle with being the entirety of the Third Battle of Ypres. People don't realise there were many battles before which made up the Third Battle of Ypres. For example, Menin Road, Broodseide, Poelcapelle, Pilkim Ridge, Langemark, Polygon Wood etc.

If you were French you'd know Verdun more.

I'm Canadian so I hear more about Passchendale, but I'd say Verdun and the Somme are basically the best equivalents between anglo/french tragedy.

These three months being at the end of the war, they can pretend they won the day for everyone else.

>they were in it for all of three months
Are... are you stupid? War was declared on April of 1917. Troops were on the frontline in October (would have been there sooner but Britain threw a fucking titfit). Our first battle that occurred solely between Americans and Germans happened in April 1918 but we had served a secondary role for the BEF and French forces for the prior 6 six months.

>three months
Fuck you

>t. american who claims "lol yuropoors had to be saved in both world war"

>refuting denial of reality is the same as complete revisionism
Fucking Eurotrash I swear to Christ

>t. fatty

Meme mud.
Also most of the shit from Verdun hasn't been translated for whatever reason.

Not to mention spending a whole week on the godamn "Holocaust"

Verdun also had mud btw

>The concentration of so much fighting in such a small area devastated the land, resulting in miserable conditions for troops on both sides. Rain, combined with the constant tearing up of the ground, turned the clay of the area to a wasteland of mud full of human remains. Shell craters became filled with a liquid ooze, becoming so slippery that troops who fell into them or took cover in them could drown. Forests were reduced to tangled piles of wood by constant artillery-fire and eventually obliterated.[87] The effect on soldiers in the battle was devastating and many broke down with shell shock

It also had extreme heat during the summer part of the battle
The smell of rotten corpses burning all day long on the sun was unbearable and many soldiers died of thirst when they couldnt access water reserves because of the shelling

He talked about Verdun for like an hour and a half you chodes.

It isnt

Verdun is the most well know with the Somme a runner up.

This is speaking as a Burger on behalf of mostly history illiterate people I know and what bad history docs show

Do Anglo pigs really make Passchendaele seem bigger and teach that over Verdun?

Gross

For a long ass time I listened to WWI podcasts and shit so i only heard the words and never saw them written. I thought the Battles of Passchendaele and 'Passiondale' were 2 different things for years until I heard someone looking at the same sentence as me read it aloud. In that moment I became the ultimate Burger.

It isn't

Wow, that's the most anglophone thing I've ever heard

Epic, truly epic

I had to look at the word for like 10 seconds trying to figure out how to pronounce it before I realized what OP was talking about

American here, only know more about Passchendaele because of that Canuck movie. The Somme or Bealleau Wood would be more up to American speed.

Then there's just the cool shit like the Paris gun, those brits who made the largest non-nuclear explosion in history, that German commander in Africa running literally the cheapest war possible, Prussian railroads fooling two Russian armies to the point one guy caps himself, or Alp ice cave avalanche war. Then there's things like Jutland or the whole development of early military aviation.

Really, the Western Front is more seen as a whole ever since it became trench warfare.

Reminds me, I need to finish the three open books I'm reading now so I can get onto Storm of Steel.

It was an assault on german positions,as opposed to a defensive battle,if it had succeeded it would have captured a major transport hub an possible freed belgium.

The advance quickly bogged down, though, when heavy rain turned the battlefield into a morass. Although Gough’s men made several attempts to press forward in these dire conditions, no progress towards Passchendaele could be made.

Because of this Passchendaele has been a byword for the horror of the Great War. The name conjures images of a shattered landscape of mud, shell craters and barbed wire, and of mud-stuck soldiers mown down by machine-guns and artillery.

also pic

Before and after the battle.

It really is staggering. Not an inch of ground has been left unscathed.

Tyne Cot, on the Passchendaele battlefield, is one of the largest Commonwealth War Grave Commission sites from WWI.

As you walk through the headstones, every so often a squat, battered concrete building appears. These are the German machine gun bunkers, left in place as part of the remembrance.

You stand in front of one of these, and then turn back to see the terrain that our soldiers had to cross to reach them. It's utterly flat--Saskatchewan flat. No cover. You just stand there, wondering how men could force themselves to get up out of the mud, and continue to move forward into the MG and artillery fire.

...

always heard it referred to as Verdun. the memorial called it verdun.

Because the rain made it so horrific people literally drowned to death in muddy fields and craters filled with toxic water

Same pic for Verdun

According to the wiki article, 2 millions of shells were fired the first two weeks, and 10 millions were fired during the month of June alone
Didnt find the total number but I wouldnt be surprized if it closed the 100 millions

memorial in my city centre i mean calls it verdun.

But Verdun had it too

Passchendaele was easily a worse battle. The fighting at Verdun was fierce, but they didn't drown in mud.

>The fighting at Verdun was fierce, but they didn't drown in mud.

Yes they did, during the rainy winter month
It's literally in the text I quoted
Verdun was worse on every possible aspects

The French had fortresses to shelter in,the commonwealth forces had to advance against forts

As much as it is an epic /pol/ meme, the Holocaust gets covered far too much. In my school district, we spent at least a week on it in 4th, 5th, 8th, 9th, 11th and 12th grade.

And the Germans had to advance against forts too at Verdun, your point?
Anyway the forts fell on the first weeks, the rest of the battle was 10 months of intense shelling and charging at entrenched positions

Only a retard would say the 2 months of Passchendaele were worse than Verdun, its 10 millions of shells and its 900,000 casualties

And the Germans had to advance against forts too at Verdun, your point?
Anyway the forts fell on the first weeks, the rest of the battle was 10 months of intense shelling and charging at entrenched positions

Only a retard would say the 2 months of Passchendaele were worse than Verdun, its 100 millions of shells and its 900,000 casualties

>your point?
Passchendaele was it more significant and important,Verdun was of no strategic importance compared,because losing it would not have affected the outcome of the war as much.

Doubt that's right, but it still doesnt make Passiondale more horrific than Verdun anyway

Your opinions are noted,but Passchendaele was an offensive operation where british troops were advancing in the open ,while the French had forts to shelter them from 100 millions shells.

>while the French had forts to shelter them from 100 millions shells.

The forts were obliterated on the first month, and the rest of the battle was a succession of offensives by both sides
And anyway, the point of view of the Germans matters too, and they had to attack forts at the beginningof Verdun

Around 1% of French troops had forts to hold, and the fighting conditions in the forts were horrific.

Not even 1%
The only fort out of the two that was actually manned was held by 600 guys
The water supply hadnt even been replenished so they had to surrender after a week when facing critical deshydratation

Because you live in Canada