What was the worst battle of WW1? Verdun has my vote.
>first use of the flamethrower
>first use of "green cross gas" that could penetrate French gas masks
>so many shells fired that they called it "the devil's anvil"
>largest battle ever seen in history at the time
"At my feet two unlucky creatures rolled the floor in misery. Their clothes and hands, their entire bodies were on fire. They were living torches. [The next day] In front of us on the floor the two I had witnessed ablaze, lay rattling. They were so unrecognisably mutilated that we could not decide on their identities. Their skin was black entirely. One of them died that same night. In a fit of insanity the other hummed a tune from his childhood, talked to his wife and his mother and spoke of his village. Tears were in our eyes. They must be crazy to do what they are doing now: what a bloodbath, what horrid images, what a slaughter. I just cannot find the words to express my feelings. Hell cannot be this dreadful. People are insane!"
What was the worst battle of WW1? Verdun has my vote
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>largest battle ever seen in history at that time
ummm....
1. Verdun
2. Somme
*power gap*
3. Paschendale
I dont know what is that battle, but Barbusse writes about it in Le Feu in 24th chapter, there are huge swamps on the battlefield and soldiers are drowning in masses.
1. Somme, 141 days
the bloodiest battle
1.200 german fatalities, 1900 wounded, per day
1.550 british and commonwealth fatalities, 1.500 wounded, per day
500 french fatalities, 950 wounded, per day
2. Verdun, 300 days
the longest battle
more than 1.000 fatalities and 1.300 wounded both sides per day for 300 days
53.000.000 shells in total fired by both sides (just by considering an average 75mm french shell is 0,8kg of explosives therfore that is more than 42.000 tons of explosives)
The battles on the isonzo on the italian side
>led by cadorna
>no supplies
>have to attack up mountains
>uncapable to speak with the rest of your regiment because everyone speaks a different language
>armed with carcano91
>walking uphill with people who don't speak your language is worse than dying
yes when you are with northern italians
Thing is that Verdun was more intense than the Somme, and the fighting was more concentrated
In just a few months, over 200,000 millions shells were thrown on a relatively small area
>largest battle ever seen in history at that time
>not some chinese battle
>50 000 killed
Are you retarded?
Brusilov Offensive
>brb 1,2 million dead in not much more than three months.
>brb over 2 million casualties in total
It is often an overlooked operation, imo.
fort de Vaux, 1916
during the battle of Verdun i think the frontline was about 30km, and the battlefield was 50km2
in the Somme the frontline was about 45 km long and the scale of the battlefield was much larger than at Verdun
>over 200,000 millions shells
too many 0. ~28M fired by the french and ~30M by the germans of which 2M on the first two days of the battle (if i'm not dumb at maths this is 11 shells each second on 21-22 february 1916 at Verdun)
>little boy was 15000 tonnes of tnt
>pretty much the equivalent of 3 atomic bombs
Well fuck
What's more impressive is that it took a year of continuous artillery barrage from 150 army divisions to match 3 small atom bombs.
>tfw
Eh not really that was 30 years earlier
3.Passchendaele, third battle of Ypres
You writing about Verdun
>wow they threw 42000 tonnes of tnt with artillery
>well fuck that's pretty amazing
You writing about 3 atom bombs
>eh it's just 42000 tonnes of tnt
>it's no big deal really
I'd have to say the Somme. Massive casualties in a short amount of time, along with the premature usage of tanks.
Fuck off butthurt american
Nations that took part in both the Somme and Verdun (Germans and French) remember the Somme as noticeably less bad than Verdun
It was Britain's worst battle, but not the war's worst battle
The carcano is actually a good rifle.
en.wikipedia.org
the battle of Suiyang
>tfw when your general makes you eat his mistress and you have to like it
I'm just picturing hundreds of soldiers in a courtyard, crying while eating a dead royal concubine, with chopsticks.
>The remains of the young men who fought valiantly for their country
jesus fucking christ I hate the daily mail
who else would still spout the same fucking 20th century propaganda about how the war was something anyone could be proud of being part of
They did fight valiantly tho
And it was for their countries indeed (muh Alsace-Lorraine/muh German supremacy)
Toss up between Verdun and the Somme, I'd give it to Verdun personally.
youtube.com
Probably Passchendaele? It's a swampy area.
Damn, that's some stupidly high bodycount, no wonder the Tsar lost some popularity.
No one says they were happy and proud to die, but they indeed fought for their country, and valiantly at that.
how did these barrages sound from the perspective of the crew firing the guns?
Paschendale was worse than the Somme desu. Somme is only bad for the scale and French being a moron, Paschendale had worse conditions
I've absolutely no clue user, the link itself is only a reconstruction based on testimony from those being shelled. Educated guess is that it would be very similar though, guns were levied en mass.
>French being a moron
The heck? France achieved all their objectives in their first day, while it was the Brits who were the stragglers and couldn't keep up since this was the first instance of throwing their batch of conscripts at the enemy.
>The first day on the Somme (1 July) saw a serious defeat for the German Second Army, which was forced out of its first position by the French Sixth Army, from Foucaucourt-en-Santerre south of the Somme to Maricourt on the north bank and by the Fourth Army from Maricourt to the vicinity of the Albert–Bapaume road. The first day on the Somme was, in terms of casualties, also the worst day in the history of the British army, which suffered 57,470 casualties.
>The German defence south of the Albert–Bapaume road mostly collapsed and the French had "complete success" on both banks of the Somme, as did the British from the army boundary at Maricourt to the Albert–Bapaume road.
>France achieved all their objectives in their first day
I meant John French, the British commander. I was mistaken however, it was Haig in charge by that point.
Please present a chinese battle that took place during or prior to WW1 where 10 million troops were involved and over 100,000 of said combatants were killed in action