What was the worst battle of World War 1 and why? When I say worst I mean in terms of the levels of misery and horror...

Really? Other than the casualty figures what made the front particularly miserable? It cant have been as bad as the western front?

They all seem pretty horrific to me. From what little I know about WWI, Passchendaele and Gallipoli seemed pretty miserable.

Most probably Verdun
It had the most concentrated intense fighting and shelling in the entire war
As violent as the Somme, but on a much smaller area

>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 filled, 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.

>A French lieutenant at Verdun, who would be killed by a shell, wrote in his diary on 23 May 1916, "Humanity is mad. It must be mad to do what it is doing. What a massacre! What scenes of horror and carnage! I cannot find words to translate my impressions. Hell cannot be so terrible. Men are mad!"[110]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Verdun#Aftermath

Almost 100 millions shells were fired during the battle, with 4 millions in the first week alone

The Alps.

What made it worse than the carpathian front? That had mountains too

>One soldier was going insane with thirst and drank from a pond covered with a greenish layer near Le Mort-Homme. A corpse was afloat in it; his black countenance face down in the water and his abdomen swollen as if he had been filling himself up with water for days now....

Pussy ass Westerners
Indians drink from corpses-filled water everyday

The imagery from this story comes to mind.

I need to reread Storm of Steel sometime.

Verdun.
Not only because it was a slaughterhouse but also because of how bad the conditions were.
We'll hopefully never fight a battle as insane as Verdun ever again.

Your picture is from the 1940s

>Memers ITT trying to deny it was Verdun

I hear this a lot, but no one ever really points to definitive stuff that makes it worse than others of the like, such as the Sommes, Ypres, Isonzo, Passchendaele. When I hear these ones described it sounds like pretty much the same quality as at Verdun. And if I am not mistaking Verdun didn't have any gas attacks?

>I hear this a lot, but no one ever really points to definitive stuff that makes it worse than others of the like, such as the Sommes, Ypres, Isonzo, Passchendaele

This posts decsribes the reasons pretty well As brutal as the Somme but on a much smaller area, making it more intense
More shells per square kilometre than any other battles of WW1
And a higher casualties rate per number of troops involved than the Somme (ie more intense)

...

I'm right now reading Alistair Horne's "The Price of Glory" and the general description of both futileness and inmense suffering from both sides makes Verdun look like absolute hell. So I guess I got to agree with everyone else on this thread

>And if I am not mistaking Verdun didn't have any gas attacks?

Hahaha oh wow
Shitons of gas shells were fired by both sides at Verdun

>On 22-23 June, Germany launched its last major attack on Verdun. German artillery fired over 110,000 chemical shells filled with phosgene. The concentration was so high that the French masks were unable to filter out the agent, and the French artillery crews, the principle targets, fell silent. "Men and horses were caught and killed by the terrible fumes. Doctors treating the wounded were themselves struck down."

Imagine being gassed so hard even gas masks can't save you

I read an absolutely massive book on The Somme, like 800 pages. what a shitshow that was. but I still don't really understand why WWI is considered more horrifying than any other war?

the only real argument that I've seen is the way the survivors came out of it. being shelled constantly for weeks, without being rotated? historically, battles were very short, usually no longer than a day, and a siege was just two armies camped out instead of daily street fighting.

it's not like violence was any less worse before WWI. there was still artillery, guns, swords, spears. all awful ways to die. I guess the difference with WWI was the psychological effects on the living?

Verdun, Carpathian Mountains, Passchendaele, Caporetto, Somme

In WW1 it wasn't just about getting shot. You could be asphyxiated by poisonous gas. You could be blinded by artillery. You could be sitting in the mud with rotting corpses for weeks. You have to sit there knowing that you could die at any moment, and there's not much you can do about. Also the stench, disease, etc. were all horrifying too.

Go into your backyard. Dig yourself a hole. And then live in it for a couple weeks.
Never mind the rats, the lice, the dead bodies, the rifle fire, the machine gun fire, the gas, the tanks and shells. Just the hole is horrific enough.

The level of carnage in WWI was obscene and unprecedented. Hundreds of thousands of casualties in mere days, and it hardly let up for 4 years. Battles were the exact opposite of 'very short', they were incredibly prolonged encounters which takes a massive toll on your psyche. The mobile wars of the 19th century and WWII weren't a thing, you were dug in the same spot of mud and clay that had been blown apart by countless shells for weeks and months on end, surrounded by corpses, piss, and shit.

The scale and lethality of artillery in WWI can't be compared to artillery of prior centuries. Go read first-hand accounts of what getting shelled feels like. Once you get past that, just the psychological side of it, remember that those shells are tossing shrapnel and earth everywhere, and most soldiers didn't even have proper helmets until well after a year into the war. You could just die at any time, no glory, no honor, no purpose to it.

And bringing up awful ways to die and not mentioning gas? From the perspective of a soldier in the trenches, you were accomplishing nothing. Militaries had so many new tools at their commands that battles just became testing grounds. You were a lab rat for whatever new way they could come up with to murder human beings that year. Violence took on a whole new level in WWI, it's the war you pick if you want to shatter all ideas of romanticism or glory in war.

This
WW1 was a war of attrition (worst type of war) in a desolate landscape of muds

That's much worse than touring across the grassy fields and pretty forest of Europe (Napoleonic Wars, Western Front of WW2...) or visiting nice tropical islands with blue lagoons (Pacific Theater of WW2)

so basically what I said about the psychological horror of death could come at any time, no way to fight back, and prolonged battles.

I don't think gas or modern artillery is a much worse way to die than any ancient methods. killing has always been brutal.

Besides the fact that getting gassed was a horribly painful and slow way to die, it wasn't just about the worst way to die. Plenty of soldiers survived gassing but were terribly physically maimed by it for the rest of their lives. Your respiratory system and every exposed orifice of your body is burning and blistering, whether you live or die it's one of the absolute worst things you could experience.

Verdun and Passchendale were pretty fucking bad

Sad and incredibly stupid war

Shhhhhhhhh

>pacific front was a cakewalk
try telling that to the people who were there in Peleliu,Tarawa,Saipan,Iwo Jima,Papua,Guadacanal etc
WW1 was hellish due to the trench and the Pacific was hellish due to the tropical environment with exotic disease,exotic humidity,exotic wildlife etc
or worse off they could send you off to Burma

The amount of casualties in Verdun are shocking even by ww1 standards. The British suffered 60,000 casualties and 20,000 soldiers killed in action ON THE VERY FIRST DAY.

That's practically something out of WH40K, except it really happened.

if you were born 100 years earlier this could have been you

ackshually that was Somme
but yeah Verdun and Somme goes hand in hand

So? Trenches had just as much disease, humidity and wildlife. What is your point?

great post, thanks for the imagery

Passchendaele - or Battle of the Mud.

I've heard some accounts from both Germans and British lines on this mid war battle. It was absolute horror. I don't think it was the worst, but it was up there.
I'll post two accounts. The first I remember from some website about some British Royal Regiment.
>Literal battle field of mud. Ground so bad, you can't make trenches, only shallow shell holes provide cover.
>Platoon of british troops marching out in the morning.
>An irish guy steps in a mud sinkhole, up to his waste. The men laugh and try to tug him out.
>some use their rifles, but nothing works. Tell them they'll come back for him.
>That same night they try again, but don't have any horses to spare or manpower anymore. They're all exhausted.
>he begs them not to leave, but they can't pull him out.
>a few days later, same platoon comes to relieve the next platoon.
>find the irish solider petrified, his corpse paralyzed in the position he died.
>clawing the ground around him.

Second account, is from storm of steel.
>German lieutenant marches out to relieve a company of 150 men in some godforsaken mud front line.
>When he gets there theres not trench, just shell holes.
>He finds the acting sergeant.
>He completely broken, he hugs the lieutenant and cries and says thank "thank god, you've come to relieve us."
>Lieutenant sees germans laying prone on blown up corspes, ask the Srgt. where the rest of the company is, he only sees 10 men.
>Srgt. says thats all thats left.
>Srgt takes whats left of his company and heads back to the rear lines through shell fire.
>doesn't make it.
>was only out on the front line for a 12 hour shift.
>Lieutenants company of 100 men are only out there for a night.
>He also only comes back with a hand full of men, after the british shell their foxholes all night.

That was a brutal fucking war, man.

>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
fuck
Any reading on this campaign? I can't seem to find anything on it. Maybe I'm retarded.

holy fuck that is heartbreaking. i don't think i've ever read anything like that before

That looks like a holiday resort compared to the western front.

imagine Stalingrad-tier conditions (tactically and in weather) with shittier clothing, inferior medicine, and horribly outdated tactics with still relatively-modern equipment.

granted most of the Eastern Front was pussy shit save for a few battles (Tannenberg, Masurian Lakes, Brusilov Offensive, and of course the Carpathians) when compared to the Western Front. but if there was an Eastern Front analog to Verdun, it was probably this.

There's literally no way the pacific war was worse than the western front. It doesn't compare on any metric.

>No one has mentioned Gallipoli

It was shit, but even for Australians far from the worst. I'll paste some accounts from Fromelles, called the worst day in all of Australia's history when my great grandfather's battalion was pretty much wiped out.

>Stammering scores of German machine-guns spluttered violently, drowning the noise of the cannonade. The air was thick with bullets, swishing in a flat criss-crossed lattice of death ... Hundreds were mown down in the flicker of an eyelid, like great rows of teeth knocked from a comb ... Men were cut in two by streams of bullets [that] swept like whirling knives ... It was the charge of the Light Brigade once more, but more terrible, more hopeless.

>If you had gathered the stock of a thousand butcher-shops, cut it into small pieces and strewn it about, it would give you a faint conception of the shambles those trenches were

It's not a competition you autists.

>answering the question makes it competitive
Shush.

why rats weren't scared by shitload of loud noises caused by artillery etc

trenches had worse day to day condition,gas attacks,barbed wires,having to mass charge etc
the islands had booby traps,flamethrowers,knee mortars,rampant diseases,flies and mosquito,naval bombardment and napalm
nobody is questioning about X is worst than Y you moron im just saying the user who thinks that is all a battle on tropical island is unread
but Burma had definitely the worse terrain for soldiers to fight,on par with Suomossalmi,Salonica,the Alps and in German West Africa

Why the fuck has no one mentioned the somme?

Verdun on the western front
Hotzendorfs dumbshit assault through the Carpathians during winter on the Eastern
The serbs retreat through Albania (not a battle but pretty brutal) as well

The consensus seems to be that Verdun was basically the Somme concentrated into a smaller space, which is brutal. As a Britfag, I've been told the Somme was the worst battle of the war my whole life.

I was a soldier, and while I obviously didn't see any combat on the level of the world wars, in terms of operating environment give me a tropical hellhole over a cold and wet hellhole any day.

wtf is this shit map? alt-history? why is japan central power? whats going on with egypt? why is Libya not italian? Norway and Spain(?) in central power?

>Always cold
>Lower amount of oxygen
>10,000 people killed by avalanches in one month of 1916 alone
>Everyone tunneling all the fucking time
>Attacking the Isonzo over and over again with little to no gain for anybody involved
The Italian Front must have sucked major dick

Hunger is a hell of a motivator.

Well, I'm German and here we are told that Verdun was the worst battle of WW1

The Somme is seen as a major battle, like Tannenberg, but Verdun is the one used to point out of hellish this war was

The Somme is the worst British battle but we didn't fight at Verdun so it's not mentioned as much. Verdun was worse.

Passchendaele was a Canadian battle, not a Britsh one
Stop stealing our achievements

Verdun. Absolutely Verdun.

What a pointless and brutal endeavour.

Can i get a list of books on Verdun? Possibly downloads for them even? I cant find price of glory in anything other than paperback on amazon...

sorry, i got all of my info about this from people like Pleský, Kopta, Kaplický, Medek, Langer etc. that all have books only in Czech.

Tannenberg is a meme, it wasnt that bad taking in count experience of avarage soldier, it was just well done job of backstabbing Baltic G*rman officers.

Passchendaele. Literally the worst battle in basically the 20th century. There was constant machine gun fire, artillery, gas, bayonets, and trench-foot was pretty widespread. The weather didn't help as rain has created mud puddles so deep, that exhausted soldiers had actually fucking drowned in them.

>all those guys who sank halfway into the mud and had to be left behind alone until they died of thirst or hunger

Battle of the piave river was pretty brutal
>the italian knew the austrian attack plan
>they decided to time their battery fire before the austrian even attacked
>a lot of soldier thought that the Italian were counterattacking and routed
>survivors said that the artillery fire was so intense that it looked like it was day instead of night
>have to cross a swollen river under artillery and machine gun fire both from air and from the other side
>20k people drown
>the ones that makes it to the other side are cut out from the supply lines and have to face desperate Italian counter attack

>There was constant machine gun fire, artillery, gas, bayonets, and trench-foot was pretty widespread
>rain has created mud puddles so deep, that exhausted soldiers had actually fucking drowned in them.

So basically, just Verdun on a smaller scale....

Probably the Battle of Verdun, and "dead man Attack" on the Eastern Front.
youtube.com/watch?v=gMtODpAQ6tY

What's with the retarded purple colouring?

Each nation is going to have their own "worst battle of ww1"

I agree. Stupid Germans have always been dangerous to the world.

Germans and French fought both at the Somme and Verdun, so if both of them think Verdun was the worst, it most definitly was

I think that the most terrible battle for the Germans was under the fortress Osowiec. 14 German 14 battalions retreated in front of one hundreds of Russian soldiers.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osowiec_Fortress

there are today still areas around verdun were you can't come due to the poison gas

another contender could be the battle of sarikamisch, the ottomans lost an entire army there

Even better, Belgium is in the CP.

the more I look the wronger it gets

Where?
Afaik there are only 2 places in Europe where an area is closed to the public due to poison gas used during WW1 and where the grass does not grow: one nicknamed 'La Place-à-gaz' in Spincourt near Verdun, where 200.000 german shells filled with arsenic (around 16 tons of arsenic) were burned down by the french in the 1920's and one near Ypres where the british did the same

it's fashwave, probabl

Probably the Battle of Joncherey in 1914

Zone Rouge