Tell me more about the Battle of Verdun. Why is it so famous?

what was the strategic value of Verdun? sure it had a fort, but they shelled it into oblivion

at least Stalingrad was the last major city on the way to an important oilfield

theres also 3 hueg maps. sadly they are very hard to scan so I just post 2 sections

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>ironically this stuff belonged to a guy who fought in ww2 around stalingrad as far as I can tell from the rest of his things
Pics?

It was mostly symbolic
Verdun was considered a French stronghold, and was a pretty important place in shared German-French history (it's the place where the treaty dividing the Frankish Empire into France and Germany was signed in 843)

hill 304 was apparently the place for artillery observers to direct fire to mort homme hill. thats it for now. if anybody can tell me more about the pics Id be very thankful.

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no sry, mostly newspaper cuts, maps, papers and very cool models and dioramas with text on their bottoms. sadly I dont have the stuff here else I could make some fotos.

Other than the excellent post made here I would say the nature of the fighting was particularly horrific, too. Of note, the siege of Fort de Vaux - where the fighting devolved into 5 days of brutal CQC in its corridors. Men taking cover behind corpses as they're bombarded by grenades, gunfire and flamethrowers. Reduced to drinking their own piss or licking moisture off the fort's walls until the French finally had to surrender as no relief force could assist them.

To this day, there are still areas around Verdun where the soil is contaminated by the poison gas used during the attack. Wounds nature has yet to heal, over a century later.

Verdun itself was a salient, sticking out like a thumb into the German lines. The attack wasn't really about capturing the city, but the heights near the River Meuse. Owning those would be of strategic benefit. There's also the symbolic value of the city, as explained in Big props to the user posting the aerial photos and maps of the area. Interesting - and horrifying stuff.

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The Germans took the initiative to try and bait the French into attacking them ad infinitum until every last service-capable Frenchman had died. Plan was literally to bleed France white or until their government collapsed. The Germans anticipated some losses, but thought they'd be acceptable and in excellent proportions relative to the French losses. They were wrong.

I also seem to recall the French employing a highly effective method of rotating units assigned to Verdun. While this meant that more soldiers got a taste of the lowest circle of hell, it also meant that the French morale was relatively high compared to the Germans. The German forces that were assigned to that theater basically stayed there the entire time.

Lastly, the Verdun offensive was a key moment in the slow death of German monarchism. The Crown Prince was one of the generals at Verdun, and German losses during the offensive served to destroy much of his popularity. For those who were unhappy with his father, Wilhelm II, the Crown Prince was a promise of a better future.... Verdun changed that.

This might help. Verdun was one of the main supply points for the front line, a central point of exchange.
It was also covered in a valley, the forts around it were placed on the hill ring around and covered each other.

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I only have this to add. One of the few non-staged pictures of combat during WW1.

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Verdun was hell, nothing has ever come close to it, one hundred years later the area still looks like a battlefield and is littered with poisonous shells,holes and bones

Because it sucked

>be depressed
>remember I’m not a soldier in Verdun
>get happy
So they didn’t die for nothing afterall

Lot of fortifications of Verdun was destroyed

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The biggest human meatgrinder ever made.

It was the most protracted battle of WW1, and one of the bloodiest. Verdun was also a hugely symbolic place for the French, as the fort at Verdun had been the lynchpin of France's frontier defences for centuries, with the core fortifications having been designed by Louis XIV's famed chief military engineer, Marshal Vauban. In the decades leading up to WW1 a huge amount of money had been spent on upgrading the fortifications to meet the demands of 20th century warfare. The battle was the key test of how strong France's defences were; if the Germans could break through there, they could break through anywhere.

More importantly perhaps, it's gained a huge place in the French national consciousness because about 80% of the French army (which at that point was basically the entire generation of young men) fought at Verdun. (since the Germans didn't rotate troops far fewer Germans fought there). It was in a very literal sense a shared national experience; a farmer from Picardy could sit down in a Lyon train station next to a random fisherman from Marseilles, and there'd be a good chance that they'd each lost a friend on the same hill overlooking Verdun.

>Plan was literally to bleed France white or until their government collapsed.
This is what Falkenhayn said after the initial assaults failed to break through, but a lot of historians think he was bullshitting, and that he'd originally intended to deal a crippling blow to French morale by capturing France's most famous fortification. Falkenhayn was extremely secretive, so it's impossible to know for sure, but the first-phase attacks look far more like attempted breakthroughs than bait-and-hold. Also, I personally find it psychologically unlikely that a German general of that period would plan a battle he had no intention of winning; the Germans had great confidence in their military. In my view Falkenhayn only retconned it into 'bleed France white' when it became clear that there'd be no breakthrough.

What was so bad about the conditions at Verdun though? Like yeah I get that it's huge and symbolic and enormous casualties were suffered, but what made combat their especially bad?

From wiki

>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.

Basically the same as the Somme, Passchendaele...etc, but much more intense and concentrated

>what was the strategic value of Verdun?
That actually depends on the historian. The German ones insist it was purely for symbolic, emotional value. The British and French ones say that it did have strategic value.

Understand that 1 in 3 shells fired didn't explode, so people to this day still die every year in cleanup operations

>It was in a very literal sense a shared national experience; a farmer from Picardy could sit down in a Lyon train station next to a random fisherman from Marseilles, and there'd be a good chance that they'd each lost a friend on the same hill overlooking Verdun.

I really like you, user.

jesus, that's haunting

with the bad luck I have I would have been hit by a shell

I would have been crushed by a non exploded shell

My great-grandfather was at Verdun and I've heard a few stories (second-hand, he died in the 1970s), none of which sounded fun.

>be Polish farmer in Silesia
>drafted to German Army with brother
>sent to Verdun
>charging French fortifications
>70% of unit dead within a couple of weeks
>your brother dies, you get shot in the arm
>unit withdrawn
>receive some first aid
>"ok your unit is dissolved, you can go home"
>receive no pay or provisions
>have to go back 1200 kilometers back to home village on foot
>it's cold as hell
>boots fall apart halfway back
>get shot at by German farmers for stealing animal feed to survive
>arm got some complications and had to be amputated

Boy did he hate Germans.

>mfw there are Poles who died fighting in the Imperial German Army against the Allies, and thus against Polish independence

No, that would be the Eastern Front of WW2

The Entente wasn't for Polish independence at the time, the only two powers who had Polish autonomy as propaganda points were Russia and Germany, who were trying to get more Polish recruits, particularly from the 'Polish' territories of their enemies.

In fact the "Poland" which declared independence at the end of WW1 was a German creation initially made as a German puppet state from Polish-inhabited lands taken from Russia.

If you want specifics and have enough interest to listen through hours of material, I recommend Dan Carlins multi-part podcast about WW1 (lead up AND war, the whole shebang) titled Blueprint for Armageddon. You'll have a pretty good idea of the timeline, the war and details on what made each famous battle as bad as it was.

Here's the first part:

youtube.com/watch?v=YFMT_BVBBsA

I think it's good to remind everyone of how people at the time experienced the war on a personal level. All too often the response to a question like this is just a bunch of statistics. It doesn't really answer the question OP was asking.

How likely are you to step on a mine walking through there?

don't think mines were a thing back then., the unexploded shells are not an issue for random walkers.

THE BLOODY VERDICT OF VERDUN

>dan carlins hardcore history

I mean I appreciate that you are trying to get people more motivated about history but it's still pretty entertainment tier so I'm gonna have to hit you with this.

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>Be a starving soviet soldier in Stalingrad,who managed to escape his battalion entire death by a direct assault into an mg nest and is hold up inside the bedroom of an apartment with 6 rounds left for your mosin nagant
>Be a jap in Tarawa watching as 400 planes and 6 Amercan battleship sail around your coral island and see flashes of yellow going all around you
>Be a 11 year old kid who were sent off to Basra and is ordered by some commander to walk into a minefield and sacrifice yourself for the hidden Imam
>all of them breathe a sigh of relief because atleast they were never in Verdun

carlin manages to give a better solid overview in that series desu
ofc if you want to learn more than just the broad strokes you should read a book but blueprint for armageddeon is a great way to spark interest