9 ms·

The Legend of Verdun

127 points by wormold 11y ago

bdavisx 11y ago
A good movie about the insanity of the trench warfare and some of the French commanders of WWI is Paths of Glory - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paths_of_Glory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paths_of_Glory.
achamayou 11y ago
An important reason why the fight was so bitter over seemingly small amounts of land that this article (and others) seem to miss is that a relatively limited area of northern France amounted to over half of the country's industrial production. Coal and steel in particular, critical to the war effort were overwhelmingly produced there. Any incremental part of this region lost to the Germans wasn't just a symbolic loss of ground or a moral defeat, it meant a real long term resource loss which could tilt the balance of the war in Germany's favour. In comparison, the allies were largely unable to strike Germany's industrial centers. It's quite easy to depict all senior commanders of the time as inflexible and stubborn (some of them were, to various extents anyway), but there's more to it than that. Defence in depth just wasn't an option, and mechanised war was a fiction anyway. With the benefit of hindsight, and ignoring the industrial value of the North, it's easy to jump to simple but wrong conclusions about why the war was fought that way. Edit: Link to English source illustrating my point http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/raw_materials http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/raw_materia...
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Best i can tell, when commanders are presented as inflexible and stubborn, its about the tactics, not the strategy. Yes, they had good reason to fight there. But the way the fighting was conducted was more often than not a stilted mess.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Indeed, much of the criticism seems to be centered around the general theme of, "Charging machine guns over open ground didn't work the last 300 times we tried it, but maybe today will be the day."
    - VLM 11y ago
      It worked quite well in their grandparents day over the same ground (more or less) with the same opponents in the Franco Prussian war. Unfortunately technology improved and trucks supply ammo to modern machine guns mean it doesn't work so well anymore.
    - johngalt 11y ago
      With enough artillery and men it actually did work in many cases. The large scale assaults regularly made progress measured in miles. The problem was that you couldn't meaningfully continue an advance or exploit a breakthrough. Once you left your trenches you also left your supply lines. The enemy could respond to any breakthrough with overwhelming force mobilized by their own rails and roads.
  - azernik 11y ago
    Unfortunately, they were limited by the technology of the day - not the lack of mechanized forces, but the lack of portable radios. Charging across the no-man's land, while high in casualties, usually worked for getting an initial penetration of the other side's trench system, but without radio to coordinate reinforcements, artillery support, and a further exploitation of the breakthrough they would quickly fall to counterattacks. And then the bloodiest bit of the offensive, the initial breakthrough, would have to be repeated again.
    - ghaff 11y ago
      I think it did relate to mobility and supply chains as well. But, yes, the bottom line is that costly long-planned breakthroughs invariably ended up getting bogged down.
    - digi_owl 11y ago
      Yeah i recall reading about how they would attempt to roll telegraph wire out as they advanced, only to have it snag on something or get cut by artillery blasts.
      - azernik 11y ago
        Yeah, even phone lines to established positions had to be buried to keep from getting cut by artillery bombardment.
  - mrec 11y ago
    There were reasons for the way the fighting was conducted too, and the popular idea of "trench warfare" being the norm on the Western Front for the whole 1914-1918 stretch is misleading. As with pretty much everything in life, things were a little more complicated than that. The excellent /r/askhistorians forum has had some good coverage of this area in the past. Try this overview for a start: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/37epxy/i_kept_hearing_about_significant_infantry_combat/crm3z5r?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/37epxy/i_kep... Or this seven-part epic answer regarding Verdun and the Somme more specifically: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/32t8bn/world_war_i_question_largescale_offensives_like/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/32t8bn/world... or more from the Western Front section of their FAQ: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/wwi#wiki_western_front https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/wwi#wiki_western...
  - cmdkeen 11y ago
    Sometimes the objectives for a battle are a little more complicated than breaking through - holding actions, diversions, rearguards etc. The British Expeditionary Force, and lots of the regular French Army, was sacrificed to blunt the initial German advance. British commanders were clear that the completely new army they were building would not be ready until 1916/7 but a mix of politics and necessity meant they had to be sent in earlier. Allegations that Britain would "fight to the last drop of Russian blood" - which had echoes of the Napoleonic wars - threatened to undermine the alliance. The British attacks during Verdun were to relieve pressure on the French by diverting resources elsewhere. Every German machine gun, soldier and shell diverted away reduced French casualties. Given the horrific conditions and casualties there was a real risk of either a French mutiny or the Government deciding it could no longer pay the price. In the harsh logic of the time the losses at the Somme were a price that had to be paid to keep the allies in the war.
jstalin 11y ago
If anyone has an opportunity to visit the Verdun area, please do. It's surreal. The landscape is still scarred by the war. It feels like you're on the moon. Craters, pieces of metal still sticking out of the ground, bunkers... undoubtedly wherever you are walking there are probably soldiers buried beneath you.
- thearn4 11y ago
  In college, I had the chance to take a trip with students in the history department to WW1 battle sites, but unfortunately could not go due to it overlapping with an internship in my major. Seemed like the more responsible choice at the time. But in retrospect, I should have taken the trip.
- grahamburger 11y ago
  I visited a few years ago. Haunting and surreal. Here's a few of my photos, they don't do it justice except to show the craters and pieces of metal like you described. https://goo.gl/photos/WGePPQWYwNHeCaN37 https://goo.gl/photos/WGePPQWYwNHeCaN37
  - prawn 11y ago
    Some of the Bosnian countryside is similarly pocked and then grassed over. I wasn't sure when driving through a few years ago if that was a remnant of war or a natural feature?
- arthel 11y ago
  I grew up at/near Verdun, and we regularly find active shells (53 millions used during the battle), ammo, bayonets... A large part of the area is forbidden ("zone rouge" in french). WWI devastated the Meuse county. Today, some kids do camping in abandoned forts ;)
akkartik 11y ago
Very cool to see Verdun's centenary commemorated by its greatest historian 50 years after he wrote The Price of Glory. http://www.amazon.com/The-Price-Glory-Verdun-1916/dp/0140170413 http://www.amazon.com/The-Price-Glory-Verdun-1916/dp/0140170...
fabrice_d 11y ago
For those who read French, Le Monde just published and interesting piece about Verdun at http://www.lemonde.fr/histoire/visuel/2016/02/21/verdun-c-etait-une-boucherie-inouie_4869124_4655323.html http://www.lemonde.fr/histoire/visuel/2016/02/21/verdun-c-et...
cm2187 11y ago
Petain was not the only reason why French officers started sparing men. The early French officers were professional army men, who cultivated the tradition of charging the enemy directly, a suicidal exercise at the age of machine guns. But they not only forced their men to do so, they charged the enemy themselves too. As a result most of them died in the first year of the conflict. They were then replaced with drafted civilians who didn't share this chivalrous conception of war. The other main reason is that as the men hardened with experience, not only were they reluctant to participate in a mass suicide, but French officers started to be increasingly killed by "friendly fire", which somewhat tempered their strategy.
- antod 11y ago
  The early French officers were professional army men, who cultivated the tradition of charging the enemy directly, a suicidal exercise at the age of machine guns. But they not only forced their men to do so, they charged the enemy themselves too. As a result most of them died in the first year of the conflict. They were then replaced with drafted civilians who didn't share this chivalrous conception of war. One historian I heard (not sure how accurate this is) said the British Army had a parallel but somewhat inverted experience. Before the war the British Army was much smaller than eg the French or German armies, but was very professional and had adapted well to modern weaponry and tactics in both attack and defence. The trouble was that at the beginning of the war, the war was expected to be over quickly so the British command didn't worry about sending nearly all its officers (and their institutional knowledge) to France for the experience and 'adventure'. It didn't work out as planned though and after getting bogged down and suffering many casualties very quickly, the huge job of training lots of new officers and soldiers was left to an older generation of ex officers back home who reverted to the older tactics. It didn't take long for the British army to revert to those ineffective suicidal charges too.
crikli 11y ago
If you've not listened to Dan Carlin's 6-part series on the Great War, take the time to do so. The "whys" and "hows" of World War I are much harder to get your head around than WWII...it's just much less linear. Not only does he do an excellent job of making the mechanics of the war understandable, he draws the element of humanity into stark relief by interspersing explanations of troop movements with first hand accounts of the suffering and carnage men sustained. Episode IV focuses on Verdun and can be listened to as a stand alone episode but the rest of the series is very much worth the time. http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-53-blueprint-for-armageddon-iv/ http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-53-bluepri...
- vlunkr 11y ago
  The entire series is probably over 20 hours, but it is well worth the time.
- jmatthew3 11y ago
  Totally agree.
- mitchty 11y ago
  Agreed on Dan Carlin and if i may add TheGreatWar youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGreatWar https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGreatWar They have videos from the british pathé and do week to week 100 years ago to today recaps. There is a lot of stuff and it won't end for a few years. Also interesting is they cover things like the infantry uniforms, the guns in use at the time etc.. Highly recommended.
- azernik 11y ago
  And if you prefer very long and dense text, I'd strongly recommend John Keegan's "The First World War" - similar to your description, it really gets into the human reality of the war with first-hand sources.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    >very long and dense text, It really isn't by the standards of history books though. It's very readable because it does get into the human reality as opposed to endless facts. It's probably the best single book on WWI that I've come across.
chiph 11y ago
There is a Youtube series called The Great War where they are performing news casts as if the events had just happened (only 100 years later). The size of the armies was huge and the loss of life was astounding. Which is what you get when attrition is the common strategy employed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfKUd8bvQfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfKUd8bvQfc At this point the US is just getting upset over 128 citizens being killed on the RMS Lusitania when it was sunk during a period of unrestricted submarine warfare. Our entry into the war as an Associated Power won't take place until 6 April 1917.
kleiba 11y ago
I found the use of the word "legend" a bit confusing. Since I'm not a native speaker, I looked it up in the Oxford Dictionary [1], but still, none of the meaning seem to be applicable here: 1. A traditional story sometimes popularly regarded as historical but not authenticated. 2. The story of a saint’s life. 3. An extremely famous or notorious person, especially in a particular field. 4. An inscription, especially on a coin or medal. 5. A caption. 6. The wording on a map or diagram explaining the symbols used My initial association was along the lines of 1., and so I was afraid to read an article doubtful of historical consent -- but that was not the case. Neither was the article about a singled-out person which could give rise to 3. The last three definitions clearly refer to a different kind of legend altogether. Could someone with a better intuition please explain how the title of this article is meant to be understood? and since 3. refers to a single person). [1] http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/legend http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/legend
- ghaff 11y ago
  I'm not sure that the word is quite right in this context but it basically refers to the fact that the event is deeply embedded in the national consciousness and that it appears to provide lessons that may not be correct ones. It's a variant of meaning 1. The sense in which that applies is probably best given by these paragraphs: What were the lessons of Verdun, if any? In 1940, Hitler’s smart new generals, such as Heinz Guderian, tackled the problem of static warfare with a blitzkrieg technique of fast-moving armoured attack. They went round the side, and back, of Maginot’s costly fortresses, making them capitulate without firing a shot. Verdun fell in a matter of hours, France after a six-week campaign. But Hitler missed the main point, militarily: never make a fetish of any fortress, any stronghold, so that you become committed to hold it however unacceptable the costs. The capture of Verdun in 1916 would have been unlikely to have caused France to lose the war. Yet in the Second World War, Hitler’s orders to his generals not to surrender an inch of ground, led to repeated disasters – beginning with the sacrifice of Friedrich Paulus’s entire 6th Army at Stalingrad, which eventually brought about the destruction of the Third Reich. And yet, in the heart of the French army, the myths and the slogans of Verdun, chimeric as they were, persisted well into the 1950s. Brave young paras died at Dien Bien Phu in the First Indochina War with Verdun on their lips.
julienchastang 11y ago
I am named after my great-grandfather who perished here along with so many of his compatriots. He died at Fort Douaumont, as I recall, as the German soldiers shot into the tunnels of the fort. He had three children and was around forty years old. My grandmother never knew her father. These tragedies resonate throughout generations. Astonishingly, it is possible to find his death certificate online [1]. [1] http://goo.gl/WdUpid http://goo.gl/WdUpid
danso 11y ago
I finished the article but went immediately to Google for "Fort Douaumont", to learn more details of "the world’s most impregnable fort, [which] was, by a series of almost incredible errors in February 1916, virtually undefended" and the recapture of which "is estimated to have cost the French as many as 100,000 men". Wikipedia has a pretty good writeup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Douaumont https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Douaumont > Kunze and his men reached the fort's moat and found that the wall casemates ("coffres") defending the moat were unoccupied. Kunze managed to climb inside one of them to open an access door. But his men refused to go inside the fortifications as they feared an ambush. Armed only with a bolt-action rifle, the Pioneer-Sergeant entered alone. He wandered around the empty tunnels until he found the artillery team, captured them and locked them up. > By now, another group from the Brandenburg regiment, led by reserve-officer Lieutenant Radtke, was also entering the fort through its unoccupied defences. Radtke then made contact with Kunze's troops and organised them before they spread out, capturing a few more French defenders and securing the fort. Later, more columns of German troops under Hauptman Haupt and Oberleutnant von Brandis arrived. No shots were ever fired in the capture of Fort Douaumont. The only casualty was one of Kunze's men who scraped one of his knees.
dankohn1 11y ago
I think of the problems with American politics today is that our politicians cast many problems in the context of WWII (ISIS are as bad as Nazis; any negotiation with Iran would constitute another Munich). If they were using WWI as the analogy, they would come to very different conclusions.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  I wonder what the world would look like if WWII had never happened. Nobody came out of WWI feeling good about the results, and a lot of people were determined that it should never be repeated; but WWII gave us a lovely tidy narrative of good vs. evil that arguably restored a lot of shine to the idea of glorious, heroic battle, at least in places that had not actually been devastated by it (e.g. the USA).
  - Spooky23 11y ago
    Not really -- world war 2 was really a settling of the over-punitive peace imposed in the first war. I wouldn't be surprised if future historians view 1914-1989 as one war.
    - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
      > Not really I'm not clear which of my points you disagree with. Also, there were three Axis Powers in WW2, and two of them had fought against Germany in WW1. It's overly simplistic to say that post-war suffering in Germany was the sole cause of WW2--especially as there were terrible sanctions after that war as well, but Germany has not gone to war again.
      - Spooky23 11y ago
        I don't buy the good v. evil position on WW2. The problem with WW1 is that it was a stalemate or a pause. All parties involved were weakened, but the status quo continued. The old 19th century system carried on, bereft of its youth and treasure. Europe was all about Germany being stuck between a rock (the post-war sanctions) and a hard place (the threat of the communist revolution that Germany implanted to defeat the Czar to the money men in Germany). Italy was a sideshow. The difference in the post-WW2 era, and the reason we didn't have WW3 in 1960 is simple. The US emerged triumphant and essentially occupied or otherwise controlled all of the powers, save China and the Soviet Union. As the US loosened control, mutually assured destruction made WW1/WW2 style "total war" too costly.

127 points by wormold 11y ago

A good movie about the insanity of the trench warfare and some of the French commanders of WWI is Paths of Glory - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paths_of_Glory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paths_of_Glory.

achamayou 11y ago

An important reason why the fight was so bitter over seemingly small amounts of land that this article (and others) seem to miss is that a relatively limited area of northern France amounted to over half of the country's industrial production. Coal and steel in particular, critical to the war effort were overwhelmingly produced there. Any incremental part of this region lost to the Germans wasn't just a symbolic loss of ground or a moral defeat, it meant a real long term resource loss which could tilt the balance of the war in Germany's favour. In comparison, the allies were largely unable to strike Germany's industrial centers. It's quite easy to depict all senior commanders of the time as inflexible and stubborn (some of them were, to various extents anyway), but there's more to it than that. Defence in depth just wasn't an option, and mechanised war was a fiction anyway. With the benefit of hindsight, and ignoring the industrial value of the North, it's easy to jump to simple but wrong conclusions about why the war was fought that way. Edit: Link to English source illustrating my point http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/raw_materials http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/raw_materia...

digi_owl 11y ago
Best i can tell, when commanders are presented as inflexible and stubborn, its about the tactics, not the strategy. Yes, they had good reason to fight there. But the way the fighting was conducted was more often than not a stilted mess.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Indeed, much of the criticism seems to be centered around the general theme of, "Charging machine guns over open ground didn't work the last 300 times we tried it, but maybe today will be the day."
  - VLM 11y ago
    It worked quite well in their grandparents day over the same ground (more or less) with the same opponents in the Franco Prussian war. Unfortunately technology improved and trucks supply ammo to modern machine guns mean it doesn't work so well anymore.
  - johngalt 11y ago
    With enough artillery and men it actually did work in many cases. The large scale assaults regularly made progress measured in miles. The problem was that you couldn't meaningfully continue an advance or exploit a breakthrough. Once you left your trenches you also left your supply lines. The enemy could respond to any breakthrough with overwhelming force mobilized by their own rails and roads.
- azernik 11y ago
  Unfortunately, they were limited by the technology of the day - not the lack of mechanized forces, but the lack of portable radios. Charging across the no-man's land, while high in casualties, usually worked for getting an initial penetration of the other side's trench system, but without radio to coordinate reinforcements, artillery support, and a further exploitation of the breakthrough they would quickly fall to counterattacks. And then the bloodiest bit of the offensive, the initial breakthrough, would have to be repeated again.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    I think it did relate to mobility and supply chains as well. But, yes, the bottom line is that costly long-planned breakthroughs invariably ended up getting bogged down.
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    Yeah i recall reading about how they would attempt to roll telegraph wire out as they advanced, only to have it snag on something or get cut by artillery blasts.
    - azernik 11y ago
      Yeah, even phone lines to established positions had to be buried to keep from getting cut by artillery bombardment.
- mrec 11y ago
  There were reasons for the way the fighting was conducted too, and the popular idea of "trench warfare" being the norm on the Western Front for the whole 1914-1918 stretch is misleading. As with pretty much everything in life, things were a little more complicated than that. The excellent /r/askhistorians forum has had some good coverage of this area in the past. Try this overview for a start: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/37epxy/i_kept_hearing_about_significant_infantry_combat/crm3z5r?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/37epxy/i_kep... Or this seven-part epic answer regarding Verdun and the Somme more specifically: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/32t8bn/world_war_i_question_largescale_offensives_like/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/32t8bn/world... or more from the Western Front section of their FAQ: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/wwi#wiki_western_front https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/wwi#wiki_western...
- cmdkeen 11y ago
  Sometimes the objectives for a battle are a little more complicated than breaking through - holding actions, diversions, rearguards etc. The British Expeditionary Force, and lots of the regular French Army, was sacrificed to blunt the initial German advance. British commanders were clear that the completely new army they were building would not be ready until 1916/7 but a mix of politics and necessity meant they had to be sent in earlier. Allegations that Britain would "fight to the last drop of Russian blood" - which had echoes of the Napoleonic wars - threatened to undermine the alliance. The British attacks during Verdun were to relieve pressure on the French by diverting resources elsewhere. Every German machine gun, soldier and shell diverted away reduced French casualties. Given the horrific conditions and casualties there was a real risk of either a French mutiny or the Government deciding it could no longer pay the price. In the harsh logic of the time the losses at the Somme were a price that had to be paid to keep the allies in the war.

jstalin 11y ago

If anyone has an opportunity to visit the Verdun area, please do. It's surreal. The landscape is still scarred by the war. It feels like you're on the moon. Craters, pieces of metal still sticking out of the ground, bunkers... undoubtedly wherever you are walking there are probably soldiers buried beneath you.

thearn4 11y ago
In college, I had the chance to take a trip with students in the history department to WW1 battle sites, but unfortunately could not go due to it overlapping with an internship in my major. Seemed like the more responsible choice at the time. But in retrospect, I should have taken the trip.
grahamburger 11y ago
I visited a few years ago. Haunting and surreal. Here's a few of my photos, they don't do it justice except to show the craters and pieces of metal like you described. https://goo.gl/photos/WGePPQWYwNHeCaN37 https://goo.gl/photos/WGePPQWYwNHeCaN37
- prawn 11y ago
  Some of the Bosnian countryside is similarly pocked and then grassed over. I wasn't sure when driving through a few years ago if that was a remnant of war or a natural feature?
arthel 11y ago
I grew up at/near Verdun, and we regularly find active shells (53 millions used during the battle), ammo, bayonets... A large part of the area is forbidden ("zone rouge" in french). WWI devastated the Meuse county. Today, some kids do camping in abandoned forts ;)

akkartik 11y ago

Very cool to see Verdun's centenary commemorated by its greatest historian 50 years after he wrote The Price of Glory. http://www.amazon.com/The-Price-Glory-Verdun-1916/dp/0140170413 http://www.amazon.com/The-Price-Glory-Verdun-1916/dp/0140170...

fabrice_d 11y ago

For those who read French, Le Monde just published and interesting piece about Verdun at http://www.lemonde.fr/histoire/visuel/2016/02/21/verdun-c-etait-une-boucherie-inouie_4869124_4655323.html http://www.lemonde.fr/histoire/visuel/2016/02/21/verdun-c-et...

cm2187 11y ago

Petain was not the only reason why French officers started sparing men. The early French officers were professional army men, who cultivated the tradition of charging the enemy directly, a suicidal exercise at the age of machine guns. But they not only forced their men to do so, they charged the enemy themselves too. As a result most of them died in the first year of the conflict. They were then replaced with drafted civilians who didn't share this chivalrous conception of war. The other main reason is that as the men hardened with experience, not only were they reluctant to participate in a mass suicide, but French officers started to be increasingly killed by "friendly fire", which somewhat tempered their strategy.

antod 11y ago
The early French officers were professional army men, who cultivated the tradition of charging the enemy directly, a suicidal exercise at the age of machine guns. But they not only forced their men to do so, they charged the enemy themselves too. As a result most of them died in the first year of the conflict. They were then replaced with drafted civilians who didn't share this chivalrous conception of war. One historian I heard (not sure how accurate this is) said the British Army had a parallel but somewhat inverted experience. Before the war the British Army was much smaller than eg the French or German armies, but was very professional and had adapted well to modern weaponry and tactics in both attack and defence. The trouble was that at the beginning of the war, the war was expected to be over quickly so the British command didn't worry about sending nearly all its officers (and their institutional knowledge) to France for the experience and 'adventure'. It didn't work out as planned though and after getting bogged down and suffering many casualties very quickly, the huge job of training lots of new officers and soldiers was left to an older generation of ex officers back home who reverted to the older tactics. It didn't take long for the British army to revert to those ineffective suicidal charges too.

crikli 11y ago

If you've not listened to Dan Carlin's 6-part series on the Great War, take the time to do so. The "whys" and "hows" of World War I are much harder to get your head around than WWII...it's just much less linear. Not only does he do an excellent job of making the mechanics of the war understandable, he draws the element of humanity into stark relief by interspersing explanations of troop movements with first hand accounts of the suffering and carnage men sustained. Episode IV focuses on Verdun and can be listened to as a stand alone episode but the rest of the series is very much worth the time. http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-53-blueprint-for-armageddon-iv/ http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-53-bluepri...

vlunkr 11y ago
The entire series is probably over 20 hours, but it is well worth the time.
jmatthew3 11y ago
Totally agree.
mitchty 11y ago
Agreed on Dan Carlin and if i may add TheGreatWar youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGreatWar https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGreatWar They have videos from the british pathé and do week to week 100 years ago to today recaps. There is a lot of stuff and it won't end for a few years. Also interesting is they cover things like the infantry uniforms, the guns in use at the time etc.. Highly recommended.
azernik 11y ago
And if you prefer very long and dense text, I'd strongly recommend John Keegan's "The First World War" - similar to your description, it really gets into the human reality of the war with first-hand sources.
- ghaff 11y ago
  >very long and dense text, It really isn't by the standards of history books though. It's very readable because it does get into the human reality as opposed to endless facts. It's probably the best single book on WWI that I've come across.

chiph 11y ago

There is a Youtube series called The Great War where they are performing news casts as if the events had just happened (only 100 years later). The size of the armies was huge and the loss of life was astounding. Which is what you get when attrition is the common strategy employed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfKUd8bvQfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfKUd8bvQfc At this point the US is just getting upset over 128 citizens being killed on the RMS Lusitania when it was sunk during a period of unrestricted submarine warfare. Our entry into the war as an Associated Power won't take place until 6 April 1917.

kleiba 11y ago

I found the use of the word "legend" a bit confusing. Since I'm not a native speaker, I looked it up in the Oxford Dictionary [1], but still, none of the meaning seem to be applicable here: 1. A traditional story sometimes popularly regarded as historical but not authenticated. 2. The story of a saint’s life. 3. An extremely famous or notorious person, especially in a particular field. 4. An inscription, especially on a coin or medal. 5. A caption. 6. The wording on a map or diagram explaining the symbols used My initial association was along the lines of 1., and so I was afraid to read an article doubtful of historical consent -- but that was not the case. Neither was the article about a singled-out person which could give rise to 3. The last three definitions clearly refer to a different kind of legend altogether. Could someone with a better intuition please explain how the title of this article is meant to be understood? and since 3. refers to a single person). [1] http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/legend http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/legend

ghaff 11y ago
I'm not sure that the word is quite right in this context but it basically refers to the fact that the event is deeply embedded in the national consciousness and that it appears to provide lessons that may not be correct ones. It's a variant of meaning 1. The sense in which that applies is probably best given by these paragraphs: What were the lessons of Verdun, if any? In 1940, Hitler’s smart new generals, such as Heinz Guderian, tackled the problem of static warfare with a blitzkrieg technique of fast-moving armoured attack. They went round the side, and back, of Maginot’s costly fortresses, making them capitulate without firing a shot. Verdun fell in a matter of hours, France after a six-week campaign. But Hitler missed the main point, militarily: never make a fetish of any fortress, any stronghold, so that you become committed to hold it however unacceptable the costs. The capture of Verdun in 1916 would have been unlikely to have caused France to lose the war. Yet in the Second World War, Hitler’s orders to his generals not to surrender an inch of ground, led to repeated disasters – beginning with the sacrifice of Friedrich Paulus’s entire 6th Army at Stalingrad, which eventually brought about the destruction of the Third Reich. And yet, in the heart of the French army, the myths and the slogans of Verdun, chimeric as they were, persisted well into the 1950s. Brave young paras died at Dien Bien Phu in the First Indochina War with Verdun on their lips.

julienchastang 11y ago

I am named after my great-grandfather who perished here along with so many of his compatriots. He died at Fort Douaumont, as I recall, as the German soldiers shot into the tunnels of the fort. He had three children and was around forty years old. My grandmother never knew her father. These tragedies resonate throughout generations. Astonishingly, it is possible to find his death certificate online [1]. [1] http://goo.gl/WdUpid http://goo.gl/WdUpid

danso 11y ago

I finished the article but went immediately to Google for "Fort Douaumont", to learn more details of "the world’s most impregnable fort, [which] was, by a series of almost incredible errors in February 1916, virtually undefended" and the recapture of which "is estimated to have cost the French as many as 100,000 men". Wikipedia has a pretty good writeup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Douaumont https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Douaumont > Kunze and his men reached the fort's moat and found that the wall casemates ("coffres") defending the moat were unoccupied. Kunze managed to climb inside one of them to open an access door. But his men refused to go inside the fortifications as they feared an ambush. Armed only with a bolt-action rifle, the Pioneer-Sergeant entered alone. He wandered around the empty tunnels until he found the artillery team, captured them and locked them up. > By now, another group from the Brandenburg regiment, led by reserve-officer Lieutenant Radtke, was also entering the fort through its unoccupied defences. Radtke then made contact with Kunze's troops and organised them before they spread out, capturing a few more French defenders and securing the fort. Later, more columns of German troops under Hauptman Haupt and Oberleutnant von Brandis arrived. No shots were ever fired in the capture of Fort Douaumont. The only casualty was one of Kunze's men who scraped one of his knees.

dankohn1 11y ago

I think of the problems with American politics today is that our politicians cast many problems in the context of WWII (ISIS are as bad as Nazis; any negotiation with Iran would constitute another Munich). If they were using WWI as the analogy, they would come to very different conclusions.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago
I wonder what the world would look like if WWII had never happened. Nobody came out of WWI feeling good about the results, and a lot of people were determined that it should never be repeated; but WWII gave us a lovely tidy narrative of good vs. evil that arguably restored a lot of shine to the idea of glorious, heroic battle, at least in places that had not actually been devastated by it (e.g. the USA).
- Spooky23 11y ago
  Not really -- world war 2 was really a settling of the over-punitive peace imposed in the first war. I wouldn't be surprised if future historians view 1914-1989 as one war.
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    > Not really I'm not clear which of my points you disagree with. Also, there were three Axis Powers in WW2, and two of them had fought against Germany in WW1. It's overly simplistic to say that post-war suffering in Germany was the sole cause of WW2--especially as there were terrible sanctions after that war as well, but Germany has not gone to war again.
    - Spooky23 11y ago
      I don't buy the good v. evil position on WW2. The problem with WW1 is that it was a stalemate or a pause. All parties involved were weakened, but the status quo continued. The old 19th century system carried on, bereft of its youth and treasure. Europe was all about Germany being stuck between a rock (the post-war sanctions) and a hard place (the threat of the communist revolution that Germany implanted to defeat the Czar to the money men in Germany). Italy was a sideshow. The difference in the post-WW2 era, and the reason we didn't have WW3 in 1960 is simple. The US emerged triumphant and essentially occupied or otherwise controlled all of the powers, save China and the Soviet Union. As the US loosened control, mutually assured destruction made WW1/WW2 style "total war" too costly.