On February 25, 1916, German
troops seize Fort Douaumont, the most formidable of the forts guarding the
walled city of Verdun, France, four days after launching their initial attack.
The Battle of Verdun will become the longest and bloodiest conflict of World War I, lasting 10
months and resulting in over 700,000 total casualties.
In February 1916, the walls of
Verdun were defended by some 500,000 men stationed in two principal fortresses,
Fort Douaumont and Fort Vaux. The Germans, commanded by Chief of Staff Erich
von Falkenhayn, sent 1 million men against the city, hoping for a decisive victory
on the Western Front that would push the Allies towards an armistice. The first
shot was fired on the morning of February 21. By the end of that first day, the
Germans had captured only the front-line trenches, much less progress than they
had hoped to make. They pushed on, however, and by February 23 had advanced two
miles and captured 3,000 French soldiers with the help of a lethal new weapon,
the flammenwerfer, or flamethrower. By February 24, the Germans had
overrun the second line of French trenches and taken another 10,000 prisoners,
forcing the French defenders to within eight kilometers of the city itself.
Forts Douaumont and Vaux, however, had managed to hold out.
Douaumont was a massive
structure, protected by two layers of concrete over a meter thick, and
surrounded by a seven-meter-deep moat and 30 meters of barbed wire. When it
fell on February 25 to the German 24th Brandenburg Infantry Regiment with the
kaiser on hand to deliver his personal congratulations, German jubilation was
matched only by the French army’s shock and sadness.
From that point on, Verdun
became a cause the French command could not abandon: public sentiment demanded
the recapture of the symbolic stronghold. If the German army under Falkenhayn
was committed to “bleed the French white,” with little thought to minimizing
its own losses, the French army, under Phillipe Petain, was equally determined
that the enemy would not pass at Verdun.
The battle stretched on and
on, with devastating casualties on both sides. As German resources were
diverted to fight the British at the Somme and the Russians on the Eastern
Front, French forces gradually regained much of the ground they had lost. Fort
Douaumont was recaptured on October 24, 1916; Fort Vaux on November 2. Barely
six weeks later, on December 18, German commander Paul von Hindenburg (who had
replaced Falkenhayn in July) finally called a halt to the German attacks,
ending the Battle of Verdun after 10 months and a total of over 200,000 lives
lost.
Taken from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/german-troops-capture-fort-douaumont-verdun
[25.02.2015]
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