Verdun's Agony Ends: 337,000 German Casualties
The German offensive at Verdun was supposed to "bleed France white" — Falkenhayn's actual words. Instead it bled both sides nearly dry. Over 300 days of shelling turned ten months of forest into a moonscape where men drowned in mud and shell craters filled with bodies. French soldiers rotated through every week so none would break from the constant bombardment. The Germans fired two million shells in the first day alone. When it ended, France had held, but 700,000 men were dead or wounded for gains measured in yards. Verdun became the symbol of WWI's futility: the place where two nations fed their sons into artillery fire and called it strategy.
December 18, 1916
110 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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