Battle of Verdun

Trucks were used, of course.

Trucks had been used in the First World War, especially at the Battle of Verdun by Marshal Pétain.

The railroad was extensively used in the Second World War.

It had also been extensively used in the First World War.

He's blamed for extending the war, wasting resources.

Erich von Falkenhayn of the German army is heavily criticized for starting the Battle of Verdun and various other strategic mistakes.

Ludendorff is basically so erratic and this mad conspiracy theorist, extremely unstable individual in the 20s, he's sort of pushed to one side.

And there are some generals in Britain whose reputations are less than stellar.

The Germans directly occupied the north and the entire Atlantic coast, including Paris.

Alsace and Moselle were effectively annexed, and in the south was the so-called Free Zone, governed from the small town of Vichy by Marshal Philippe Pétain, who was the hero of Verdun, a great hero from the First World War.

Parliament voted him full powers, and he replaced the Third French Republic with the French state in what he called the National Revolution.

Work, family, and fatherland became the new slogan instead of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

Okay, story number two.

1916, the Battle of Verdun, almost a year long.

Yeah.

Hundreds of thousands killed in action.

Villages disappeared, forests completely destroyed.

What's amazing

about the Battle of Verdun, which was longer than a year, and there was about 1.3 million

casualties,

The Blue Rider, his circle of artists in Munich, did not survive the war either.

Franz Mark, with whom Kandinsky had founded the group, was killed fighting at the Battle of Verdun in 1916.

Once he had arrived in Moscow, Kandinsky began a new life.

In February 1917, just as revolution was about to break out in Russia, he married Nina Andreevskaya, a young student some 30 years his junior.

Red-roofed Verdun springs into view just beyond.

There are spots in it where no red shows, and you know what has happened there, in the green pasture land bordering the town round flecks of brown indicate the shell holes you cross the meuse verdun seen from the sky immediately east and north of verdun there lies a broad brown band from the wove plain it runs westward to the s bend in the meuse and on the left bank of that famous stream continues on into the argonne forest Peaceful fields and farms and villages adorned that landscape a few months ago, when there was no Battle of Verdun.

Now there is only that sinister brown belt, a strip of murdered nature.

It seems to belong to another world.

And with Ukraine, with one-fifth the population of Russia, one-tenth the GDP, and one-twentieth of the area, cannot force Putin out of either the Crimea or the Donbass territory which he's occupied.

And that means the only way that this Verdun or this Somme can be solved is one side or the other has to win, and it doesn't seem like either can, or there has to be a new power join one of the two sides, or they have to agree to a ceasefire.

There's another issue.

In World War II, Winston Churchill held an election right after the German surrenders, but right at the height of the Pacific War.

affair for the French to try and capture the ridge and they'd suffered approximately 150,000 casualties in their attempts to gain control of this part of the battlefield.

The French 10th Army held this part of the battlefield until February of 1916 when it was relieved by 17 Corps that was commanded by a man by the name of Lieutenant General Sir Julian Bing and the French army army was sent over to the east to join in the Battle of Verdun.

And as the British took over this sector, they rapidly discovered that the Germans had made full use of this sort of relative calm that had sort of typified this part of the battlefield.

And they had dug this extensive network of tunnels and these very deep mines under what were the French positions and now the British positions.

And it was very, very interesting when you look at the planning, because one of the great criticisms that so often levelled against First World War generals was that there was no... change of plan and they stuck with the same thing.

And I think what it's clear to see from the Canadian planning for Vimy Ridge, this is a very unfair statement because what happened was that the plan was sort of drawn up and it went through various finalisations and finessing throughout March 1917.

But it drew very, very heavily on the briefings of staff officers who'd been sent to the east of France to try and learn from the experiences that the French army had gone through at the Battle of Verdun.

And Vimy was going to be a significant battle because it was the first time that all four Canadian divisions were going to fight together.

Damn.

The Battle of Verdun.

Many battles.

He was a proud Italian American, and that's what he would call himself.