Verdun 1916: The 300-Day Hell of World War I

Verdun. 1916. The longest battle of the First World War.

And one of the most bloody. 300,000 dead. 400,000 wounded.

These days this massacre over a few hills in the east of France seems criminal to us, absurd. But a century ago, those soldiers didn't think it was absurd. They were ready to fight.

Why? VERDUN: THEY SHALL NOT PASS It's the end of 1915. Somewhere in the region of Verdun, some French soldiers are, to distract themselves, projecting some films on the wall.

For over a year now they've been at war with Germany. The enemy positions are only a few hundred yards away, just over the hill. The soldiers look relaxed, in a holiday mood.

This is how they were caricaturing Wilhelm II, the German Emperor, and the German soldiers with their pointy helmets and their Superman cult. In Verdun, and all around, the French feel safe. Just look at this image.

In red, the German army positions. In the middle, the town of Verdun, the river Meuse running through it, and the hills all around. The French have built 30 or more forts there, to protect themselves from invasion from the east.

Mythical names. Soon all the world will have heard of them. Souville.

Vaux. Douaumont. Now let's take a look at the other side of the front, the German side.

On this day, the supreme commander Kaiser Wilhelm II has come to meet his military staff. As well as his own son, the Crown Prince. He's the one with the death's head on his hat.

It's here, in the greatest secrecy, that the Germans are getting ready to launch a major offensive. Here where nobody expects it. By attacking the strongest position on the whole front.

They reckon the French won't give up the town of Verdun without throwing everything they've got into the battle. And that they can crush them before turning their sights on the British, and winning the war. It's to his own son that the Emperor has entrusted the task of leading the battle.

Here he is, encouraging his officers. His Majesty calls us to the attack, he's saying. We must show that the will to victory of the sons of Germany is as hard as steel.

At the beginning of 1916, thousands of Germans are converging on Verdun. In just a few days, after the heaviest bombardment in military history, this armada will launch itself at the French positions. "It's going to be a fight the like of which the world has never known," a rifleman called Rudy writes to his parents.

They've dug what they call Stollen, tunnels under the hill, to lodge the German troops. In one of these burrows waits 20-year-old Clemens Birkenhoff. "By the door I've got my rifle and 3,000 cartridges," he writes.

"That should put the French on the run. " And the French don't suspect a thing. They reckon they're invulnerable there, in their fortresses.

Especially in this one. Douaumont. For the time, it's a state-of-the-art construction.

An underground city, strong enough to resist any attack. On the 19th of February 1916, a soldier by the name of De Bloch writes that everyone there reckons the war will be over by March. That's next month.

There's one French officer, though, who has some idea of what's in store for them. He finds himself face to face with the Germans, out in open country, 10 kilometers north of Douaumont. He's a local politician from Lorraine, and he's written books on military forecasting.

He's a sort of Jules Verne of the battlefield, Lieutenant Colonel Drant. For months now, from his underground command post, he's been warning them in Paris that the German assault will happen. And they can get through.

The 21st of February 1916. The Crown Prince's guns unleash a hurricane on the French lines. According to French pilots, the 1,200 German cannons looked like a blazing yellow line across the landscape.

This is Bois des Caures Wood, where Drant is. We don't have many pictures of those first hours. But take a look at these films that we've colorized.

They're reconstructions filmed at the same spot 10 years later with the survivors. "We were deafened," one of them said. Eyes bugging out, blown upside down.

The Germans fire off 1 million shells that day. This is Trommelfeuer. Carpet shelling.

Those shells smash, burn and crush all the defences one after the other. At 4 p. m.

, more than 30,000 Germans hurl themselves at the French trenches, including the one where Drant is. He's one of 400 men against 1,300 before the assault began. That's nearly 1 against 5.

Drant himself gets a bullet in his head while trying to save one of his men. It's like the end of the world. One lieutenant tells how both officers and their men are beginning to lose hope.

"We just have to save face," he says, "before it all goes to hell. " Back in Paris, the politicians are in shock. The commander of the French forces, General Joffre, is always saying that Verdun is too well protected for the Germans to attack it.

He's even started to strip the forts of their cannons and send them to the Somme in the north, where he's preparing an assault with the British. The Prime Minister Aristide Briand, the one in the bowler hat, warns him that he can't afford to lose any French territory. "If you evacuate Verdun and sound the retreat," he says, "you'll be dismissed immediately, along with all your chiefs of staff.

" Within hours, an order from those chiefs of staff is fired off to the troops at Verdun. "You're to fight to the death," it says, "while awaiting reinforcements. " But it's too late.

In just 5 days, the German steamroller crushes all the villages around Verdun, all the way up to Douaumont, right below the fort. It's here that a certain Charles de Gaulle, 25 years old, is wounded and taken prisoner. But for the French, the nightmare's only just begun.

It's the 25th of February, 4 days after the beginning of the assault. Now the Germans are right up against the enormous fortress of Douaumont. Only 200 yards away from the supposedly impregnable summit.

A handful of soldiers from Brandenburg, spurred on by success, decides to have a go without telling their commanders. They're about to carry out one of the greatest feats of arms of the First World War, one that will live on for many years in German memory. At their head, heedless of danger, Captain Haupt slips through the barbed wire and jumps into the fortress's moat.

The real danger is friendly fire. The German rifles haven't been told of this raid, so they're firing on their own men. But that doesn't stop the boys from Brandenburg getting into the strongest fortress in France, through the front door.

Because the place is almost deserted. In all the panic, a French general has left it unmanned. A triumph.

As news of the fall of Douaumont reaches Germany and all the church bells start to ring out, a young mother in Freiburg, expresses the delight of her countrymen. "What a joy to read this news," she writes to her husband at the front. "May God grant us peace, and let the music of the cannons hail our future happiness.

" France, though, is badly bruised. It's a disaster. Above all, it's a humiliation for the troops.

Now they're all picturing the Germans rolling across the country as they'd done half a century earlier in 1870. If Verdun falls, France does too. That's what people are thinking.

But now a new character arrives on the scene. Philippe Pétain, a complete unknown. He's a defence strategist.

He's handed the job of defending Verdun. Here he is, arriving at his headquarters. For now he's just another bit player urging on the troops.

Soon though, he'll be the nation's biggest star. What matters now is to get men to the front, to block the German advance. It already seems like a lost cause.

The French have been taken by surprise and just aren't ready. There's just one road that links Verdun to the rear. Alongside it, one little train line.

It's a harsh contrast to the German front with its network of 14 railway systems. Once the new general arrives, this country road becomes Verdun's umbilical cord. The Sacred Way, as they call it.

Pétain demands a pitiless pace. 6,000 troop changes a day. The lorries are rolling day and night.

And the roads being maintained day and night too, by thousands of road workers. If it gets cut off, the battle is lost. A Sacred Way, straight to a battle that's become a sacred cause.

In one of those trucks is a young lawyer, Lieutenant Joubert. "The very blood of France is here," he writes in his diary. Over the next 10 months, two-thirds of the French army will pass through here.

2. 5 million men, many of whose names will be inscribed on the monuments to the dead. They're defending their wives and children, their homes.

And among these men marching to their fate, a rallying cry is born. They shall not pass. Dug in over there, within the walls of Douaumont, do the Germans have any idea what's coming?

If these German reconstructions filmed after the war are to be believed, their morale is sky-high. In reality, though, they've suffered enormous losses. Their advance is much more difficult than it was to start with, and they're exhausted.

Especially these young 18-year-olds, now feeling more fragile than they'd expected. "I'm besieged by terrible thoughts," writes Siegfried Eichheim to his parents. "My gaiters are covered in blood.

We just listened to the ceiling dripping. My armpits are itching. It's lice, for heaven's sake.

" Among the first to die is one of the greatest German painters of the twentieth century, Franz Marc, wiped out by a shell. Ever the visionary, he's seen before many others the futility of this fight. "All I see," he writes to his wife shortly before he dies, "is the most frightful spectacle the human brain could ever imagine.

" The Crown Prince and his father, the Kaiser, are well aware of all these doubts. In two weeks the Germans have only advanced 10 kilometers, and there's no breakthrough in sight. They just keep going though.

Never lose face. Here's how the battlefield looks to them. To the right, Douaumont, held by the Germans.

The artillery Pétain has placed on the west bank of the Meuse and at the forts of Marre and Vacherauville is stopping the Germans from breaking through on the east bank. If the Germans want to take Verdun, they have to destroy those cannons. But to do that, they'll have to take the two hills that stand in their way.

Côte 304, and Le Mort-Homme, Dead Man's Hill. Dead Man's Hill was named after a corpse found up there in the 19th century. Every square foot of this hill has seen fighting too violent to even think about.

At its summit stands a terrible monument. A skeleton crying victory. On the 6th of March, the Crown Prince launches his troops at Dead Man's Hill.

Before their very eyes, the hill just explodes. The French are fighting back. It's a head-on collision.

Army against army. Nation against nation. It'll be known as the Hell of Verdun.

And this, in April 1916, is where the battle gets stuck. The two armies are dug in face to face, and for months will exterminate each other. This is already a victory for the French.

As Pétain promised, the Germans cannot pass. It's time for him to speak the words that will make him famous throughout the world. "Courage.

We'll get them. " His words hit home. The new general will become a symbol of all France, the man who stood up to the Germans.

And the French will remember this 25 years later when the country falls to Nazi Germany in 1940. On Dead Man's Hill now, the boot is on the other foot. As the French put out more flags, the Germans are hiding less and less their unease.

Especially the ones who've been captured by the French. "We have been gravely deceived by our officers," writes young Karl Gartner to his mother. Another demands, "We would like all those gentlemen responsible for the war to come and fight at our sides.

If they'd done so, we would have had peace long ago. " In fact though, Germany is far from the idea France has of it. Germany is in crisis.

Since the beginning of the war, there's been an Allied naval blockade. And German stomachs are empty. In Germany you have to queue for hours for food.

Mothers, with their children in tow, are starting to riot at the shops. Most of them are working in the factories. And some of them just crack.

Like Theresa von Wertheim, who writes to her husband at the front, "If anything happened to you my life would be over. I feel so alone. Yet I can't bear to be around anybody.

Even the children. " With this battle going on forever, the politicians are starting to argue about it all. And demonstrations are breaking out in favor of peace.

Like here, in Berlin, on the 1st of May, in the middle of the Battle of Verdun. A far-left deputy called Karl Liebknecht is haranguing the crowd. "Down with the government!

Down with the war! " No sooner does he speak the words than he's thrown in jail by the imperial government. At that very moment, in the French capital, the mood is different.

All February they'd been so scared, but now, as this film of Parisian kids so clearly proves, the French are getting their confidence back. While the troops have been holding out on Dead Man's Hill, life has resumed here. Almost as if the battle was actually being won.

They had no idea, these civilians carrying on with their lives, having fun even, that 60,000 men have already died at Verdun. And that there on the flame-scorched hillsides, a man is dying every 2 minutes. Charles Delvert, a captain on leave, writes sarcastically, "Paris is delicious.

You can see people back here are resigned to war. If you die out there on the barbed wire, you won't be that much of a loss. " In the spring of 1916, the Germans are longing for a rapid end to the battle, while the French dream of a glorious revenge at Verdun.

They'll have their wish. After 3 months of bombardment, the town is virtually destroyed. But the Crown Prince's men still haven't broken through.

And Verdun, evacuated now of all its inhabitants, is still in the hands of the French. A success for France, obviously. In a war of attrition, a stalemate is a victory for the defending side.

And while they're still being blown to bits up in the hills, there are delegations arriving from all over the world to celebrate the resistance of a whole nation. This is the future king of Serbia, an ally of France, being welcomed by the President of the Republic. The journalists have been invited.

An English correspondent writes, "At Verdun, one feels an intense satisfaction. It would seem a masterpiece has been achieved. " The French have stood alone against Germany.

Everyone knows it. The Germans shall never pass. The battle has ground to a halt, and has no further strategic interest.

But it will still carry on for another eight months. This statue by Rodin that stands on the banks of the Meuse gives an idea. It speaks of France's need to wipe away the insult and to punish Germany.

France's counter-attack comes on the 22nd of May. The troops hurl themselves at Douaumont, the fort so shamefully abandoned only three months earlier. Their objective is a dubious one.

Their generals know getting the fort back won't help them pierce through into Germany. The whole area's locked down by artillery. They want a victory though.

And for a few hours, it seems within reach. The French rush the front line, and get a foothold on the fort. Before being decimated by the German artillery.

It's a disaster. 5,000 dead, wounded, or taken prisoner. For nothing.

The survivors limp back to their positions. Among them, Maurice Maréchal, who writes, "Douaumont has been taken, lost, retaken. The wounded are ghastly.

One of them is crying, "Mommy", and "My little girl". It's madness. We're all mad.

" In truth, it's the battle itself that's gone mad. It's a battle of pride. Of ego.

Of prestige. An industrial war that's getting out of control. Where technology is what matters, not men, nor all the slaughter.

The odds are equal on either side of the front. 200,000 French against 200,000 Germans, who are all dug well in to hide from the observation balloons that make them sitting targets. Pétain has his troops on a revolving system.

10 days on the front line, 10 days on the second line, then a rest back at the rear. Then back to the front line again. And that's where Captain Delvers is when he writes, "You feel like an animal being herded into the abattoir.

" 60 million shells. 1 ton of explosives per square yard. At Verdun, the bombardment never stops.

The enemy mustn't be allowed to breathe. Men are dying all the time, often with nobody even noticing, and usually with no glory. In the month of May, when everywhere else nature's starting to bloom again, here they're still wading through a landscape of gunpowder, blood, excrement, and human flesh.

Some men even drown in the shell craters. What keeps them holding on are their loved ones, their camaraderie and alcohol. Any patriotism is long forgotten now.

They're fighting by routine, out of duty, because they have no choice. French, Germans, they've all become just machines. As one German, Bernhard Bing, writes, "It's one big madhouse full of raving madmen.

" "We simply can't stop," says one of his comrades. "We just carry on, carry on, forward. " At the beginning of June, General von Falkenhayn, head of the German army, orders his men to give Verdun another good kicking.

"To pin down the French," he says, "and prevent them from attacking further north at the Somme, along with the British. " No one's behind it, though. Not even the Crown Prince.

For him, this battle no longer makes sense. "In my heart, the Kaiser's son was right. I was totally opposed to pursuing this offensive.

I had to obey orders, though, and I just forced myself to appear completely confident. " Between the fort at Douaumont, still in German hands, and the fort at Vaux, still held by the French, once more the landscape burns. This reconstruction based on an aerial scan of the battlefield shows the network of trenches and the thousands of shell craters.

On this lunar landscape, the Germans are descending the ravines, climbing back up the hills and eventually encircling the Fort of Vaux. Inside it are 400 French, with neither water nor munitions for several days now. Every day there are 8,000 shells raining down on them.

They're cut off. However, they know all of France is watching them. It is here, on the 4th of June, that one of the most famous episodes of the Battle of Verdun takes place, when the Germans manage to breach the fort through a tunnel.

They fight with knives, grenades, flamethrowers. "Kill these goddamn Frenchmen! " a German lieutenant screams.

For them too, it's all about the glory. Eventually, the French surrender, exhausted. And the Germans, they've just been fighting to the death, down in the cellars, present arms to them.

It could all just end here. But that's not what happens. For having taken Vaux, the Germans have opened the way to the next hill.

There, on the horizon. And the next fort. Souville.

On this promontory, which they scale one month later, on the 11th of July, they once again feel close to victory. In the distance they can see Verdun and its cathedral. Their one dream.

They'll never get any further, though. Their final offensive will fail right here, in this village now wiped off the map. Fleury.

Taken, then retaken a dozen times in just two weeks. It's the very image of the whole battle. Heroic.

And pointless. They've been fighting for 6 months. They've lost 80,000 men.

Like many of his comrades, Arnold Zweig, a young writer, feels he's been sacrificed by his emperor and his generals. "The war's been going on too long," he writes to his wife. "One more push, they keep telling us.

In March, they said it. In April. In May, in June, reinforcements arrived, even younger men.

The infantry hit at the very heart of the French. They told them they were defending their country, and they believed it. Then, they saw it wasn't working.

Whose fault is all this? The fault lies with Falkenhayn, chief of the German army, the man who has led his country's youth to death. That, in any case, is what everyone's thinking at the end of August, when the Kaiser has him replaced.

He has failed entirely. Ever since the 1st of July, the Allies have been advancing on the Somme. The men at Verdun are needed elsewhere.

And now Romania has declared war on Germany. He's sent there as a punishment. He's replaced by two generals from the Eastern Front, Ludendorff and Hindenburg.

Hindenburg, on the left, will become President of Germany after the war. It's him who will appoint Hitler to power in 1933. For the time being, though, he's given up on this battle that was supposed to be so decisive but instead has awoken all the ardor of the French.

The madness of the Battle of Verdun can now be ended. But this is Verdun. It never ends.

For the French it's not a battle anymore, it's a legend. An existential struggle for their country's survival. That's not the case at the Somme, where the French and British offensive is even more murderous, and has been going on since the first of July.

It's not making its mark on France's collective memory. It's a joint operation with the British, with no thought for public opinion. No, it's here, in the Clay of Verdun, that the French want their revenge.

Officially, to make the area safe. In reality, for the glory. Between September and December 1916, it will cost the lives of 47,000 more Frenchmen.

General Pétain has brought in the big guns. They fire 1-ton shells, the size of an 8-year-old child, as they like to say. And they pulverize the Germans.

On the 24th of October, the French make one last assault on Douaumont, the latest icon of their national myth. And, 9 months after its capture by the Germans, they manage to take it. Once and for all.

The Crown Prince's troops all surrender in droves. At Verdun, 140,000 Germans lost their lives. And 190,000 were wounded.

All for a battle that changed nothing of the course of the war. And that's not as many as the French. They lost 160,000 men, with 210,000 wounded.

But the French got their victory. The amateurism. The tactical errors.

The humiliation. All behind them now. At Douaumont, a pilot, Bernard Lafont, wrote: "I'm so happy.

Verdun, saved from the barbarian. I've worked so hard to raise you to glory. Verdun, I love you.

" And when the snows came, in December 1916, the battle was officially over. 300 days of fighting. It would take another eight months to win back the Forest of Caures and Dead Man's Hill.

And another two years for the war to end. These soldiers, these husbands, these fathers, had gone to the limits of bravery. They left behind thousands of orphans.

And they would ask, "Was it glorious, this battle? Or was it absurd? " All that was a century ago.

The longest battle of the Great War traumatized the whole world. It reminds us how far we've come. And, above all, perhaps, how much we've changed.