Home › World History › World War I › Verdun
World War I · Western Front · February 21 – December 18, 1916
The Battle of Verdun
For ten months the French and German armies fought over a few miles of hills and forts around the old fortress city of Verdun. It was the longest battle of the war and one of the bloodiest in history. For France, holding Verdun became a matter of national survival summed up in four words: “They shall not pass.”
French soldiers of the 87th Regiment at Hill 304, Verdun, 1916
Quick facts
Verdun at a glance
| When | February 21 to December 18, 1916 (303 days) | |
| Where | The hills and forts north and east of Verdun-sur-Meuse, northeastern France | |
| Sides | France vs. Germany | |
| French leaders | Gen. Philippe Pétain, then Gens. Robert Nivelle and Charles Mangin | |
| German leaders | Gen. Erich von Falkenhayn (chief of staff); Crown Prince Wilhelm (Fifth Army) | |
| Casualties | About 700,000 killed, wounded or missing: roughly 377,000 French and 337,000 German | |
| Result | French defensive victory; lines end close to where they started |
The big picture in 30 seconds
Why Verdun matters
- It became France’s great national symbol of endurance in the war.
- About three-quarters of the French army rotated through Verdun.
- It forced Britain to take the lead in the Somme offensive that summer.
- Pétain’s fame from Verdun later made him leader of Vichy France in 1940.
303 days
the longest battle of the war
1,200+
German guns opened the battle
1 truck
every 14 seconds on the Sacred Way at its peak
700,000
approximate casualties
Why Verdun?
“Bleed France white”
By late 1915 German chief of staff Erich von Falkenhayn believed the war would be won or lost in the west. He chose Verdun, a fortress city in a bulge of the French line, as the place to attack. After the war he claimed his aim was not to capture the city but to force France to throw in its army to defend it, so that France would “bleed to death.” Many historians doubt he planned it so coldly at the time, but that is what the battle became.
The French had stripped many of Verdun’s forts of their guns, believing forts were useless after the fall of the Belgian forts in 1914. On February 21, 1916, after a bombardment by more than 1,200 guns, German troops attacked. Four days later a small German party walked into Fort Douaumont, the strongest fort of all, almost without a fight.
Where it happened
A bulge in the line
Verdun stood on the Meuse River, guarded by a ring of forts on the hills around it. The front curved around the city, so German artillery could fire from the north and east. Only one road and a narrow-gauge railway linked Verdun to the rest of France.
Simplified map. Verdun sat in a bulge in the French line, with German lines on three sides.
How the battle unfolded
Ten months in hell
Soldiers called Verdun “the mill on the Meuse” because it ground up division after division.
A huge bombardment, then German assault troops with flamethrowers. Fort Douaumont falls on February 25. Pétain takes command that night.
Pétain organizes the Sacred Way and rotates fresh divisions through the line. Fighting spreads to the west bank of the Meuse, to the hills of Le Mort Homme and Hill 304.
Fort Vaux surrenders on June 7 after its garrison runs out of water. On June 23 the Germans attack with phosgene gas shells toward Fort Souville, the last height before the city, but are stopped.
Nivelle and Mangin retake Fort Douaumont on October 24 and Fort Vaux on November 2. By December 18 the French have regained most of the lost ground.
The Sacred Way
One road that saved Verdun
Verdun’s lifeline was a single road about 45 miles long from Bar-le-Duc. Pétain had it widened and kept open day and night by thousands of territorial soldiers who threw crushed stone under the wheels. Trucks drove bumper to bumper; at the peak one passed every 14 seconds. In the single week starting February 28 they carried about 190,000 men and 25,000 tons of supplies. The writer Maurice Barrès named it the Voie Sacrée, the Sacred Way.
Pétain also created the noria, a rotation that sent divisions into the line for short periods and then out to rest. It spread the suffering across the whole army: 259 of France’s 330 infantry regiments fought at Verdun.
Commanders and soldiers
Who led the armies
.jpg/500px-Philippe_P%C3%A9tain_(before_1918).jpg)
Why it mattered
Neither side won, both were scarred
After ten months the front lines were almost back where they started. Hundreds of thousands of men were dead, and the ground was so churned by an estimated tens of millions of shells that some villages were never rebuilt. They are still marked on maps as villages that “died for France.” For the French, Verdun was proof they could endure anything, a belief that shaped their defensive thinking, and the Maginot Line, between the wars.
“Courage! On les aura!”
Gen. Philippe Pétain
Order of the day, April 10, 1916: “Courage! We’ll get them!”
See the whole war
World War I hub
Causes, fronts, battles and people of the Great War on one page.
Go deeper
Books and sources
- The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916, by Alistair Horne (1962)
- Verdun: The Longest Battle of the Great War, by Paul Jankowski (2013)
- The First World War, by John Keegan (1998)
- More recommended books