![]() ![]() Thus the German attack of February 21 caught the French relatively unprepared. Ignoring intelligence that warned of a possible German attack in the region, French command had begun in 1915 to strip its forces at Verdun of the heavy artillery essential to defensive warfare, choosing instead to focus on an offensive strategy masterminded by General Ferdinand Foch, the director of the army’s prestigious War College, and dubbed Plan XVII. ![]() The city was selected because in addition to its symbolic importance-it was the last stronghold to fall in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War-it was possible to attack the fortress city from three sides, which made it a good strategic target. The chosen mark of Falkenhayn’s offensive was the fortress city of Verdun, on the Meuse River in France. READ MORE: 10 Things You May Not Know About the Battle of Verdun In December 1915, Falkenhayn convinced the kaiser, over the objections of other military leaders such as Paul von Hindenburg, that in combination with unrestricted submarine warfare at sea, a major French loss in battle would push the British-whom Falkenhayn saw as the most potent of the Allies-out of the war. Despite the hard conditions in the trenches, Erich von Falkenhayn, chief of staff of the German army, believed that the key to winning the war lay not in confronting Russia in the east but in defeating the French in a major battle on the Western Front. on the morning of February 21, 1916, a shot from a German Krupp 38-centimeter long-barreled gun-one of over 1,200 such weapons set to bombard French forces along a 20-kilometer front stretching across the Meuse River-strikes a cathedral in Verdun, France, beginning the Battle of Verdun, which would stretch on for 10 months and become the longest conflict of World War I.īy the beginning of 1916, the war in France, from the Swiss border to the English Channel, had settled into the long slog of trench warfare. ![]()
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