Posted on 03/19/2016 9:04:58 AM PDT by C19fan
There is no quick route by which one may approach Verdun. No superhighway passes through this sleepy town, nor do any of France’s fabled “Trains de Grande Vitesse” stop here. There is only the local line, and even that humbled creaking route terminates in Verdun. In the end, one can only come to this hallowed ground slowly, by a small four-car train or by narrow two-lane road. This is as it should be. Some 250,000 men died in these few square miles of turf, and one should not rush into a graveyard.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
WWI is too often ignored. It was brutal beyond belief. All those who like to ridicule the French as cheese eating surrender monkeys know absolutely nothing about The Great War.
I have driven along the Verdun road - lined with helmet markers. The place is haunted.
I’ve been there a few times...it’s hard to fathom that tens of thousands of soldiers..on both sides..were just vaporized into nothing...today, a century after the battle there are still large areas where nothing will grow..not even weeds, because the soil is so toxic from the residual chemicals of the artillery explosives..
Good article with informed analysis.
The World Wars were a demographic disaster for Europe.
10’s of millions of the best men slaughtered.
To me it explains much of the world, especially Europe.
Google street view is a fascinating tool. You can literally drive around Verdun or any where else in the world:
For anybody wanting to know more about the battle see "The Price Of Glory," by Alistair Horne.
The Late, Great Lemmy probably penned the most poignant tribute to the soldiers of that war....
1916
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqFoqtpUFY8
Thanks. I just sent this to my brother who is a docent at the true WWI museum and memorial. 10 freeper credits to anyone who can tell me where it is.
Mr. Mercat and I have visited Devil’s Den at Gettysburg and The Bloody Road at Antietam. Both very sad places.
The two world wars exhausted Europe spiritually and physically, giving rise to Third World attacks against a dying civilization. Note the so called liberation movements became effective after WWII.
“The World Wars were a demographic disaster for Europe.”
That’s for sure. Really it was the end of European Christian civilization. It ushered in the era of Communism and Nazism, followed now by Islamization.
I agree; my belief has always been that you can’t understand where we are today unless you appreciate what happened in World War I. On a tactical basis, static, costly battles incredibly bad for troop morale; almost no maneuver except at the very beginning and the end and in the Mideast theater and Churchill’s disastrous Gallipoli campaign; unbelievable disregard for the lives of our best young men. The strategic consequences were horrendous; the rise to power of the murderous Bolsheviks in Russia who would have never been allowed near public toilets much less the government in normal times; the same for Hitler in Germany; the feeling in the US that led to isolationism in WW2 was a direct result of having lost 100,000 men for a European war that made little sense to the average American. I have never been to Fort Douamont in Verdun but I have been to the Somme. Verdun was a direct result of German Gen. Falkenhayn’s belief that the German nation had more young men to lose than the French, thus they could bleed the French nation to death. Same thing for Gen. Haig at the Somme. Horrendous military thinking with expectable horrendous results.
Google says it’s at Kansas City MO
“Mr. Mercat and I have visited Devil’s Den at Gettysburg”
I had ancestors at that end of the battle. Mississippi and Alabama boys. One was buried in the field after Barksdale’s Charge through the Peach Orchard.
Thank you for posting this very well written article. Please keep up the good work and post its successors.
I encourage reading Manchester’s first volume of his three volume biography of Winston Churchill to gain some strategic understanding of the Gallipoli campaign. The slow advance of naval forces made Gallipoli possible—it might well have been avoided. Churchill suffered greatly the blame but was arguing a different strategy than he was saddled with in the end. It is a good study in the difficulties of leading in wartime.
Time will tell how much of Western Civilization can be saved.
America has saved the world 3 times in the past century. (WWI, WW2, Cold War).
The next time we might not be able to help as we have so many problems of our own to deal with.
Yes, but I understand the Ruling Classes came out okay for the most part.
/S
Well we ended two hot wars and one cold one. Brought Nazism and Communism to an end. But I don’t think that we saved Western Civilization.
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