Synopses & Reviews
A powerfully immediate and controversial account of one of the longest and bloodiest engagements of World War I.
In mid-February 1916, the Germans launched a surprise major offensive at Verdun, an important fortress in northeast France. By mid-March, more than 90,000 French troops had been killed or wounded. The fighting continued for seven long months, with casualties on both sides mounting in astonishing numbers. By the end of the year, the battle had claimed more than 700,000 victims. The butchery had little impact on the course of the war, and Verdun soon became the most potent symbol of the horrors of the war in general, and of trench warfare in particular.
Ian Ousby offers a radical, iconoclastic reevaluation of the meaning and import of this cataclysmic battle in The Road to Verdun. Moving beyond the narrow focus of most military historians, he argues that the French bear a tremendous responsibility for the senseless slaughter. In a work that merges intellectual substance and great battle writing, Ousby shows that the roots of the disaster lay in the French national character–the grandiose, even delusional way they perceived themselves, and their relentless determination to demonize Germans, which began in the debacle of the Franco-Prussian War. Ousby analyzes the generals’ battle plans, and provides a graphic, gripping account of the deprivations and inhumane suffering of the troops who manned the trenches. His incisive, moving descriptions make it painfully clear why the influential French critic and poet Paul Val?ry called Verdun “a complete war in itself, inserted in the Great War.”
In telling the story of Verdun, Ousby demonstrates that the confrontation marked a critical midpoint in Franco-German hostility. The battle not only carried the burden of history, but with the presence on the battlefield of France’s future leaders–including Pétain and de Gaulle–it fed an increasingly venomous enmity between France and Germany, and lay the groundwork for World War II.
Review
“Mr. Mosier [is] one of the more entertainingly contrarian military historians writing today...An important and groundbreaking book about the Eastern front.”—
The Washington Times on
Hitler vs. Stalin
“The author knows his military history, strategy, and tactics…packed with evidence, much of it ingeniously obtained and argued.” —The Washington Post on The Myth of the Great War
“This provocative book tosses military-history hand grenades on almost every page, challenging just about every generally held notion about World War II.”—Forbes on The Blitzkrieg Myth
“A dramatic departure from the conventional wisdom…a dramatic chronicle of the most brutal theater in the most brutal war in one of historys most brutal centuries...This is a clear-eyed, compelling description of a battle that has been described many times, but seldom with such an ironic eye.”—The Boston Globe on Hitler vs. Stalin
“There is much in the work I really admire, not least its brilliant recasting of the traditional military narrative.”—Niall Ferguson on The Myth of the Great War
Synopsis
Alongside Waterloo and Gettysburg, the Battle of Verdun during the First World War stands as one of historys greatest clashes. Yet it is also one of the most complex and misunderstood, in a war only imperfectly grasped.
Conventional wisdom holds that the battle began in February 1916 and lasted until December, when the victorious French wrested all the territory they had lost back from the Germans. In fact, says historian John Mosier, from the very beginning of the war until the armistice in 1918, no fewer than eight distinct battles were waged for the possession of Verdun. These conflicts are largely unknown, even in France, owing to the obsessive secrecy of the French high command and its energetic propaganda campaign to fool the world into thinking that the war on the Western Front was a steady series of German checks and defeats.
Although British historians have always seen Verdun as a one-year battle designed by the German chief of staff to bleed France white, Mosiers careful analysis of the German plans reveals a much more abstract and theoretical approach.
Our understanding of Verdun has long been mired in myths, false assumptions, propaganda, and distortions. Now, using numerous accounts of military analysts, serving officers, and eyewitnesses, including French sources that have never been translated, Mosier offers a compelling reassessment of the Great Wars most important battle.
About the Author
IAN OUSBY was the author of several books, including The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English and Occupation: The Ordeal of France 1940—1944, which won the 1997 Edith McLeod Literary Prize, given annually to the British book that has “contributed the most to Franco-British understanding,” and the 1997 Stern Silver PEN Award for Nonfiction. He passed away in August 2001.