The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916

What an outstanding book by Alistair Horne about the greatest battle in the history of mankind. Verdun reminds me of the books I've read on Stalingrad. In fact, Verdun was the Stalingrad of WWI with the exception that it lasted 10 months compared to Stalingrad’s 5 months. It sounds every bit as awful and there are amazing parallels. The funny thing is that Alistair Horne argues that the leaders of both armies didn’t really intend for the battle to unfold the way it did. Joffre had given up on fixed fortifications and he realized that Verdun was a salient. Prior to the German offensive, The French commander, had ordered the forts stripped of their heavy artillery and planned to withdraw French forces out of the salient. This was the prudent thing to do. The German Commander, Falkenhayn, attacked Verdun to establish a foothold. His goal was to draw the French in to attack entrenched German positions with the goal of bleeding France white. Falkenhayn never cared to conquer Verdun. But as Mike Tyson used to say, “Everybody’s got a plan until he gets punched in the mouth.” The two commanders forgot that Verdun, like Stalingrad, was a symbolic city. The Germans were drunk with early success and the Kaiser wanted Verdun conquered. On the other side, it became a matter of stubborn French National pride.There are a few passages that I will not ever forget from this book. I like the way the author describes the French in 1914 at the Battle of the Frontiers. The Germans wore feldgrau and the British wore olive but the French showed up to the party in colorful uniforms with red pants that stood out. That was the point! They wanted to be seen. Their enemies would be terrified by their overwhelming numbers. The French considered themselves the warrior class of all of Europe. Also, French high command disdained the machine gun and heavy artillery. They would stick to the light 75mm gun and the bayonet and they would attack to excess and never let the enemy gain the initiative. This was the doctrine attributed to Colonel De Grandmaison and the cult of the offensive. Only Petain rejected this nonsense, teaching instead that firepower killed and could break up such attacks but he was in the minority. The De Grandmaison doctrine would cost the French dearly throughout the war.Horne writes the following:"All along the frontier The infantrymen in their red trousers and thick blue overcoats, carrying heavy packs [the French kit weighed 85 lbs] and long, unwieldy bayonets, broke into the double behind their white-gloved officers. Many sang the Marseillaise. In the August heat, the heavily encumbered French attacked from a distance of nearly 1/2 mile. Never had the machine-gunners had such a heyday. The French stubble-fields were soon transformed into gay carpets of red and blue. Splendid cuirassiers in glittering breastplates of another age hurled their horses hopelessly at the machine guns that were slaughtering the infantry. It was horrible and horribly predictable, in that superb, insane courage of 1914 there was something reminiscent of the lemmings swimming out to sea. But it was not War."On page 65 Horne wrote few outstanding paragraphs about the horrific use of artillery in WWI. At Verdun, the Germans employed calibers as large as 420 mm and later on in the battle the French introduced a 400 mm mortar."Of all the factors that had contrived to the education of the novices of 1914, obviously none was more fundamental...than the sickening effect that the new weapons of the industrial revolution had on the bodies of men. It was bad enough to be wounded at all but at least a bullet was a relatively clean agent. If you were hit by rifle or machine gun, the chances were that you were killed outright, or eventually you returned to life more or less in one piece. However, in contrast to World War II, bullet wounds were the minority; the greater part of casualties were caused by the terrible effects of shell-fire. Also, by 1939, the march of civilization had advanced metallurgy to a point where shells and bombs burst into smaller fragments; they killed more men with each burst but they did so more tidily. In the First World War, the crude iron of the shells (most of them many times bigger than anything used in the land battles of 1939-1945) shattered into huge ragged chunks that sometimes two men would be unable to lift. The effect on the soft human carapace of impact with these whirling fragments could be imagined....Men squashed, cut into two, or divided from top to bottom, blown into showers by an ordinary shell, bellies turned inside out and scattered anyhow, skulls forced bodily into the chest as if by blow with a club. It was only astonishing how much of such mutilation flesh could suffer and survive."This was the Stalingrad of WWI. After the war was over, the crown prince said The Mill on the Meuse ground to powder the hearts as well as the bodies of the troops. It was at Verdun that the seeds were sown for the French mutinies of 1917. Conservative estimates are 700,000 casualties combined during the 10 month battle but this is probably understated. There is a French estimate of 420,000 Frenchmen died and 800,000 were gassed and wounded on the Verdun battlefield during the entire war. However, they will never be sure. That is why they round off in the tens of thousands. Imagine that?My hero during the entire book is Petain. It was his innovation of the rolling barrage that allowed the French to retake lost ground and reclaim forts Douaumont and Vaux. In a war led by leaders that were dinosaurs, Petain was an innovator similar to Ludendorff and more importantly, he was quick to understand when enough was enough. The lesson of WWI was that an innovation worked outstanding the first time used and was less effective during subsequent attacks. The phosgene gas attack and the rolling barrage are great examples. Falkenhayn was too cautious to exploit a break through and thus, squandered opportunities. His counterpart, Nivelle, was too rash and attacked at half strength. Petain understood all of this.After Verdun, Nivelle was promoted over Petain. He led the French Army in the disastrous Chemin Des Dames which led to mutiny of half the French divisions. Only Petain could quell this rebellion. He did so not by mass punishment but by improving the conditions for the French soldier and restoring confidence. For God's sake a hospital with 3,500 beds had only 3 thermometers!!! Do you think that there was room for improvement?Petain's decision was to wait for the Americans to arrive and finally when Ludendorff was over extended in similar fashion as the German Army of WWII in the Battle of the Bulge, Mangin was brought back from disgrace to lead a massive counteroffensive that was successful.Today, many of the small villages around Verdun were never repopulated. The land is said to be haunted by the massive loss of life and needless pain and suffering by the flower of a generation of French and German youth. Human skeletons continue to be discovered. In some areas the topsoil has vanished due to the massive artillery bombardments and nothing will grow there. In other areas the battlefield continues to claim casualties as when a plow strikes unexploded ordinance or a relic hunter gets more than he bargained for upon uncovering a find.The book was excellent and I almost got down on my hands and knees to thank God that I did not have to partake in that mass slaughter of a war. In the news today we will undoubtedly watch someone whine over some trivial matter and call themselves survivors because they had been offended. This book puts such things in perspective. Yes, the death and suffering of Verdun can only be imagined by fellow Americans. We lost 3,000 at Pearl Harbor and another 3,000 or so in the World Trade Center. A helicopter goes down and we lose a SEAL team. These are tragedies but they don’t amount to the ante of the devastation of Verdun. The author ends the book recounting a story about a French officer invited to Ecole De Guerre to attend a seminar of the lessons learned during WWII but an inordinate amount of the time was spent discussing the glories of the previous war with an emphasis of Verdun. The years following WWII the British were seen bowing to the inevitable but the week French government goaded on by an Army desperate for glory and anxious to win a war – any war - continued to apply military solutions in their territories with disastrous results. The author says that even today (the book was written in the 1960’s) that all officers of the Ecole De Guerre continue to go to Verdun to attend long lectures even though the instructors freely admit that it has no relevance to modern warfare. The Ghosts are not allowed to die. The author inferred that Sadly, the strong minded French will continue to make the same errors in judgment that date back to the Franco Prussian War of 1871.I want to say never again but only the dead have seen the end of war.

On the face of it, I felt that a rating of 4.5 stars would be about right for The Price of Glory. A great extent of research clearly went into this work, what with Horne having drawn from a large number of published primary and secondary sources as well as conversations with veterans of Verdun, World War I historians, and military analysts. Horne writes well and although his narrative seemed to me to shine a somewhat more favorable light on the French than on the Germans, he liberally describes both wise and poor decisions made by either side.The Battle of Verdun was the longest battle of World War I and one of the costliest in all history, with an estimated 700,000+ men killed or wounded on both sides. The great loss of life was due mainly to artillery bombardments on a massive scale and heroic though often pointless charges by infantry directly into heavy enemy machinegun fire, exacerbated by poor conditions on the field for getting medical aid to the wounded. All of this is described very well, sometimes with details of close quarters action that were clearly taken from firsthand accounts. Firsthand accounts are great to have but can often be embellished or biased. Perhaps Horne could’ve more clearly identified in the main body of the text where such accounts were used; to his credit the “Reference Notes” section in the back does clearly describe such instances.One issue I had with this book was Horne’s liberal use of 20/20 hindsight to criticize many decisions made on the battlefield. Before the widespread use of handheld radio equipment, new situations in the field were often slow to be communicated and new orders by leadership slow to be received. Many poor decisions made in this battle were likely based on insufficient information or even worse, on incorrect information. I felt that Horne often criticized decisions unfairly. However, Horne’s main criticisms of the French leadership (commitment to hold Verdun at all costs) and of the German (poor choices of where to concentrate their superior firepower) ring true.Another annoyance that took away from The Price of Glory for me was Horne’s incessant need to connect an individual’s personality and actions with physical appearance. In Horne’s world, piggish eyes and nose imply great obstinacy; a strong chin means a forceful personality; stooping shoulders on a man tells us he feels his responsibilities are a heavy burden, etc. Horne then unfailingly manages to connect decision making with these personality traits inferred from appearance, in my opinion making some of his analysis and conclusions suspect.After considering these detractions from an otherwise fantastic account of the Battle of Verdun, I feel that 4 stars is about right for me. Good but not great. I prefer reading historical accounts that are dry and detached, so that I can more easily draw my own conclusions and opinions of the individuals involved. One day I hope to find such an account of this battle, and comparing it to Horne’s effort will surely be fun.

This book used to be a popular book about Verdun, that I read many years ago and enjoyed. On a reread, I was left with a feeling that it hasn't stood the test of time.- It's got lots of comments about "the German race" and national characteristics, and talks endlessly about how character shows in the face, all of which sticks in the throat nowadays.- It's very definitely in the "lions led by donkeys" tradition that most First World War generals were useless. Some did pretty poorly, but they had a very hard job to do with the world changing around them, and the idea that they were utterly hopeless butchers doesn't stand analysis. Meanwhile the idea that Conrad was the best Great War commander of any nation is frankly bizarre.- It's simplistic, with too much of the single simple event that caused everything. The French did not get their views on the German reserves in 1914 from a casual remark by the Kaiser (French intelligence got it wrong based on their own experience); the Germans would not have immediately won the war if this or that breakthrough had happened; the French were not beaten in 1940 because of the defensive mindset of Verdun (not totally wrong, but it's much more complex than that).In summary, it's a good flowing read that brings home the horror and drama of the story, but is rather shallow and seems not to have noticed anything written since 1950 (and in places since about 1920).

In Great War terms, the Somme is the battle the British remember. Verdun is the equivalent for the French and its course is surprisingly little known in the English-language histories. Horne amply fulfils that gap. He shows himself as a superb story-teller - better, in my view, than in his Napoleon history, 'How Far From Austerlitz?' - and a writer with a sharp eye for the telling detail, as ready to describe the squalor as to hail the heroism. And that goes for both sides. My only disappointment was that his story stops short of the well earned humiliation of Nivelle.

This might be an old book but is still probably the est on subject. Only draw back is the maps

The horrors of Verdun are imbued in French history and the soul of the nation. Horne is a superlative historian. This volume is the second in his trilogy concerning conflict between France and Germany. It no ordinary volume of military history.

I knew little of the horrors of this battle. Alistair Home writes with assurance and a wealth of detail, yet you are not overwhelmed or lost in it. The horror of man's inhumanity to man and the dehumanizing nature of this war's battles are revealed with short sharp examples. He doesn't wallow in the mire and gore but you are left stunned at times. One of the better accounts I have read simply because he keeps the detail so simple.