While Romania is busy with the abundance of new births, the breath of early spring in France has arrived. Here the Germans prepared for a battle against the French army, fighting for a blow to withdraw France from the war.

The German strategy of 1915 was a great success, and on the Eastern Front Russia was pushed back to Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, and now Russia was completely free of threat to the eastern German territory. Serbia, which had been holding off the Austro-Hungarian army on the southern front, was also completely occupied this year, even bringing in a new member for the Central Powers. As for the Ottoman Turks, they also repelled the Entente attack with the help of a group of German advisers. So in 1915 it was a situation in which the Allies had the upper hand.

The Entente, despite their disadvantage over the Central Powers in the Army, was a different story in terms of naval vessels. The ships of the Allied Navy were suppressed by the fleets of Britain, France, Italy and other countries, and could not move in the North Sea and the Adriatic Sea, respectively. Although the Allied navies relied on their superior generals to harass the Allied shipping lines across the oceans, they were quickly wiped out.

Now the Germans are focusing their energies on France, and the biggest promoter of this is the Chief of the General Staff, Colonel-General Falkingham. In 1913 he became Prussian Minister of War. On September 14, 1914, the Germans suffered a setback in the First Battle of the Marne, and the Schlieffen plan failed. Falkingham took over as Chief of the General Staff of the German Army and planned the "March to the Sea" operation with the intention of seizing the northern ports of France and cutting off direct contact between Britain and France, but failed in the First Battle of Cambrai and failed to achieve all his success.

He advocated that Germany should focus its strategy on the Western Front, which conflicted with the Eastern Front strategy of Paul von Hindenburg and Generals Erich Ludendorff. However, because of his position as Chief of the General Staff, the Battle of Verdun was forcibly passed in 1916.

According to Admiral Falkingham's plan, he chose to attract the main force of the French army at Verdun and get the French government to surrender by annihilating the main force of the French army. To this end, he also made a deceptive deployment.

At the beginning of January 1916, Falkingham quietly gathered his forces and prepared to attack Verdun. At the same time, Germany brazenly increased its forces in Chambeni, making a gesture of launching an offensive in Chambeny. The commander-in-chief of the French army, Xia Fei, was really fooled. After the Germans were unable to capture Verdun in 1914 and shifted the direction of their attack, the French considered the fortress of Verdun to be obsolete, and Xia Fei stopped strengthening the fortress in 1915.

At this time, the movement of the German army towards Cimbène made Xia Fei extremely vigilant, and he believed that the Germans would attack Chambéni and march to Paris from here. The Germans were continuing to quietly gather forces in the direction of Verdun.

As the signs of the assembly became apparent and exposed, the Anglo-French forces finally figured out the true intentions of the German army.

Verdun was the northeastern part of Paris and was the support point for the entire front of the French army. In the event of a loss, the capital Paris would face a direct attack by the German army. At this time, Xia Fei panicked and quickly ordered to increase troops to Verdun. Fortunately, due to poor weather conditions, the German offensive was delayed, providing time for the French to mobilize reinforcements, and the French mobilized two divisions into the area.

On this day, the Germans began to attack Verdun. The unit under the offensive mission was the 5th Army under the command of the German Crown Prince Wilhelm (with a total of 18 divisions in 7 armies, more than 1,200 artillery pieces, about 170 aircraft, and a total of more than 210,000 troops). ）

Its 7th, 18th, and 3rd armies (6 and a half divisions, 879 artillery pieces, 202 mortars) carried out the main assault on a 15-kilometer-wide frontage from Konsanwa to the Aône River, with the 5th Army covering its left flank. The 15th Army carried out an auxiliary assault 6 km south of the Orne River, and the 6th Army carried out diversionary operations on the west bank of the Meuse. In the direction of the main outburst, the German infantry was twice as numerous as the French infantry, and the artillery was 3.5 times outnumbered. In order to achieve the suddenness of the battle, the Germans carried out a series of feints on the Western Front in January of the same year.

In fact, as the commander-in-chief of France, Xia Fei had the opportunity to react at the first time, but because of one of his bad habits, the defenders of Verdun were even more critical. Xia Fei should not be disturbed when he sleeps, and he believes that a commander needs to get enough sleep in order to have the energy to deal with the ever-changing battlefield situation. So on the night of the outbreak of the battle, the commander-in-chief of the French army, Xia Fei, was sleeping soundly, and the messenger who delivered the war report waited dryly all night.

It wasn't until the next morning that Xia Fei, who was yawning, knew that Verdun was already in a hurry.

In less than four days, the Germans had completely broken through the Verdun position, and more than 13,000 French troops were reduced to prisoners of war. By 25 February, nine German soldiers had easily climbed to the fortress of Mont, the northern support point of Verdun, which was strategically important and was about to collapse. Not far away, Paris was red-eyed, and even the French government was ready to move again. In the newspapers of the time, it was described as "exactly the same as before the last defeat (Franco-Prussian War)".

But the real consequences are bound to be worse: if Germany goes one step further and successfully controls the main heights of Verdun, France will either watch Verdun fall and the gates of Paris wide open, or they will throw their elite troops into it and be wiped out by Germany like a tiger!

At this time, Xia Fei made the most correct choice, and he gave Verdun a new commander, a major general named Petain.

Petain, a poor boy from a single-parent peasant family, joined the army at the age of fifteen because of the disastrous defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, and has since become a stubborn temper among French officers: he is always straightforward in his speech, and he loves to contradict his superiors. At the age of 58, on the eve of the outbreak of World War I, he finally stumbled up to the rank of colonel. Petain himself laughed at himself at the time: I can already thank God that I can still get the colonel's pension.

But the sudden First World War made Petain finally show his skills, and after the start of the war, he made many military exploits, and the firing line was promoted to a major general. When Verdun was in a mess, he was decisively transferred by his boss to fill the hole. After seeing the terrible battle situation on the Verdun front, Petain, who had an acute pneumonia attack, immediately fell down with black eyes, and after waking up, he forcibly issued the first combat order: draw a line of supervision on the existing position, and the French army, regardless of the soldiers and officers, who want to retreat from this line, will be machine-gunned and killed!

And Petain's next order shocked the officers even more: it was necessary to organize a repair team to quickly widen the only improvised road in Verdun that was not blocked by German artillery fire in two days, and it was necessary to ensure that from the 27th, this road could pass through a truck every 14 seconds to supply a steady stream of blood to the Verdun front!

It should be mentioned here that among the transports of personnel and supplies for France there was a convoy of transport companies from Le Havre. 27 of its 58 Dongfeng trucks were damaged for various reasons in the process of transfusing blood for Verdun, and its boss Le Havre was awarded the Legion of Honor (commander level) by the French government after the battle, and was one of the few civilians to receive this rank.

After 190,000 reinforcements and 25,000 tons of supplies finally arrived at Verdun at the first time, Petain's cross-fire tactics began to shine brightly, and he actually came face to face with the powerful German army. By April, Petain's unrelenting battle had even more bad luck: a French artillery shell accidentally hit the secret German ammunition depot in the Spancourt Forest, and 450,000 German large-caliber heavy artillery shells were completely blown up in an instant. The Germans' best 42-caliber cannon bombardment, all of which were abolished.

The Germans planned a successful "bloodletting" battle, which was tossed into a bitter tug-of-war by the tough Petain. Pétain was promoted to commander of the front in May, and Verdun's French and German armies continued to grow and fought fiercely over the Verdun position. The divisional and brigade-level units were almost wiped out after a few artillery fires back and forth.

The bloody battle lasted until December, when the French army finally turned from defense to attack, and the German army abandoned the Verdun position in a hurry, and finally the French army lost 650,000, but the German army also paid 450,000 casualties, and the ten most elite divisions of the German Western Front were all lost.