Before the Battle of Verdun, the Germans were confident that their army and artillery were invincible. But until the Battle of Verdun was going on, the Germans realized that artillery was not completely invincible to warfare.

For most of the month, the Germans were the first to attempt a fierce assault on the central positions of the French line, and after an unsuccessful attack, they switched to attacking the left and right flanks.

But apart from the considerable casualties, the Germans did not have too obvious results.

Especially after Petain's readjustment of strategy, the Germans felt unprecedented pressure in the Verdun area, and their plan to win by storming with artillery superiority and superiority in forces had completely failed.

The main reason for the victory of this tactic on the Eastern Front was actually the reason why the Russian army was too poorly equipped and too backward in logistics.

But the logistics of the French were not weaker than those of the Germans, and with their fortresses and new equipment, the French army was not much inferior to the Germans in terms of equipment.

After the French army stabilized the defensive line, the rear staff replenished the front with a large number of troops, ammunition and weapons and equipment.

This also gave the French army ample strength to launch a counterattack and recapture some of the positions and fortifications lost in the early stages of the campaign.

With the recent victory in skirmishes, the morale of the French army has gradually risen, and most of the troops on the front have regained sufficient combat effectiveness.

When the two sides faced off offensively and defensively, time also quietly came to 1916.

On January 3, 1916, the French commander-in-chief, Chauffy, issued an updated directive to all the defending armies in the Verdun area, which included Chauffeur's encouragement to all the soldiers.

Xia Fei said that for more than a month, the German army gave the Verdun fortress a fierce attack, in an attempt to drive straight in.

With their elite troops and extremely heavy artillery fire, they achieved no small results on the Eastern Front.

The French army in the Verdun area was able to make no progress for the Germans, and even thwarted the spirit of the German army, which is enough to see the strength of the French army.

Xia Fei proudly said that he would ensure the arrival of all military supplies and reserves in the rear as soon as possible, and make all logistical preparations for the soldiers on the front line.

If the enemy still wanted to attack, the French army, with its unyielding courage and sincerity in upholding the lifeblood of the nation, would be praised by all the French people in the eyes of the whole country as a strong force to prevent the German army from entering Verdun.

From January 3, 1916, the Battle of Verdun officially entered its second phase.

The German command decided to mobilize forces and shift the focus of the offensive from the east bank of the Maas River to the west bank, to capture the important defensive positions of the French army on the west bank in one fell swoop, and to prevent the French army from using the terrain to carry out artillery support on the east bank.

For the new campaign, the German General Staff transferred a small number of elite troops from other places and replenished the troops that had participated in the first phase of the previous offensive.

In fact, the real purpose of the Germans in attacking Verdun in the first place was not to capture this impregnable fortress.

The real purpose of the German military leadership, led by Falkingham, was to make the French bleed and exhaust the living forces of the French in the Verdun area.

The problem is that this plan is no longer possible. Maybe the French will run out of blood one day, but the Germans will definitely bleed to death.

Although he knew that the Battle of Verdun had reached a stalemate, Falkingham decided to let the German army in the Verdun area continue the offensive for the sake of German prestige.

It was also from this moment that the Battle of Verdun turned from a plot into a senseless war of attrition.

France and Germany continued to invest troops in this area, and the two sides launched round after round of tug-of-war, but it was only a consumption of manpower and equipment and materials, and the actual front movement was not large.

Beginning on 10 January, many German soldiers became dissatisfied with this worthless sacrifice.

Although everyone is willing to give their lives for patriotic feelings, it is somewhat unnecessary if it is consumed in a war that is not necessary at all.

French and German planes hovered over the battlefield of Verdun, and a large number of corpses could be seen at any time and place.

These piles of corpses, French, German, and colonial native.

Some of the positions had been shattered by artillery, but the French were stubborn, and on such positions, they sang a battle song of blood and fire.

Such a shocking scene can be seen almost everywhere on the battlefield, and the soldiers of both France and Germany have paid a large number of casualties, and their feelings of generosity in dying for the country are worthy of recognition.

Dense artillery exploded in patches of dead wood, creating craters large and small.

Some of the blind, badly wounded soldiers groped their way to crawl into caves or bunkers to survive, believing that such bunkers would give them a sense of security, but the snow melted by the heat of the artillery explosions became a grim reaper.

The blood flowed into huge craters and caverns, drowning the wounded soldiers who lay on the ground and struggled weakly.

Such a picture is not cruel, but in the famous Battle of Verdun in history, it is a bloody reality.

Everywhere the shells went, there were corpses of human bodies and horses. Fortunately, it's January, and the Verdun region is still relatively cold, and the corpses have not yet emitted a foul smell.

If it was summer, the smell of rotting corpses alone would be enough to make some soldiers psychologically devastated.

What is even more exaggerated is that some German soldiers are not only covered in mud and sunken eyes because they have lived in such a terrible environment for a long time, but also look extremely old and frail, and they are unrecognizable.

But the German military top brass was still wishful thinking about depleting the French army through the Battle of Verdun in order to prevent the imminent large-scale offensive of the Anglo-French forces.

Instead of waiting for the Anglo-French forces to launch an offensive in an unknown area, it was better to take the initiative and lead the Anglo-French forces to the Verdun area, where there would be a decisive battle and try to destroy the main force of the Anglo-French forces, which was the plan of the German leadership.

In fact, the great offensive of the Germans in the Verdun area really reminded the British Empire.

The British government was keenly aware of the need to devote more forces to the continent as soon as possible, and at the same time to support the French army as much as it could, so as to avoid a Russian rout for France.

Russia has great strategic depth, and a few defeats are nothing to Russia, which has a vast land and a large population.

But for France, if the Battle of Verdun fails, not only will Paris be at risk of falling, but it will even affect the combat capability of the French army in the entire French region.

It is no exaggeration to say that after the fall of Verdun, Paris was lost. If Paris is not protected, France is not protected.

Under the premise of Britain's strong support for France, the French army fought a fierce battle with the German army in the Verdun area, and neither side could take the initiative, and the Battle of Verdun was also stalemate.

In February 1916, more than two months had passed since the Battle of Verdun began.

German and French armies also faced each other in the area for nearly 70 days, during which time there were numerous engagements, with heavy casualties on both sides.

In the hilly and forested area of less than 20 square kilometers on the east and west banks of the Maas River, the offensive and defensive sides have repeatedly fought fierce battles.

The German troops, who lacked the necessary rest, were exhausted by this time. The French army, on the other hand, took advantage of the fatigue and slackness of the German army to launch counteroffensives in some parts from time to time, which overwhelmed the German officers and soldiers.

Due to heavy casualties and ineffective food and ammunition supplies, the German soldiers, who had always been strictly disciplined and courageously charged, gradually lost confidence in the high command.

Since the beginning of the Battle of Verdun, the German high command has never cared about heavy casualties. Desperate for victory, the commanders never seriously faced the number of casualties. This was actually the opposite of the German army's original campaign attempt to "let the French bleed".

Because in terms of human resources, the Allied bloc could not compete with the Entente.

In this way, the Battle of Verdun not only failed to achieve its attempt to bleed the blood of the French, but on the contrary seemed to have the intention of draining Germany's own blood.

Faced with unusually heavy casualties, Falkingham, under pressure from Wilhelm II, had to revise his original battle plan to avoid causing more casualties.

The French General Staff required officers at all levels to pay attention to the scientific attitude of command in the war, and required all armies to implement timely and effective artillery support during the offensive.

In order to prevent the French machine guns and artillery in the fortress from inflicting huge casualties on the attacking German troops, the German army also modified the tactical maneuvers of the infantry.

The German General Staff demanded that the German troops in charge of the offensive adopt a more dispersed spacing, successive progressive assaults, rather than the previous cluster charge.

Drawing lessons from the past, the German high command no longer one-sidedly emphasized the power of artillery attacks, but began to emphasize that machine guns are effective weapons when approaching the enemy, and their role is difficult to replace by artillery. In the following operations, the Germans paid more attention to the strafing ability of machine guns, especially the suppression of fire when close to the enemy.

In the use of troops, the German army also changed the previous tradition of elite troops acting as the vanguard, and changed to attack with weaker units first, and then use elite troops to expand the results of the battle.

In order to reverse the serious defeat on the battlefield and reverse the passive situation, the German army did make a lot of efforts in terms of war wood and technology.

In order to destroy the French defenses, the German sappers even dug holes under the French positions, and then planted a large amount of explosives inside, blowing up a large pit up to 10 stories deep in the French positions.

However, subsequent battles proved once again that these so-called new tactics could not produce much effect in the face of a solid positional defense system with strong fire support and a certain depth due to the lack of necessary protection of the attacking forces at that time.

Will the Germans stop their offensive because of too many losses? This was the main concern of the Entente group, especially the French people.

The protracted and tragic conditions of the Verdun war have become a heavy psychological burden on the French people.

The whole country was proud of the French army's stubborn ability to hold its ground and crush the German army's frantic attack, but also worried about the heavy number of casualties.

As it turned out, the Germans still did not abandon the assault on the Verdun fortress.

However, the Germans had expected that the Battle of Verdun would soon succeed in their attempts, so they committed only the main attacking force of six corps.

However, as the campaign progressed, Germany had to send more reinforcements to join the Battle of Verdun.

This kind of behavior is the most taboo in war, and the practice of increasing troops one by one is far worse than investing more troops at one time, which is like a gourd baby saving grandpa, a small number of troops supported many times are extremely easy to be targeted by the enemy, because this can never maintain the superiority of troops over the enemy.

To borrow the words of the Paris Journal at the end of February, which commented on the state of the battle at Verdun: "For whatever reason, it can now be proved that the German army has reached a time of going on the defensive." Since then, the Germans have been powerless to stop the development of the Entente. ”

Of course, there was an element of exaggeration in this, but the current situation of the German army in Verdun was really not good, and the Germans could no longer maintain their superiority over Verdun.

On 1 March, General Robert Georges Nivel succeeded General Petain as Commander-in-Chief of the Verdun Theater of Operations, while General Pétain was transferred to Army Group Center on the Western Front as Commander-in-Chief.

The reason for the change of commander-in-chief of the Verdun theater of operations at such an important moment was that Xia Fei was already quite dissatisfied with General Petain's strategy at Verdun.

In fact, the new commander-in-chief of the Verdun theater of operations, General Nivel, also had a good reputation.

General Nivel was a learned and eloquent artillery specialist, having served as the artillery commander of the Verdun theater of operations before becoming commander-in-chief of the theater of operations.

Coming from a military family, he now studied at the Saumur Cavalry School, where he studied cavalry command and later changed to artillery, and achieved excellent results.

General Nivel's promotion journey was also very exaggerated, and at the beginning of the war, Nivel was just an ordinary lieutenant colonel.

But then he was soon promoted to commander of the 5th Brigade, and then to commander of the 6th Division.

His prowess in artillery found his place in the Battle of the Marne, for which he was promoted to general and commander-in-chief of the Third Army.

It is worth mentioning that General Nivelle also invented a high-altitude burst bomb capable of destroying airborne balloons, even airships and airplanes, during this war.

The invention of this shell dealt a fatal blow to the German air scouts, greatly weakening the German air force, and General Nivel's talent in artillery can be seen.

By this time, preparations for the Anglo-French offensive on the Somme line in northwestern France were coming to an end.

The initial purpose of this campaign was to inflict a heavy blow on the German army and even to advance into Germany, but the main purpose at this time was only to relieve pressure in the Verdun direction and force the German troops to withdraw their troops from the Russian front.

In order to reduce the scale of the Anglo-French campaign in the Somme region, the Germans launched an even more fierce attack on the Verdun area.

Because of the fierce German attack on Verdun, the Anglo-French forces decided to intensify their offensive in the Somme area to distract the Germans and force them to divide their forces and even withdraw from Russia.

Both sides had implemented battle plans for their own strategic objectives, but in the light of the current development of the situation, it was clear that it was even more unfavorable to the German side.

Under the orders of the German command and the Anglo-French command, the German army decided to resume a large-scale offensive in the Verdun area, and the Anglo-French army decided to speed up the preparations for the campaign in the Somme area, forcing the Germans to withdraw from Verdun and Russia with an offensive enough to shock the Germans.

One more today, 4200 words.

The specific reason for the easter egg chapter explains, thank you for your support!

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