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The Battle of Verdun
During the stalemate between Italy and Austria-Hungary to the south, one of the longest and most catastrophic battles of the war was fought several hundred miles away, in France. On February 21, 1916, Germany launched an offensive against the fortified French town of Verdun, which guarded the approach to Paris. The Germans intended to make a sustained attack that would drain the enemy of soldiers and break the stalemate. Both sides employed artillery shells filled with poison gas on a large scale. France temporarily lost Verdun and its two forts but regained the forts by battle’s end and recaptured the town in a renewed attack that ended the battle on December 18. After ten months, the fighting ceased, with both sides back where they had started, but with a staggering 650,000 soldiers dead. The Battle of Verdun was the longest single battle of the war, and among the deadliest.
The Battle of the Somme
On July 1, 1916, even as the fight was still raging at Verdun, the Allied Powers launched an offensive of their own in northern France along a 25-mile front that extended across both banks of the river Somme. The opening artillery barrage was so heavy that it could be heard in southern England. During the four-and-a-half-month Battle of the Somme, the Allies managed to make a small advance of only six miles, at a cost of 146,000 lives. The German death toll was 164,000.
The Stalemates in Europe
By 1916, all of the initial fronts of the war had reached stalemates, with both sides embedded in trenches and neither side gaining nor losing much ground. All the while, soldiers were dying in massive numbers simply to maintain the status quo. The conflict was becoming a war of attrition, a gruesome contest to see which country could afford to lose the most soldiers. It was made all the more horrible by the fact that Britain, France, and Germany relied heavily upon their colonies to bolster their supplies of fighting men. Of the major participants, only Russia and later the United States relied solely upon their own populations to fight the war.
The primary reason that World War I became a war of attrition was the use of modern weapons. Machine guns made it easy to cut down large numbers of soldiers quickly if they came out into the open to fight. Once opposing armies became entrenched, long-range artillery, aerial bombs, and poison gas were used to try to force the other side to abandon its shelters and retreat.
The Battle of Messines Ridge
Finally, in the summer of 1917, the British made the first small steps toward breaking the stalemate on the western front. At 3:10 a.m. on June 7, 1917, a series of simultaneous explosions ripped with amazing force through Messines Ridge in northern France—a fortified position along the front, where German forces had been entrenched for a long time. More than 10,000 German soldiers died instantly; those who survived were stunned and had no idea what had happened. Around them were craters of more than 400 feet in diameter. Before the Germans could regain their senses, the British army was upon them. Some 7,300 Germans were taken prisoner, while the rest retreated in shock.
For 18 months prior, British soldiers had been digging a series of 22 tunnels below the German position. The tunnels extended up to 2,000 feet in length, and some were as far as 100 feet below the surface of the ridge where the Germans were dug in. Once complete, the tunnels were filled with 1 million pounds of high explosive and plugged with sandbags. The blast was heard as far away as London.
The Battle of Passchendaele
Although the Battle of Messines Ridge was a relatively small battle, it had considerable psychological impact for both sides. It also broke the Germans’ hold on the ridge, forcing them to retreat eastward and marking the beginning of a slow but continuous loss of ground by German forces in the west. After the battle, British forces continued to push the Germans back a few hundred yards at a time toward the high ridge at Passchendaele. The Germans fought back with mustard gas, a notoriously slow-acting chemical agent that maimed or killed enemy soldiers via severe blisters on the skin or internally if breathed.
By mid-September 1917, the British, close to their goal, began a new offensive movement. The fighting was slow and exhausting, and even the slightest forward progress came with horrendous casualties. The British reached Passchendaele on October 12 during a driving rain that turned the landscape to impenetrable mud. During the Battle of Passchendaele that ensued, the British suffered 310,000 casualties, while German casualties numbered 260,000. The battle proved the last great battle of attrition on the western front and again saw the use of mustard gas and other deadly chemical weapons.
Events Timeline
February 21, 1916
Battle of Verdun begins
July 1
Battle of the Somme begins
November 18
Battles of Verdun, the Somme end
June 7, 1917
Battle of Messines Ridge
July 31
Battle of Passchendaele begins
November 6
Allied forces capture Passchendaele
