Battle of Verdun: History of the Longest Fight during World War I

The decision by German Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn to launch a massive offensive against the French fortress of Verdun in February 1916 represented a fundamental shift in German strategy from seeking decisive battlefield victory to implementing a calculated war of attrition designed to bleed France white through the systematic destruction of French military forces in a battle that France could not afford to lose. This strategic concept, outlined in Falkenhayn's Christmas Memorandum of 1915, reflected his recognition that the war had reached a stalemate where traditional military breakthrough was impossible while Germany's position would deteriorate over time due to the Allied blockade and the growing strength of enemy coalitions. The selection of Verdun as the target for this strategy represented a masterstroke of psychological warfare, as the historic fortress held such symbolic importance for French national identity that France would sacrifice unlimited resources to defend it, enabling Germany to inflict casualties that would eventually break French resistance.

The strategic context that led to Falkenhayn's decision reflected Germany's deteriorating position by late 1915, as the failure to achieve decisive victory in the opening campaigns had created a two-front war that stretched German resources while the British naval blockade began to affect German industrial production and civilian morale. The entry of Italy into the war had opened a third front while unsuccessful offensives in Poland and the Dardanelles had failed to eliminate any major enemy from the coalition arrayed against the Central Powers. Falkenhayn's assessment that Germany could not sustain indefinitely the mounting economic and military pressures created by prolonged warfare led to his search for a strategy that could achieve decisive results through carefully applied force rather than massive offensives that had proven prohibitively costly and strategically ineffective.