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

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.