The French Army At Verdun

The French Army At Verdun Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of The French Army At Verdun book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.

The French Army at Verdun

Ian Sumner
The French Army at Verdun Book PDF

Author : Ian Sumner
Publisher : Casemate Publishers
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2016-01-31
Category : History
ISBN : 9781473856165

Get Book

The French Army at Verdun by Ian Sumner Pdf

In four and a half years of fighting on the Western Front during the First World War a few battles stand out from the rest. They had a decisive impact on the course of the conflict, and they still define the war for us today. For the French, the Battle of Verdun, fought between February and December 1916, was one of the greatest of these. That is why the selection of contemporary photographs Ian Sumner has brought together for this volume in the Images of War series is so important and revealing. They show the strained, sometimes shocked faces of the soldiers, record the shattered landscape in which they fought, and give us an insight into the sheer intensity of the fighting.At the time, and ever since, the battle has been portrayed as a triumph of French tenacity and heroism that is encapsulated in the famous phrase They shall not pass. These photographs remind us, in the most graphic way, what that slogan meant in terms of the devastating personal experience of the men on the Verdun battlefield.

French Soldier vs German Soldier

David Campbell
French Soldier vs German Soldier Book PDF

Author : David Campbell
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 81 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2020-03-19
Category : History
ISBN : 9781472838162

Get Book

French Soldier vs German Soldier by David Campbell Pdf

On 21 February 1916, the German Army launched a major attack on the French fortress of Verdun. The Germans were confident that the ensuing battle would compel France to expend its strategic reserves in a savage attritional battle, thereby wearing down Allied fighting power on the Western Front. However, initial German success in capturing a key early objective, Fort Douaumont, was swiftly stemmed by the French defences, despite heavy French casualties. The Germans then switched objectives, but made slow progress towards their goals; by July, the battle had become a stalemate. During the protracted struggle for Verdun, the two sides' infantrymen faced appalling battlefield conditions; their training, equipment and doctrine would be tested to the limit and beyond. New technologies, including flamethrowers, hand grenades, trench mortars and more mobile machine guns, would play a key role in the hands of infantry specialists thrown into the developing battle, and innovations in combat communications were employed to overcome the confusion of the battlefield. This study outlines the two sides' wider approach to the evolving battle, before assessing the preparations and combat record of the French and German fighting men who fought one another during three pivotal moments of the 101⁄2-month struggle for Verdun.

The Verdun Regiment

Johnathan Bracken
The Verdun Regiment Book PDF

Author : Johnathan Bracken
Publisher : Pen and Sword
Page : 437 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2018-07-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9781526710314

Get Book

The Verdun Regiment by Johnathan Bracken Pdf

This book on French soldiers during WWI is “a first-class narrative with an abundance of personal testimony from the officers and men of the regiment” (The Great War Magazine, Editor’s Choice). Although the French fielded the largest number of Allied troops on the Western Front in the First World War, the story of their soldiers is little known to English readers. The immense size of the French armies, the number of battles they fought, and the enormous losses they incurred, make it difficult for us to comprehend their experience. But we can gain a genuine insight by focusing on one of the defining battles of that war, at Verdun in 1916, and by looking at it through the eyes of a small group of soldiers who served there. That is what Johnathan Bracken does in this meticulously researched, detailed and vivid account. The French 151st Infantry Regiment spent fifty days under fire at Verdun in 1916 and another thirty-five in 1917 and lost 3,200 soldiers killed or wounded. Yet their ordeal was no different from that of hundreds of other infantry units that fought and endured in this meat-grinder of a battle. Their diaries and memoirs tell their story in the most compelling way, and through their words the larger human story of the French soldier during the war comes to life. “The book recounts the horror of intense artillery bombardments and men mown down in great waves. None of this is particularly pretty and the accounts do much to scatter notions of war as a glorious, thrilling experience. It was vicious and brutal utterly cruel.”—War History Online

Battle Story: Verdun 1916

Chris McNab
Battle Story Verdun 1916 Book PDF

Author : Chris McNab
Publisher : The History Press
Page : 130 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2013-03-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780752492575

Get Book

Battle Story: Verdun 1916 by Chris McNab Pdf

The Battle of Verdun was one of the bloodiest engagements of the First World War, resulting in 698,000 deaths, 70,000 for each of the 10 months of battle. The French Army in the area were decimated and it is often most tragically remembered as the battle in which the French were ‘bled white’.A potent symbol of French resistance, the fortress town of Verdun was one that the French Army was loath to relinquish easily. It was partly for this reason that the German commander chose to launch a major offensive here, where he could dent French national pride and military morale. His attack commenced on 21 February, using shock troops and flamethrowers to clear the French trenches. Starting with the capture of Fort Douamont, by June 1916 the Germans were pressing on the city itself, exhausting their reserves.The French continued to fight valiantly, despite heavy losses and eventually rolled back German forces from the city. In the end it was a battle that saw much loss of life for little gain on either side.

Verdun 1917

Christina Holstein
Verdun 1917 Book PDF

Author : Christina Holstein
Publisher : Pen and Sword Military
Page : 447 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2021-01-26
Category : History
ISBN : 9781526717108

Get Book

Verdun 1917 by Christina Holstein Pdf

A tour of the historic French battlefield that goes beyond the usual dates and places, and reveals the full story of the fighting after the fighting. Despite the popular view, the French army did not cease offensive operations after the disastrous Nivelle Offensive of spring 1917 and the subsequent mutinies. Nor did the fighting at Verdun come to an end in 1916. The successful French counteroffensives at the end of that year led to preliminary planning for a two Army operation in 1917 to break out of the Verdun salient and recapture the strategically very significant Briey coal basin. The French Army mutinies of May and June 1917 led to a more limited version of the plan being implemented, with the aim of establishing new lines for a breakout in 1918. The need to rebuild morale in the French army meant that nothing was left to chance. The immense logistical effort of this late summer 1917 campaign and the detailed planning and careful training at all levels brought success to an army weary of war but determined to win. The industrial nature of the preparations, the spectacular numbers of guns, and the first appearance of the Americans at Verdun presage the campaigns of 1918 and the final Allied victory. Christina Holstein, Britain’s premier expert in the battlefields around Verdun, leads the reader around the various vital points of this largely unknown battle of 1917, one which was crucial for the rebuilding of a French army that played such a notable part in the victorious Allied campaign of 1918. Like all the books in the Battleground Europe series, it is profusely illustrated and mapped using contemporary and modern material, with clear maps to support each of the tours.

Verdun to the Vosges: Impressions of the War on the Fortress Frontier of France

Gerald Campbell
Verdun to the Vosges Impressions of the War on the Fortress Frontier of France Book PDF

Author : Gerald Campbell
Publisher : DigiCat
Page : 254 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2022-09-16
Category : Fiction
ISBN : EAN:8596547331797

Get Book

Verdun to the Vosges: Impressions of the War on the Fortress Frontier of France by Gerald Campbell Pdf

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Verdun to the Vosges: Impressions of the War on the Fortress Frontier of France" by Gerald Campbell. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Verdun 1916

William Martin
Verdun 1916 Book PDF

Author : William Martin
Publisher : Greenwood
Page : 104 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : History
ISBN : STANFORD:36105114352029

Get Book

Verdun 1916 by William Martin Pdf

"On 21 February 1916, German General Erich von Falkenhayn unleashed his hammer-blow offensive against the French fortress city of Verdun. His aim was nothing short of the destruction of the French army. He was sure that the symbolic value of Verdun was such that the French would be 'compelled to throw in every man they have.' He was equally sure that 'if they do so the forces of France will bleed to death.' The massed batteries of German guns would smash the French troops in their trenches and bunkers. However, the French hung on with immense courage and determination and the battle became a bloody battle of attrition"--Page 4 of cover.

The Road to Verdun

Ian Ousby
The Road to Verdun Book PDF

Author : Ian Ousby
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 344 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2002
Category : History
ISBN : UOM:39015053756600

Get Book

The Road to Verdun by Ian Ousby Pdf

"Verdun was the largest, the longest and the bloodiest battle between the French and Germans in the First World War, lasting from February 1916 until the end of the year and claiming more than 700,000 casualties. For the French in particular, it was always more than just a battle, being rather (in Paul Valery's words) 'a complete war in itself, inserted in the Great War'. Ian Ousby's new book gives a vivid, insightful account of the generals' planning and the troops' suffering. At the same time it challenges the narrow horizons of military history by locating the experience of Verdun in how the French had thought about themselves, their nation and their relations with their eastern neighbour since the debacle of the Franco-Prussian War. Verdun emerges as the mid-point in the cycle of Franco-German hostility, carrying both the burden of history and - if only by the presence on the battlefield of men like Petain and de Gaulle, France's two leaders in the next war - the seeds of the future. The Road to Verdun will radically challenge every reader's view of France - and of the very nature of warfare."

The Price of Glory

Alistair Horne
The Price of Glory Book PDF

Author : Alistair Horne
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2007-06-28
Category : History
ISBN : 9780141937526

Get Book

The Price of Glory by Alistair Horne Pdf

The battle of Verdun lasted ten months. It was a battle in which at least 700,000 men fell, along a front of fifteen miles. Its aim was less to defeat the enemy than bleed him to death and a battleground whose once fertile terrain is even now a haunted wilderness. Alistair Horne's classic work, continuously in print for over fifty years, is a profoundly moving, sympathetic study of the battle and the men who fought there. It shows that Verdun is a key to understanding the First World War to the minds of those who waged it, the traditions that bound them and the world that gave them the opportunity.

Petain

Robert Bowman Bruce
Petain Book PDF

Author : Robert Bowman Bruce
Publisher : Potomac Books, Inc.
Page : 190 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2011-09
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781612340685

Get Book

Petain by Robert Bowman Bruce Pdf

Few figures in modern French history have aroused more controversy than Marshal Philippe Pétain, who rose from obscurity to great fame in the First World War only to fall into infamy during the dark days of Nazi occupation in World War II. Pétain's brilliant theories of firepower and flexible defense, as well as his deep empathy for the soldiers of France and the horrific trials they endured on a daily basis, mark him as one of the greatest Allied generals of World War I. Yet today he is best remembered as the nearly senile marshal who was handed the reins of power in France in the midst of the disastrous 1940 campaign and tasked with seeking terms from Nazi Germany. His leadership of Vichy France from 1940 to 1944 and his postwar conviction of treason and lifetime exile to the Ile d'Yeu made him a scapegoat for the nation. This later perception forever tainted Pétain's military reputation as a soldier who served France his entire life and led the French Army through the crucible of Verdun, the morale crisis of 1917, and on to final victory in the Great War. He was despised for his actions as an octogenarian in June 1940. With the bulk of the French Army already destroyed and Paris itself wide-open to attack, Pétain, then eighty-four, immediately sought an armistice with Germany to halt further bloodshed. While others fled, Pétain took what he considered the braver course by staying and doing what he could to safeguard the remnants of his army and his nation. So began his descent into collaboration, treason, and the destruction of all that he had accomplished and stood for throughout his life.

The French Army and the First World War

Elizabeth Greenhalgh
The French Army and the First World War Book PDF

Author : Elizabeth Greenhalgh
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 487 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2014-11-13
Category : History
ISBN : 9781107012356

Get Book

The French Army and the First World War by Elizabeth Greenhalgh Pdf

A major new account of the role and performance of the French army in the First World War.

Verdun

Paul Jankowski
Verdun Book PDF

Author : Paul Jankowski
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 976 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2014-01-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9780199316915

Get Book

Verdun by Paul Jankowski Pdf

At seven o'clock in the morning on February 21, 1916, the ground in northern France began to shake. For the next ten hours, twelve hundred German guns showered shells on a salient in French lines. The massive weight of explosives collapsed dugouts, obliterated trenches, severed communication wires, and drove men mad. As the barrage lifted, German troops moved forward, darting from shell crater to shell crater. The battle of Verdun had begun. In Verdun, historian Paul Jankowski provides the definitive account of the iconic battle of World War I. A leading expert on the French past, Jankowski combines the best of traditional military history-its emphasis on leaders, plans, technology, and the contingency of combat-with the newer social and cultural approach, stressing the soldier's experience, the institutional structures of the military, and the impact of war on national memory. Unusually, this book draws on deep research in French and German archives; this mastery of sources in both languages gives Verdun unprecedented authority and scope. In many ways, Jankowski writes, the battle represents a conundrum. It has an almost unique status among the battles of the Great War; and yet, he argues, it was not decisive, sparked no political changes, and was not even the bloodiest episode of the conflict. It is said that Verdun made France, he writes; but the question should be, What did France make of Verdun? Over time, it proved to be the last great victory of French arms, standing on their own. And, for France and Germany, the battle would symbolize the terror of industrialized warfare, "a technocratic Moloch devouring its children," where no advance or retreat was possible, yet national resources poured in ceaselessly, perpetuating slaughter indefinitely.

Verdun

Paul Jankowski
Verdun Book PDF

Author : Paul Jankowski
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 346 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2014-04
Category : History
ISBN : 9780199316892

Get Book

Verdun by Paul Jankowski Pdf

Paul Jankowski offers a fresh look at Verdun, one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the First World War, in a book the will surely become the standard work on the topic.

The French Army on the Somme 1916

Ian Sumner
The French Army on the Somme 1916 Book PDF

Author : Ian Sumner
Publisher : Casemate Publishers
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2018-11-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9781526725493

Get Book

The French Army on the Somme 1916 by Ian Sumner Pdf

So much has been written about the 1916 Battle of the Somme that it might appear that every aspect of the four-month struggle has been described and analyzed in exhaustive detail. Yet perhaps one aspect has not received the attention it deserves the French sector in the south of the battlefield which is often overshadowed by events in the British sector further north. That is why Ian Sumner's photographic history of the French army on the Somme is so interesting and valuable.Using a selection of over 200 wartime photographs, many of which have not been published before, he follows the entire course of the battle from the French point of view. The photographs show the build-up to the Somme offensive, the logistics involved, the key commanders, the soldiers as they prepared to go into action and the landscape over which the battle took place. Equally close coverage is given to the fighting during each phase of the offensive the initial French advances, the mounting German resistance and the terrible casualties the French incurred.The photographs are especially important in that they record the equipment and weapons that were used, the clothing the men wore and the conditions in which they fought, and they provide us with a visual insight into the realities of battle over a hundred years ago. They also document some of the most famous sites on the battlefield before they were destroyed in the course of the fighting, including villages like Gommecourt, Pozires, La Boiselle and Thiepval.

Verdun 1916

William F. Buckingham
Verdun 1916 Book PDF

Author : William F. Buckingham
Publisher : Amberley Publishing Limited
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2016-01-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9781445641171

Get Book

Verdun 1916 by William F. Buckingham Pdf

A gripping narrative of the most infamous Western Front battle of the war. The British remember the Somme, Russia the Brusilov Offensive, and France and Germany remember Verdun