The second phase of the battle
- Date:
- February 21, 1916 - December 18, 1916
- Location:
- France
- Meuse River
- Verdun
- Context:
- Western Front
- World War I
The Germans had failed to gain an immediate decision at Verdun, and they soon realized that the British army was preparing an attack on the Somme. For the next four months, they kept the Battle of Verdun going with furious tenacity in order to disorganize the attack being prepared by the Allies in Picardy. For its part, the French general staff was faced with the problem of holding on at Verdun without ceasing to prepare for the Somme, exhausting the Germans as much as possible in advance of the planned Allied summer offensive.
On March 4 the Germans captured Douaumont village. The town was razed during the battle, and the widespread presence of unexploded ordnance throughout the area ensured that it could not be rebuilt. The Germans expanded the scope of their attacks to the west bank of the Meuse, and on March 6 two reserve corps crossed the river at Brabant and occupied the Hill de 1’Oie. On March 10 the Germans captured the Bois de Cumières, clearing the way for an attack on one of the pillars of the main French line of defense, a hill known as Le Mort Homme (“the Dead Man”). Both sides suffered tens of thousands of casualties during the furious engagements, and on March 14 the Germans captured the lower crest of Le Morte Homme. The higher crest, known as Peak 295, could be held by neither side and was considered No Man’s Land.
The battle was now raging on both banks of the Meuse. On March 8 the Germans captured the defensive works surrounding Hardaumont on the right bank, and they spent the next 10 days engaging in a series of bloody but inconclusive attacks on the fort and village of Vaux. On the left bank the Germans overran the Bois d’Avocourt on March 20 as a prelude to an assault on the French strongpoint at Hill 304, but that attack failed to develop. The Germans brought up fresh troops, and on March 28 the battle began again on the left bank; on the right bank the Germans captured the village of Vaux on March 31. By April 8 the French had lost all that remained of their former front line on the left bank of the Meuse. The new front passed through Avocourt, the first slopes of Hill 304, the southern reverse of Le Mort Homme, and to the north of Cumières. On April 9 the crown prince ordered an attack on both banks on a scale not known since the opening offensive in February, but the gains were insignificant.
The bloody stalemate continued through April as both armies rotated their commanding officers. Pétain was promoted to commander of Army Group Centre, and his former command was divided, with Robert-Georges Nivelle taking charge of French forces on the right bank and Henri Berthelot leading the defense on the left. The German command had also divided the field of battle into two sections, with Gen. Ewald von Lochow replacing Gen. Bruno von Mudra on the right bank; Gen. Max von Gallwitz commanded the left bank until he was replaced by Gen. Hermann von François in July. On May 8 the Germans captured the Bois Camard but were unable to parlay that advance into a successful assault on the French strongpoint at Hill 304. The village of Cumières fell in heavy fighting on May 24, but the German gains were partially reversed days later, owing to a French attack on Douaumont that immobilized German reinforcements destined for the left bank. As each army continued to seek the advantage at Verdun, preparations for the upcoming Somme offensive exerted pressure on both sides to push for a hasty and conclusive resolution to the battle.
On June 1 the Germans attacked Vaux and Thiaumont, two strongpoints in the French line on the right bank. After days of back-and-forth combat, the Germans captured both positions on June 9, but they were unable to carry their attack through to the defensive works south of Thiaumont. Fighting on the left bank was largely inconclusive, but on June 15 the French reclaimed roughly a little more than a half mile (one kilometre) of trenches on Le Mort Homme. Such minor gains, which came at an enormous cost in lives, would typify the horrors of trench warfare on the Western Front.
While the Germans retained the initiative at Verdun, their efforts were frustrated by events nearly 1,000 miles (1,600 km) away. On June 4 Russian Gen. Aleksey Brusilov launched a devastating offensive in Volhynia (now in Ukraine) that led to the capture of 200,000 Austro-Hungarian troops in the space of just three days. Forced to divert attention to the Eastern Front when victory at Verdun seemed imminent, the Germans renewed their attack on the right bank on June 21. The town of Fleury fell, as did the first line of trenches in front of Souville, but the offensive stalled at the French strongpoint at Froide Terre. By June 23 the situation had become so dire for the French that Pétain, as sector commander, advised relocating to the left bank if the Germans advanced farther; on June 27 he was ordered to hold the right bank at all costs.