Think of France, and a
hundred images flood our minds; excellent wine, delicious food (served in
decidedly non-American portion sizes), art, history, the Eiffel Tower, skiing
in the alps, and bicycle racing, just to name a few.
But mention the French Army
to an American, and all these images disappear: replaced by a cynical
perception of an army that won’t fight, and surrenders at the first opportunity.
This perception is so
widespread that no explanation is needed. It’s just implicit. Nobody questions it; nobody except for the
one group that doesn’t buy into it at all—historians—who know that this bit of
slander has no basis in fact. It’s just one
of those caricatures that has been repeated so often over such a long period of
time that many people accept it without question. There is a certain amusement to this caricature,
enough so that many people resent being set straight.
But for those who are
willing to revisit this long-held belief with an open mind, we are at an
historical crossroad.
One hundred years ago the
French, along with their British and Belgian allies were locked in a bloody
stalemate, stuck in trench lines that stretched from the Swiss border to the
English Channel. Time after time, one
side would try to advance, only to be repulsed with heavy losses. Then the German high command came up with a
planned offensive so monumentally huge that it would ‘bleed France white’,
forcing them to surrender.
The fortress and area around
Verdun were not an important strategic target, but held great value in the
hearts and minds of the French. The
Germans chose to attack there, simply because they knew the French would spare
nothing to defend there. In that they
were absolutely right.
To get an idea of the scale
of the violence of the initial assault, in the first two days of the offensive,
The Germans hurled over two million high-explosive artillery shells into a
seven-mile stretch of French defenses near Verdun, killing tens of thousands of
French soldiers. Pause for a minute to
consider the sound of millions of artillery shells exploding all around you,
for days at a time.
Because of their incredible
advantage of men, artillery, and airpower, the Germans were able to advance a
few miles in the first few weeks. But
ultimately, they were stopped short of Verdun itself. The battle continued for ten months, making
Verdun the longest single battle in the history of Western Europe.
In the end the French ‘won’
the Battle of Verdun – by the only standards that mattered in that war of
wholesale slaughter fighting over feet and inches. After their initial losses, the French defenders
regained all the ground that had been lost.
But in ten months of fighting, as many French and German soldiers were
killed in action in that seven mile battle front as in the Union and
Confederacy combined in the entire four years of the American Civil War – even heavy
fighting continued elsewhere all along the Western Front.
Verdun was the longest
duration battle ever to take place in Western Europe, and, despite terribly
lopsided odds against them, the French army prevailed.
Hardly what one would expect
of ‘surrender monkeys’.
