The Road to Verdun: World War I's Most Momentous Battle and the Folly of Nationalism [Hardcover]

Ian Ousby (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 14, 2002

A powerfully immediate and controversial account of one of the longest and bloodiest engagements of World War I.

In mid-February 1916, the Germans launched a surprise major offensive at Verdun, an important fortress in northeast France. By mid-March, more than 90,000 French troops had been killed or wounded. The fighting continued for seven long months, with casualties on both sides mounting in astonishing numbers. By the end of the year, the battle had claimed more than 700,000 victims. The butchery had little impact on the course of the war, and Verdun soon became the most potent symbol of the horrors of the war in general, and of trench warfare in particular.

Ian Ousby offers a radical, iconoclastic reevaluation of the meaning and import of this cataclysmic battle in The Road to Verdun. Moving beyond the narrow focus of most military historians, he argues that the French bear a tremendous responsibility for the senseless slaughter. In a work that merges intellectual substance and great battle writing, Ousby shows that the roots of the disaster lay in the French national character–the grandiose, even delusional way they perceived themselves, and their relentless determination to demonize Germans, which began in the debacle of the Franco-Prussian War. Ousby analyzes the generals’ battle plans, and provides a graphic, gripping account of the deprivations and inhumane suffering of the troops who manned the trenches. His incisive, moving descriptions make it painfully clear why the influential French critic and poet Paul Val?ry called Verdun “a complete war in itself, inserted in the Great War.”

In telling the story of Verdun, Ousby demonstrates that the confrontation marked a critical midpoint in Franco-German hostility. The battle not only carried the burden of history, but with the presence on the battlefield of France’s future leaders–including Pétain and de Gaulle–it fed an increasingly venomous enmity between France and Germany, and lay the groundwork for World War II.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"If you haven't seen Verdun, you haven't seen anything of war," said one veteran infantryman of the First World War, referring to a particularly gruesome episode in a four-year clash known for its monotonous brutality. More than 300,000 men were killed at Verdun, out of more than 700,000 total casualties. "By any standards, the figures are formidable: almost one death a minute, day and night, for the ten months that the battle lasted," writes Ian Ousby, who expresses astonishment at "how much suffering was expended and how many lives were lost over strips of ground so small, so insignificant." It began in February, 1916, when the Germans launched an offensive against the French. Neither army made much headway against the other, even as the deaths on both sides rose to staggering proportions. This was typical of the trench warfare of the time. In one sense, Verdun was not much different from other battles in the war; Ousby even calls it a "microcosm" of the larger conflict. Yet, he also argues that it was the war's bleakest and most hopeless scene of engagement. Ousby offers a chronicle of the fighting, and writes from the French perspective--much of the book, in fact, ruminates on the meaning of French nationalism. This combination of military and intellectual history makes The Road to Verdun a top-rate addition to First World War literature. --John Miller

From Publishers Weekly

British polymath Ousby, who edited The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English among many other titles, died last year at 54. Following up on his previous, much-praised historical work, Occupation: The Ordeal of France 1940-1944, this sadly posthumous book is a new triumph. The 1916 Battle of Verdun was the longest and one of the bloodiest of WWI: lasting 10 months, the battle killed 700,000 French and German soldiers, 10% of all those killed in the war. Yet a sense of glory was maintained, however inappropriately, amid the gore: the road leading to the battlefield was called the Sacred Way, and the French General Neville gained immortality by his brave statement, "They [the Germans] shall not pass." Ousby divides the story into three parts: "Friction at Verdun, February 1916"; "The Endless Crisis, 1870-1914" and "The Mill on the Meuse, March-December 1916." Ousby shows how the French loss to the Germans in 1870, followed by their losing the regions of Alsace and Lorraine, was essential background for understanding Gallic heroism at Verdun. Unlike those French who were quick to surrender to the Nazis in WWII, in 1916 they were resolved to win or die. So they did both, as Ousby notes, quoting the chilled reaction of one French soldier, Jacques P‚ricard, when he trips over the face of a dead soldier in the snow. Even today, 150,000 unidentified dead soldiers are commemorated by rows of white crosses at Verdun, a ghastly memorial to the carnage. Ousby's account is a must for any modern world history buff.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1 edition (May 14, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385503938
• ISBN-13: 978-0385503938
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #925,817 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nationalism and Total War, January 27, 2007

By 

Brent Wigen (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Road to Verdun: World War I's Most Momentous Battle and the Folly of Nationalism (Paperback)

Ian Ousby's book about the battle waged around the French town of Verdun in 1916 is a battlefield history combined with a sociological study. Its ultimate goal is to explain to the reader how historical events and the rise of nationalist thought conspired to create the circumstances that made Verdun the "charnel house" that it is now so recognized for having been. Ousby's ultimate goal is to provide understanding of why either side would fight such a battle, where every inch of ground was contested and in many cases, proper military strategy regarding strategic retreats and the holding of untenable positions was ignored, resulting in wholesale slaughter, and as Ousby puts it, a battle not between armies, but for the survival of nations.

Ousby begins the book with a lengthy foreword, followed by the description of the buildup and first three months of the battle around Verdun. We learn of the German preparations for the battle, as well as the valiant French stand in the Bois de Caures, heroes like Colonel Driant, and eventually the fall of Ft. Douaumont. Ousby's narrative of the battle is not overly detailed, but conveys the desperation of the French situation and the hits all the high points of the first days of the battle.

The book's second section turns to history, primarily regarding the French--from the Revolution to the Franco-Prussian war of 1870--and how over time, the French view themselves. They are described as the world's avant garde, despite their self-destructive nature; their differences are what bring them together and make them great, while also tearing them apart. Ousby goes on to discuss how the "violation" of Alsace-Lorraine, and the national reaction to the loss of those territories, helped to consolidate the French identity as well as the French view of the newly-formed German nation. Ultimately, Ousby states, many factors combined to create the situation at Verdun, where the battle came to be seen as a war for the survival of the French "race," not just an effort to oust an invader. This part of the book bogged down a bit for me; I found it fairly rambling, though informative. However, I did find certain aspects of it interesting, particularly the role that science played in establishing differences and attempting to establish superiority between the different "races" of Europeans, many vestiges of which remained well into WWII.

The third section of the book takes us back to Verdun, where the French hold the line against the Germans and the battle eventually slows as the Somme offensive kicks off. Ousby details how close the French come to the breaking point, how low morale had sunk in the French army, and ultimately, the poilu's true distrust and disdain for those who lived their lives in "l'arriere," and how the true story of the battle was not told in the media, it was a shared secret that only the combatants at "l'avant" truly knew.

I think Ousby's assertions were more or less effective, though he really doesn't go on to explain why, applying the same theory, the British would fight similar battles at Ypres and the Somme, presuming that their nationlistic fervor and view of the fight weren't necessarily shared with the French. The best parts of this book were the soldiers' individual accounts; Ousby was fairly liberal with diary entries of combatants, which really went a long way to illustrating the terrors and destruction that took place around Verdun in 1916. This isn't a complete battlefield history; rather, it is a study in nationalism and its effect on conflict between peoples, using one of history's most terrible battles as its subject matter.

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Moonscape of the patriots, August 26, 2002

By 

John C. Landon "nemonemini" (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Road to Verdun: World War I's Most Momentous Battle and the Folly of Nationalism (Hardcover)

This new account of the battle of Verdun (cf. Alistair Horne's The Price of Glory) and its place in the warfare of World War I is not comprehensively detailed in its battlefield account (perhaps usefully so) but extremely good at the overall context, history since the era of 1870 and the Franco-Prussian war, and the mood, general tenor, and nationalistic mystique that mesmerized the defense of the great fort. It is disconcerting to consider abandoning Verdun in a step backward to the nearby rear terrain might have proven a better vantage and have saved lives. But the reflex to defend the 'symbol' at all costs, and a very steep cost at that, was overwhelming, and finally successful--in winning back some few squares miles of cratered moonscape. The strange character of this battle is its lack of definition, beginning with the ambiguous lack of direct objectives of the German Falkenhayn whose tactic seems to have been to send men over the top, merely to bleed the enemy through attrition. The author also brings out the issue of the Social Darwinism of the times, although, as all too often, letting Darwin's theory off the hook. There is little distinction between 'Social Darwinism' and 'Darwinism' in its shadowy background influence on the tenor of a whole generation. The description of the troops on the march returning meeting the troops arriving, along the Voie Sacree, tells the tale, the ghosts of the trenches, in a Verdun book of the dead.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This is not the story of Verdun, but of what led up to it and let it continue, March 27, 2007

By 

Grey Wolffe "Zeb Kantrowitz" (North Waltham, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Road to Verdun: World War I's Most Momentous Battle and the Folly of Nationalism (Paperback)

Ousby has divided the book into three sections: the first is the beginning of the attack on Verdun in 1914 and the German attack in 1916; the second is supposed to be a history of France from 1870 to 1914, but is really an historical polemic that begins with the French Revolution of 1789 and goes all the way up to the 1940 surrender; the third section is the French reaction to the German advance and their counter-attack.

The best part of Ousby's book is his retelling of the accounts and memories of the men who fought at Verdun (almost all French) and the long range effect of the number of men who seemed to have been thrown away like so much detritus. We hear about Generals who are known by names like the 'Mangeur' or the maneater, and others that are famous for telling their men to hold to the last man. But the saddest part is reading about how men can become innured to death and talk about fighting along side the 'dead' and those who will be dead. The troops take on a lackadaisical attitude towards life, knowing that they are being sent to their deaths, and in many cases for no reason except that the Generals can say they are trying to do something.

Life can be made cheap (ask anyone involved in the drug trade), but soldiers who will willingly 'sacrifice' for their country, don't want to be 'sacrificed' (it should be voluntary). It's especially poignant that almost three-quarters of the French Army served at Verdun at one time or other. This made a bonding of the survivors that could not be understood by anyone who didn't serve and had lasting effects well into the last half of the twentieth century.

The middle part of the book is a wonderful explanation by Ousby as to why he feels, what happened at Verdun was bound to happen because of the way the French Military was trying to win back its' honor after being destroyed in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and losing the provinces of Alsace and Northern Lorraine. Whereas in prior wars, land was gained and lost, France had not changed much since the days of Louis XIV and that the growth of 'nationalism' and the creation of the 'French people' (like the German 'Volk') made the loss of land equal to the amputation of a limb. It was an open wound that wasn't going away and was always there to see.

If your looking for a straight forward military history of the battle, go somewhere else, but if you want to understand WHY the battle happened and WHY it happened the way it did, read this book.