The Road to Verdun: France, Nationalism and the First World War

By Ian Ousby

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 northeastern France. By mid-March, more than 90,000 French troops had been killed or wounded. The fighting continued for seven long months, and, 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 trench warfare.

Ian Ousby offers a radical, iconoclastic re-evaluation of the meaning and import of this cataclysmic battle in The Road to Verdun. Moving beyond the narrow focus of most military historians, Ousby shows that the roots of the disaster lay in the French national character and their relentless determination to demonize Germans, which began in the debacle of the Franco-Prussian War.

Ousby analyses 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 Valéry called Verdun “a complete war in itself, inserted in the Great War.”