The story of this place
On 21 February 1916 the German Army launched a colossal offensive against the fortress city of Verdun, aiming, in General Falkenhayn's words, to 'bleed France white'. For ten months the two armies ground each other down across a shattered moonscape of shell craters, with the rallying cry 'Ils ne passeront pas'—They shall not pass. Some 40 million shells fell; combined casualties approached 700,000 dead and wounded. Nine villages were obliterated so utterly they were never rebuilt, marked today only by signs reading 'died for France'. Verdun became the defining ordeal of the French nation, and Pétain, its defender, a hero—decades before his disgrace at Vichy.