Chancellor Helmut Köhl promoted the encounter. During the fortieth anniversary of the end of WWII, he openly declared that he was very relieved not to have been invited to take part in the commemorations of the Normandy Landing that he considered «ambivalent» since too closely linked to the German defeat. Following this declaration, a ceremony reserved exclusively for the Germans and the French was organized in Verdun, a place linked to a tragic violent confrontation between the two nations.

On 22 September 1984, in the national necropolis adjacent to the Douaumont Ossuary, both men paused for a moment of silence in front of a catafalque draped in French and German flags as the German national anthem played. Just before the band started playing the Marseillaise, the French president took the hand of the German Chancellor. The two men stood hand-in-hand during the performance of the French national anthem.

This strong gesture between two heads of state of different political allegiance marked a new development in the symbolic meaning of Verdun as the Place of Memory for Franco-German Reconciliation.

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The inscription for the Memorial’s entrance is from French writer and WWI veteran Maurice Genevoix. It summarizes the rationale for this Memorial :

«This Memorial was built by the survivors of Verdun in memory of their comrades who fell in battle, so that those who come to reflect and meditate at the site of their sacrifice understand the Ideal and Faith that inspired and sustained them».

The project was led by the National Committed for the Memory of Verdun, chaired by Maurice Genevoix. A national campaign was set up to raise the funds for the construction of the Memorial, its selected location was the former train station of Fleury-devant-Douaumont, a small French village situated on the front line that was the scene of hard fighting during Spring 1916, captured and recaptured by the Germans and the French sixteen times.

The Memorial, also a military museum that embodies the motto «They Shall Not Pass», was inaugurated on 17 September 1967. Post WWII France was a time when the Souvenir of Verdun was gradually fading. It was also a time when WWI veterans started realising that they were slowly disappearing. The comprehensive modernisation of the museum is nearing completion. The new design aims to present the Franco-German Battle intended and presented as such. The project also acknowledges that the founding fathers have all passed away and that Verdun has not only become a Symbol of the Great War but also the Symbol of Franco-German Reconciliation.

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Monseigneur Ginisty requested that a memorial monument and a tower be erected at Verdun in memory of the countless unidentified soldiers who died on the battlefield so that bereaved relatives and friends could come and pay their last respects. On 22 August 1920, the foundation stone was laid by Monseigneur Charles Ginisty and Marshal Philippe Pétain, Honorary President of the Ossuary Committee.

In order to finance the construction of the Ossuary, a committee convened by Monseigneur Ginisty and veterans associations promoted the project. Over fifteen million francs were collected from 100 French, foreign cities and private donators through massive funding. The state contributed to one million francs for the completion of the construction works.

The bones were transferred from a temporary ossuary in 1927. The ossuary was officially inaugurated on 7 August 1932 by President of France, Monsieur Albert Lebrun during a ceremony attended by a huge crowd of veterans and families of victims of war.

This impressive architectural statement is the work of French architects Léon Azéma, Max Edrei and Jacques Hardy. The Ossuary is 137 metres long. It consists of a cloister of 42 inside alcoves and apses containing 46 tombs, each representing one of the 52 main sectors of the battlefield and containing the remains of more than 130,000 unknown French and German soldiers who lost their lives on the field of honour. Above the central entrance rises to 46 meters a lantern tower, the “Lantern of the Dead” designed to illuminate the surrounding battlefield, shining like a searchlight at night.

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After replacing him by General Robert Nivelle, General Joseph Joffre, Commander-in-Chief of the French Army, promoted General Pétain to Commander of the Army Group Centre on 1 May 1916.

During the battle, General Pétain distinguished himself by his meticulous attention to detail while remaining very active in the development of the operations. It is indisputable that the combination of the extraordinary resilience, courage and sacrifice of Verdun’s «Poilus» led to the final victory. However, General Pétain’s own charisma and excellent organizational skills also played a significant role. General Pétain proved to be an energetic and brilliant chief. He masterfully reorganized the transport system in order to improve the insufficient railroad communications with the rear, readily understood the importance of air power that implied to win the air battle and is best remembered for boosting his troops’ morale with his famous order issued on 10 April 1916: «Courage! We shall get them».

However, General Joffre, who favoured Generals Nivelle and Mangin, both disciples of the offensive doctrine, gradually removed General Pétain from the chain of operational command of the Verdun sector (RFV). During the French Army Mutinies of 1917, General Pétain postponed the useless deadly offensives and granted more leaves to provide rest for his exhausted units. His sincere concern for the well-being of his men greatly increased his popularity.

According to French historian Marc Ferro, there are two distinct beliefs surrounding the Victory of Verdun. The first one adopted by the military chiefs and politicians who attributed the Victory to General Nivelle; and the second one by which all the fighting men hailed General Pétain as their only Commander. During the Second World War, Vichy propaganda was to make good use of the mythic aureole of the «Saviour of Verdun».

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During the same year, François Simon, President of the Rennes section of the French Remembrance Society, proposed that the remains of an unidentified dead French soldier be laid at rest in the Panthéon in Paris in commemoration of the thousands of dead men who were denied a proper burial.

On 8 November 1920, following the wish of French veterans’ organizations who favoured the Arc de Triomphe, members of French Parliament voted unanimously in favour of the transfer to Paris of the remains of one of the unknown soldiers who fell on the field of honour during the 1914-1918 war and his burial under the Arc de Triomphe. There is a symbolic dimension to the fact that the selection was made from eight identical coffins, each bearing the remains of a soldier fallen on the field of honour and placed in an underground casemate of the Citadel of Verdun. The ceremony took place on 10 November under the supervision of French minister of Pensions André Maginot, a WWI veteran who received a severe leg wound in Maucourt-sur-Orne, near Verdun in November 1914.

On 11 November 1923, the Flame of Remembrance was lit for the first time on the Tomb of the Unknown French Soldier. It has been rekindled each night ever since. Since 1980, on the first day of November of each year, members of the Committee of the Voie Sacrée and the Voie de la Liberté bring the eternal flame to Verdun and place it in the crypt of the Monument for the Victory where its burns until 11 November.

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On 10 April 1916, General Pétain issued his famous order of the day to the troops :

«Courage ! We shall get them».

With two-thirds of the French Army rotating in and out of Verdun, a battlefield where no Allied troops took part, this emblematic battle rapidly epitomized the courage and determination of the French «Poilu».

On 13 September, as the German embrace begun to loosen, the President of France, Monsieur Raymond Poincaré awarded the city of Verdun the Croix de Guerre (Cross War) and the Legion of Honour. In his speech, he revealed the symbolic nature of the city :

«These are the walls against which the supreme hopes of Imperial Germany were shattered. […] It is here that France responds with unmoved assertiveness: «They Shall Not Pass ! ».

«Verdun They Shall Not Pass!» became the motto inscribed on the Verdun Medal created on 20 November 1916 by the Municipal Council of Verdun to be awarded to «the High Chiefs, Officers, Soldiers, to All. The heroes, known and unknown, both dead and living, who have triumphed over the barbarous onslaught and immortalised her name throughout the world and for ages to come, the Town of Verdun, inviolate and standing on her ruins».

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The small village of Fleury-devant-Douaumont was captured and recaptured sixteen times during the summer of 1916. Once the battle was over, nothing was left of these small villages excepted for a vast field of ruins, a tangled wreck of concrete, steel and dust littered with corpses and unexploded ordnance. This chain of non-contiguous devastated landscapes could be seen all along the Western Front. At the end of 1918, French authorities designated as «Zone Rouge» (Red Zone) all the lands that had been completely devastated, impossible to clean and inhabit. In the Verdun sector where the landscape was brutally devastated by war to become a national symbol, French authorities decided that the memory of nine villages that had been annihilated should be preserved as a testimony of war and officially declared that they had «Died for France».

Today, the only testimonies left of these “destroyed villages” are some ruins, a small chapel built on the site of a former church and some signs stating where the shops, baker, school and farms once stood. These nine villages are administered by unelected mayors who are symbolically maintaining their administrative existence. In accordance with French Law on War Damages, the French government bought 7,000 hectares of former farmland from these villages that added up to the 10,000 hectares of battleground already purchased. The whole area was designated a «Red Zone» meaning that any construction is prohibited have been reforested.

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At the end of June, at the height of the German offensive, French General Staff prepared for street-to-street and house-to-house fighting. Constantly under heavy enemy shellfire, the city of Verdun became both a Martyred City and a Besieged Fortress. Yet, ironically, the city was looked upon a haven of peace for French troops billeted there prior to being sent to or returning from the front lines.

The city owed its key role in the defence of the sector to its citadel but more particularly to the 4 kilometres (2.4 miles) of tunnels dug between 1886 and 1893 under 16 meters (52 feet) of rock. The citadel transformed itself into a subterranean city, a safe refuge from German artillery bombardment, fully equipped with immense dormitories for the troops, offices, depots, a bakery, an infirmary, a switchboard and a telegraph service. It was in the symbolic site of the Citadel that President Poincaré bestowed the Legion of Honour upon the heroic city of Verdun during his visit on 13 September 1916 and, a few years later, where the selection for the Unknown French Soldier took place on 10 November 1920.

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During the Middle-Ages the three Bishoprics of Verdun, Metz and Toul passed under the suzerainty of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1553, Henry II of France seized the city. Following the Peace of Westphalia, it was ceded to France in 1648.

After France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the newly created German Empire annexed most of Alsace and the Moselle department of Lorraine. The proximity of the new border and the recently annexed Citadel of Metz contributed to make Verdun – where the French had acquitted themselves honourably during the siege – a major strategic point within the defensive barrier constructed by Séré de Rivières to protect France against its powerful German neighbour.

A ring of nineteen forts was built and fourteen kilometres of galleries dug under the fortress known as the Citadel of Verdun. In the context of the war of movement unleashed during the summer of 1914, French Military High Command ordered without moral compunction the evacuation of forces of the fortifications despite their strategic importance in September 1914. Indeed, it was the Battle of Verdun that was to make the city the Symbol of the Great War.

The post The “hyperbataille” of Verdun, twentieth episode : the city of Verdun, prior to the battle first appeared on The News blog.

However, the Battle of Verdun was not any deadlier than other battles that took place during this first industrial war. It is French National Remembrance that made Verdun the National Symbol of the Horrors of War and the terrible carnage of the Great War. This can be explained by the enormous extent of human losses concentrated on such a small area. Another explaination lies in the duration of the Battle and the configuration of a battlefield that was incessantly under heavy artillery fire and where all was doomed to destruction, including temporary graves.

All these factors played a major part in the life of the soldier condemned to live amongst the corpses of his friends or enemies. All the accounts of WWI veterans testify to the fact that life in the trenches meant living amongst dislocated bodies in decomposition, some of them ending up as elements of trenches or parapet that provided a precarious shelter to the survivors. This mass destruction was even omnipresent in the air. The suffocating smell of the front lines coming from mixed odours of gas and putrefying bodies permeated the air for miles around.

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