The Price of Glory (61 page)

Weygand, General. (I)
Mangin (Discours)
, Paris 1929.

(2)
Histoire de ľArmée Française
, Paris 1953.

Wienskowski, Major von.
Falkenhayn
, Berlin 1937.

Wilhelm, Crown Prince of Germany. (I)
The Memoirs of the Crown Prince of Germany
, London 1922.

(2)
My War Experiences
, London 1922.

Williams, Wythe.
Dusk of Europe
, London 1937.

Wintringham, T. H.
Mutiny
, London 1936.

Witkop, Philip (ed).
German Students War Diaries
, London 1929.

Wolff, Leon.
In Flanders Fields
, London 1959.

Ziegler, Wilhelm.
Verdun
, Hamburg 1936.

Zieser-Beringer, H.
Der Einsame Feldherr—Die Wahrheit Über Verdun
, Berlin 1934.

Zoeberlein, Hans.
Der Glaube an Deutschland
, Munich 1934.

Zwehl, General von. (1)
Maubeuge, Aisne, Verdun;
Berlin 1921

(2)
Erich von Falkenhayn
, Berlin 1926.

Zweig, Arnold.
Education before Verdun
, London 1916.

REFERENCE NOTES

T
HIS
book has made use of conversations with veterans of Verdun and their relatives, First War historians and military analysts, but above all published material. After the passage of nearly half a century, there is probably little of value that has not yet appeared in print; certainly no battle of the First War has had more written about it than Verdun. The foregoing bibliography contains published works that have all been used to greater or lesser extent by the author, but it is by no means complete. In terms of value, the material depends greatly on the date when it was written; among the analytic works, those published either under the fog of war or very shortly afterwards have obvious limitations, while in Germany many that appeared after 1933 bear the stamp of the Nazi distortion of History, and tend to glorify German deeds at Verdun while glossing over the errors. Of the eye-witness accounts, the best are those written closest to the events, but not published until the removal of the deadening hand of censorship.

Certain published sources have been used in almost every chapter. For details of operations and orders, there are the two official histories; of the
Service Historique
of the French Army and the
Reichkriegsministerium.
For objectiveness combined with occasional vivid depiction of the battle, the four semi-official volumes of the
Reichs Archives
are the best German material. Among French works, General Palat’s history is rare in that it makes no attempt to play down the disasters and
défaillances
occurring among the French forces. A good recent pictorial history of Verdun is provided by J-H Lefebvre (though based largely on material to be found in Pericard’s huge work). For a penetrating analysis of the German strategy, Wendt is outstanding. To anyone writing about the French in the First War, Jean Norton Cru’s
Témoins
is invaluable. This is almost a life’s work by a Franco-American professor which soberly evaluates and classifies every eye-witness account to appear on the French side, pricking many
belles légendes.
Unfortunately, nothing similar was produced in Germany, where in any case the eye-witness material is poorer both in quantity and quality. Of the books written by the various leaders, the Crown Prince’s, Poincaré’s and Pétain’s struck me as outstanding; Pétain’s is notable among such works for its brevity and its few attempts at self-justification. Liddell Hart’s brief characterisations of Joffre, Falkenhayn and Pétain in
Reputations
still seem just and true-to-life. Finally, it would be hard to write anything about Verdun without repeated reference to Churchill’s
The World Crisis
.

The following notes lists the principal source material used in each chapter, in addition to the above; works to be found in the bibliography bear the author’s name only; where there is more than one by the same author, the appropriate number is given; where a work is not listed in the bibliography the title is given in full.

Chapter One

On 1870, Michael Howard’s recent book
The Franco-Prussian War
is hard to beat; also Emile Zola’s
La Débâcle
for description of the humiliation of the French Army. Background of the years 1870–1914; Brogan, Chastenet (1 & 2). Re-creation of the French Army; de Gaulle, Weygand (2). German and French war plans; Fuller, Liddell Hart (1), Falls, Foerster.

Chapter Two

The initial clash: Churchill, Junger, Spears. Joffre and G.Q.G.: Liddell Hart (2), Spears, Pierrefeu, Desmazes, Joffre, Varillon.

Chapter Three

Personality of Falkenhayn: Zwehl (2), Wienskowski, Liddell Hart (2), Zieser-Beringer. The Kaiser’s life during the war: Kurenberg, Admiral Georg von Muller (
The Kaiser and His Court
), Sturgkh.

Chapter Four

Analysis of Falkenhayn’s strategy, here and later; Wendt, Foerster, Kabisch (2). Details of German preparation for
GERICHT;
Ettighoffer, Crown Prince (2), Bansi, Wendt. Terrain of Verdun; Johnson. French unpreparedness; de Thomasson. First warnings of German plans; principally Morin & Andrieu; Paquet, Cuneo.

Chapter Five

Waiting in the German lines; Ettighoffer, Unruh, Pericard. The ‘Waiting Machine’ quote is from Barbusse. German and French order-of-battle;
Reichs Archives
Vol. 13,
¹
Grasset, Palat. Life in the trenches and general background; Mornet, Barbusse, Ducasse &c. Hospital conditions; Duhamel (1 & 2).

Chapter Six

Best accounts of XXX Corps’ role in the battle, here and later; Grasset, Paquet, Palat. First moments of bombardment in Bois des Caures; Jollivet, Stéphane, Grasset. German account of initial attack; RA (13), Zwehl (1).

Chapter Seven

Fighting in Bois des Caures and death of Driant; Pericard, Jollivet, Stéphane, RA (13).

Chapter Eight

Interchanges between Generals Chrétien and Bapst; Becker, de Thomasson. The disaster at Samogneux; Zwehl (1), Queri, RA (13), Palat, Haig’s comment on the 37th African Division is drawn from Blake, and details of its breaking from Palat and Becker. Heroism of the ‘trainee corporals’; Delvert and Bouchor, Delvert (2), Palat. Last moments of XXX Corps and arrival of XX Corps; Muenier, Becker.

Chapter Nine

De Castelnau’s quote on the forts comes from Percin
(Les Erreurs du Haut Commandement).
German accounts of the capture of Fort Douaumont; above all von Klüfer, the C.O. of the Battalion of the 24th Branden-burgers that made the capture, who devoted most of his life on leaving the army to compiling a minute by minute account of the capture. His book was not published until the eve of World War II, when interest in Douaumont had waned. Also RA (13), Radtke, Brandis, Bansi. Description of Fort Douaumont; Menager, Rouquerol, Lefebvre. French failure to occupy the fort; Passaga, Rouquerol, Marchal, Becker, de Thomasson, Pericard. French demoralisation after Douaumont; Lefebvre, Palat, Morel-Journel, Dubrulle.

Chapter Ten

Reactions at Chantilly to disasters at Verdun, and de Castelnau’s mission; Joffre, Pierrefeu, Ferry, Poincaré. Background to de Castelnau; Pierrefeu, Liddell Hart (2), Spears. Winston Churchill’s comment on ‘meeting an artillery attack’ is quoted from
The London Magazine
of November 1916.

Chapter Eleven

The ‘disappearance’ of Pétain; Serrigny. On the character of Pétain a great deal has been written, much of it violently biassed in one extreme or another. As one of the Instructors of Military History at the École de Guerre warned the author, ‘one should not rely too much on anything about Pétain that was written either in the heat of the First War, or of the Second War’. Principal sources referred to in this book; Pierrefeu, Liddell Hart (2), Serrigny, Laure (though written with a propaganda slant as the ‘official’ biography in Vichy days), Guedalla, de Gaulle, Bolton. François-Poncet’s
Éloge
to the Academie Française in 1953, moving yet balanced, is a classic. Aron’s view of Pétain in his latter days is also notably fair.

Chapter Twelve

Pétain’s arrival at Verdun; Serrigny, Lavisse
(Histoire de France Contemporaine,
Vol. IX), Pétain, RA (13). The
Voie Sacrée
; Pétain, Romains, Pellegrin, Heuzé, Irwin, Lavisse, Brogan.

Chapter Thirteen

Account of the first German setbacks at Verdun; Crown Prince (2), RA (13), Zwehl (1), Wendt, Kabisch (2), Unruh, Falkenhayn, Hoffmann, Marchal, Rupprecht.

Chapter Fourteen

The fighting for the Mort Homme and Côte 304; RA (15), Colin Frantzius, Johnson, Bouvard, Serrigny, Campana, Cochin, Laurentin, Pericard. The French disaster at Avocourt; Poincaré, Palat, Marchal.

Chapter Fifteen

For evaluation of French eye-witness accounts, here and elsewhere; Cru. The list of all sources used in this chapter would cover several pages, but — in addition to the authors given the highest ratings by Cru — the following have been particularly useful: Lefebvre, Pericard, Bartlett, RA (all vols), Unruh, Witkop, Debeney,
L’Illustration
, Irwin,
New York Times
, Bordeaux (1). For life of artillerymen at Verdun; Delvert (1), Henches, Fonsagrive, Humbert, Pastre. Again, Duhamel’s accounts of conditions for the wounded are outstanding; also Muenier.

Chapter Sixteen

For a good all-round picture of life in France behind the lines, two recently published works; Ducasse, &c. and Chastenet (2); also Brogan, Bonnefous. The background in Germany; Kurenberg, Muller (
ibid
), Ambassador James W. Gerard (
My Four Years in Germany
), Remarque’s
All Quiet on the Western Front
, Falls, Kabisch (2).

Chapter Seventeen

There is a large bibliography on the air war in general. Among recent publications, Quentin Reynolds is extremely readable. Sources with particular reference to Verdun include: Lafont, de Chavagnes, Werner, Cuneo, Mortane, ‘Vigilant’ (
French War Birds
), Bordeaux (5), Air Ministry, Hoeppner, Supf, Kiernan, Ritter. Published sources on the Lafayette Squadron; Reynolds, Parsons, Hall & Nordhoff, McConnell, Lefebvre.

Chapter Eighteen

Chapman is the source of the aside on Shackleton returning from the South Pole. Principal sources for the dispute between Falkenhayn and the Crown Prince, as for
Chapter Four
; also of course Crown Prince (2) and Falkenhayn, Rupprecht, Army Quarterly, Bauer. The explosion in Fort Douaumont; RA (1), Rouquerol, Bansi, Ettighoffer, Kabisch (2). On the background of the Crown Prince, an objective work by a German-American professor, Klaus Jonas, published while this book was in preparation, proved most useful; Churchill also supplies a remarkable insight into the Crown Prince’s character; in addition, Ziegler, Sturgkh, Gerard (
ibid
), Zweig (for the more conventional view).

Chapter Nineteen

For Pétain’s strategical appreciation and his relations with Joffre, here and later; Pétain, Joffre, Pierrefeu, Liddell Hart (2). Biographical details on Nivelle and Mangin; Pierrefeu, Morel-Journel, Williams, Spears, Churchill, Hanotaux, Weygand (1). Mangin’s May attack on Douaumont; Pétain, Rouquerol, Menager, RA (1), Hallé, Lefebvre-Dibon, Brandis, Delvert (1).

Chapter Twenty

In the paragraphs referring to the symbolism of Verdun, I have drawn indirectly from a conversation with Captain Liddell Hart, as well as from the following sources: Brogan, Marchal, Valery, Zweig, Ducasse, Laurentin, Boasson, Cru, Junger,
New York Times
. German preparations for MAY CUP; Karl von Einem (
Ein Armeeführer erlebt den Weltkrieg
, Leipzig, 1938), Ziegler, RA (14). The eclipse of the ‘Big Berthas’ at Verdun; Menager, Bansi, Ziegler, Palat, Contre-Amiral Jehenne (
Historique des Batteries de Canoniers Marines
). The episode of R.1; Delvert (1).

Chapter Twenty-One

The account of the French defence of Vaux is very largely based on Raynal’s own story; also Bordeaux (1), Palat, Lefebvre, Pericard, Rouquerol, Pétain, Méléra. The German side; Klövekorn, RA (14),
Kriegszeitschrift der 50 Division
, Ettighoffer, Kabisch (2).

Chapter Twenty-Two

The early fighting for Thiaumont and accounts of the decline in French morale at the beginning of June; Palat, RA (14 & 15), Dupont, Thellier de Poncheville, Poincaré, Boasson, Pétain. The
Tranchée des Baïonnettes;
Bouvard, Lefebvre, Cru, Salisbury-Jones. The first Secret Session of the French Assembly; Allard, Ferry, Joffre, Desmazes.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Relations between Falkenhayn and Conrad; Zwehl (2), Gehre, Falls, Regele, Sturgkh, Goerlitz, Foerster, Wienskowski, Conrad, Falkenhayn, Duffour, Kabisch (2), Hoffmann, Liddell Hart (2), Wendt, Crown Prince (2).

Chapter Twenty-Four

The attack on Souville; Johnson, Bordeaux (3), Dupont, Mazenod, Fries & West (
Chemical Warfare
), Menager, Joffre, Witkop (for the account by the German ex-student; this does not however appear in the English edition), Thimmermann, Ziegler. The first day of the Somme; Blake, Rupprecht, Ducasse &c., Falls, Liddell Hart (1), Churchill, John Harris (
Covenant with Death
), Robin Gardner (
The Big Push
), Edmonds.