Talk:Battle of Verdun

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General statements and questions[edit]

The horrifying aspect about this battle is that the Germans never intended to overrun Verdun. Their primary goal was to win through a war of attrition. The German calculus was that they had one number of men coming to military age each year and France had a smaller. Eventually, the theory went, after both sides fought for long enough, France would be the first to run out of fighting men.

At Verdun there is now a memorial to the battle. Aside from the graves there, the bones of soldiers who could not be identified were removed from the battlefield and put in a massive Ostuary. Visitors can walk around the outside and see these bones piled inside through low windows.

I don't have a lot of details, how many soldiers' bones are there? How many graves? What were those numbers in the German calculus?—Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.75.4.159 (talk • contribs) 19:58 3 September 2003 (UTC)

Casualty figures and other problems[edit]

The article had considerable confusion about the size of the battle and the casualty figures (probably due to the usual way in which total casualties — killed, wounded, prisoner, missing — get reinterpreted as killed only). In particular there was a claim in the opening that the battle caused a million deaths. This seems rather unlikely given the official French figures of 162,308 killed or missing. There was also a claim that it was the bloodiest battle in history, which also seems very unlikely: [1] makes it the twelfth bloodiest in the 20th century. I changed the numbers and claims accordingly.

there was about a quarter million killed in all and a half million wounded.

It would be nice to be able to estimate the maximum numbers of troops on each side in the battle. Gdr 13:31, 2005 Mar 18 (UTC)

Recent edits Comment[edit]

@Reaper1945: Do you have the page number for that data? Thanks Keith-264 (talk) 00:07, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's on page 226 of Philpott's book, with him stating that "The Germans had inflicted by French reckoning 377,000 casualties on their army, of which 162,000 were killed. The Germans themselves suffered 337,000 casualties. Other imprecise estimates put the total casualties both sides suffered around Verdun over four years as high as 1,250,000." Reaper1945 (talk) 00:12, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, just found it in the Casualties section. Hope it wasn't me that wrote the higher figure. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 00:17, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Recent edits[edit]

@Reaper1945: You're basing your edit on a 26-year old source. What has been written since? Regards Keith-264 (talk) 22:20, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]