The Battle of Verdun

T he ten-month battle of Verdun is symbolic of the costly and indecisive offensives of the attritional phase of the First World War. It epitomises the style of warfare of the machine age. Above all it was an artillery battle, in which men endured what the German infantry officer and author Ernst Jünger characterised as the ‘storm of steel’ for little perceptible result. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.