Reincarnated as Nikolai II

The Battle of Verdun. As the name suggests, this battle was like Rosen on the Eastern Front, with France and Germany repeatedly taking and retaking specific points.

Being located in the center of the Western Front, more than half of the French Central Army Group (GAC) forces were deployed there.

What made this battle different from previous ones was that while both sides alternated between offense and defense with bombardment-attack-occupation-counterattack-recapture cycles, Germany was generally on the offensive while France was mainly defensive.

This was quite different from last year’s pattern of France reclaiming territory and Germany defending.

"Counterattack at all costs! Don’t stop the offensive until we recapture all fortresses near Verdun!"

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"Deploy the entire GAC there! Push them back somehow!"

French Commander-in-Chief Joseph Joffre sent Philippe Pétain, who had risen from colonel to general in just one year.

In fact, Pétain was the only commander in current France with experience of victory in 1915, so Joffre had no other choice.

Perhaps thanks to Commander Joffre’s sufficient input.

The back-and-forth battles that continued through March and April seemed to end in French victory in May.

France recaptured Fort Douaumont and took prisoners. Just when it seemed they could smoothly recapture the Verdun front.

Germany, sensing they couldn’t win with firepower superiority alone, made a change.

They dismissed Constantin von Knobelsdorff, who was the chief of staff assisting Crown Prince Wilhelm and the actual commander.

And appointed Hindenburg as the Fifth Army’s chief of staff.

Hindenburg had survived.

While other field marshals who fought during the same period were dismissed as obsolete, he survived until the end.

Whether it was because he got hit by heavy artillery once and preached the importance of heavy artillery firepower, or simply because Falkenhayn’s 1916 grand strategy and Hindenburg’s command doctrine aligned perfectly, he ultimately crawled back to the field.

"Ludendorff, this is our last chance."

"If we retreat here too... I might commit suicide rather than return."

"Don’t worry. I’ll be lying there beside you first."

While they lost too badly in the East to excuse it as simply a matter of troop numbers, Hindenburg was still the only one in the current German army with experience commanding large-scale attrition warfare.

And when Hindenburg assessed the current losing situation at Verdun.

"...Think attrition warfare has no tactics or strategy?"

"Both enemy and friendly forces. They seem to know nothing about what needs to be done."

This was nothing more than an ugly dogfight, no more, no less. Men crawling through mud and wire, fighting over craters and ruined farmhouses. No grand maneuvers, no brilliant flanking attacks - just relentless grinding of human life against hardened defenses.

Nivelle’s rolling barrage? Pétain’s offensive firepower doctrine? How can you give up an occupied fortress just because you gained a couple of doctrines like that. Trading ancient stone walls and strategic high ground for theoretical advances in artillery coordination. The price in men and materiel far outweighed any tactical innovations learned.

Compared to the battles in the Eastern Front where tens and hundreds of thousands fought, this seemed trivial. The vast sweeping movements of entire armies across Poland and Galicia made these Western Front struggles over a few kilometers of trenches seem almost petty. Entire divisions maneuvering across open plains rather than fighting over individual machinegun nests.

In late May, Hindenburg’s first Western Front command began. The old master of Tannenberg would now try his hand at this different kind of warfare, where victory was measured in meters rather than miles.

"Having the offensive point in one place is the problem. These Western Front commander bastards need to get hit alternately at Rosen and Wydgoszcz to wake up." 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

"I’ll attack alternately on both sides of the Meuse River at Verdun."

"Good, an experienced person is indeed different."

Hindenburg and Ludendorff hadn’t forgotten the lessons they learned physically in the large-scale attrition warfare in the East.

No, they didn’t just remember. They wanted to kindly teach those lessons to France too.

"Fort Vaux has fallen!"

"One of the polygon fortresses has been breached! Other fortresses must retreat too!"

"Fort Fleury is in danger? Damn it, weren’t all enemies supposed to be north of the Meuse? Why are they suddenly popping up from below!"

In attrition warfare, if one route is blocked, you must immediately open another route and send troops there too.

"The rate of troop casualties will also double... But if the enemy can’t respond quickly enough, they’re bound to be breached."

In June, Fleury fell.

"Trenches? Fortresses? No. The answer is sufficient troops. Artificial structures don’t guarantee absolute defense against thousands of heavy artillery. You can only block it by paying an appropriate price."

While relentlessly pushing forward, they continuously found and pushed troops into areas where enemy defenses were weak.

It felt similar to how Roman would send troops to other places occasionally when the battlefields of Rosen and Wydgoszcz started feeling familiar.

The hope of recapturing the fortresses that had existed until early May was broken along with Hindenburg’s fierce attacks, and now France was struggling just to defend.

Douaumont, Vaux, Fleury, and the Couleuvre Ravine. All of Verdun’s crucial military bases were in German hands.

Now only Fort Verdun remained among France’s major fortresses.

"Deputy Chief of Staff Ludendorff. I learned something else while walking through hell in the East. A lesson learned when the front suddenly got completely blocked, like breath stopping abruptly."

"What is it?"

"Attrition warfare is never won by pushing the front line back 500m or 1km. So unless it’s truly geographically important high ground, everything is worthless in the face of massive numbers of deaths."

"...Your explanation makes it sound even more difficult."

"Simply put, heavy artillery that makes the enemy exchange lives and shells from where they sit is the god of the battlefield.

Seeing these frogs huddled together in fortresses trying to defend reminds me exactly of when we first got hit by over 2,000 heavy artillery pieces.

The sight of hundreds of thousands of shells being fired made us not even think about tracking firing positions for counterattacks.

’It’s still shocking even now to think about it.’

Soldiers rushing toward trenches try to kill the machine gunners first.