I'm just curious if Germany didn't attack at Verdun there's a good chance that Petain might have elss prominience. If this is so there is agian a good chance France might have resisied Germany altering WW2 significantly
a question: I seem to have a hazy recollection that the crown prince also got aggressive in the opening phases of the war, when he was supposed to hold on the defensive in the center (per the Schlieffen plan) and instead decided to counterattack the french.
Am I recollecting right?
Question: what happens if the French simply withdraw from Verdun, before suffering the shattering casualties of OTL? Was it a city worth holding?
And, reading this thread, it's strange how similar Verdun and the Somme are in some respects. The massive casualties, the clash in high command between attritional plans and holding land/breaking through the enemy (von Falkenhayn vs. Fifth Army being similar to Haig vs. Rawlinson), and so on. Indeed, in the same way that the RAF and British Army in WWII wanted to avoid 'another Somme', you hear Hitler in his speeches proclaiming how his tactics in Stalingrad are intended to avoid 'a second Verdun'.
Petain ordered this initially only to be overruled by the politicians, because Verdun was such an important city historically and emotionally for France (and Germany). The treaty of Verdun in 900 meant it was the birthplace of both Germany and France; losing it would have caused the government to fall and the public to potentially slip into defeatism. Militarily it made the most sense to abandon it and hold from the West Bank of the Meuse, but politically it was too dangerous to let go of.Question: what happens if the French simply withdraw from Verdun, before suffering the shattering casualties of OTL? Was it a city worth holding?
And, reading this thread, it's strange how similar Verdun and the Somme are in some respects. The massive casualties, the clash in high command between attritional plans and holding land/breaking through the enemy (von Falkenhayn vs. Fifth Army being similar to Haig vs. Rawlinson), and so on. Indeed, in the same way that the RAF and British Army in WWII wanted to avoid 'another Somme', you hear Hitler in his speeches proclaiming how his tactics in Stalingrad are intended to avoid 'a second Verdun'.
Check again, those numbers are from JUNE 21st, not July.Like I said casualty figures are hard.
I was never arguing for Edmonds numbers just noting that different armies use different systems. The point on the German system is that the sanits lightly wounded figure appears to be excluded from other german origin casualty figures , on the reasonable grounds that many of these men never left the firing line and for all practical purposes were not casualties even though recorded as such.
I don’t know what the British or French reporting system was but unless it broke down casualties in the same way and were summarised in the same way we are comparing different base numbers leading to different results statistically and that the only reliable numbers would be ‘irreplaceable losses’ KIA, MIA and POW,, plus a proportion of severely wounded, some of which would have been returned to duty in a very short period, others maimed for life. But the fact remains that whatever the cause that individual was no longer a factor in the war.
The figure 164k probably reflects the fact that the battle of the Somme, british terminology is 1 July 18 November but the numbers and the numbers you quote are from 21 July – 26 november i.e. missing i.e. missing 12 days casualties (and including 8 days after major action completed.) a casualty rate of 1750 per day which does not seem unreasonable.
Overall of course the Germans lost 10% of their force per day during the course of the war and the allies 5-6% but that’s the course of the war, the british losing 20% of strength on 1 July 16..
Germany did not lose 164 kia on the Somme, as that number included POWs as well, which turned out to be some 31k.
Edit:
Looking through the official numbers from late June through November, here were German losses:
http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=129974
Forgive me if I post another Sanits tabulation - it's hard to digest these statistics - but here is its compilation for the Somme from June 21st to November 26th 1916:
Killed 57,987
Missing 85,683
Wounded 273,132
So if there were 31,000 POWs during the Somme, then that means German dead totalled: 112,670
If not and all the missing were dead then the total is: 143,670.
I'm not sure where the death toll of 164,000 is coming from.
Agreed.More important for the course of the war is the effect the fighting had on the troops and army commands. The net result of the 1916 fighting was the German army retreating to new positions in order to economise on manpower, changing their defensive doctrine and a general deterioration in combat power for a given unit vs the British and imperial forces in particular. Not suprising as the Germans had started with a better cadre who were dying and the British and imperial with a more amateur cadre who were becoming veterans.