<story><title>The Legend of Verdun</title><url>http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/02/legend-verdun</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>crikli</author><text>If you&amp;#x27;ve not listened to Dan Carlin&amp;#x27;s 6-part series on the Great War, take the time to do so.  The &amp;quot;whys&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;hows&amp;quot; of World War I are much harder to get your head around than WWII...it&amp;#x27;s just much less linear.  Not only does he do an excellent job of making the mechanics of the war understandable, he draws the element of humanity into stark relief by interspersing explanations of troop movements with first hand accounts of the suffering and carnage men sustained.&lt;p&gt;Episode IV focuses on Verdun and can be listened to as a stand alone episode but the rest of the series is very much worth the time.
&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.dancarlin.com&amp;#x2F;product&amp;#x2F;hardcore-history-53-blueprint-for-armageddon-iv&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.dancarlin.com&amp;#x2F;product&amp;#x2F;hardcore-history-53-bluepri...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>The Legend of Verdun</title><url>http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/02/legend-verdun</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>achamayou</author><text>An important reason why the fight was so bitter over seemingly small amounts of land that this article (and others) seem to miss is that a relatively limited area of northern France amounted to over half of the country&amp;#x27;s industrial production. Coal and steel in particular, critical to the war effort were overwhelmingly produced there.&lt;p&gt;Any incremental part of this region lost to the Germans wasn&amp;#x27;t just a symbolic loss of ground or a moral defeat, it meant a real long term resource loss which could tilt the balance of the war in Germany&amp;#x27;s favour. In comparison, the allies were largely unable to strike Germany&amp;#x27;s industrial centers. It&amp;#x27;s quite easy to depict all senior commanders of the time as inflexible and stubborn (some of them were, to various extents anyway), but there&amp;#x27;s more to it than that.&lt;p&gt;Defence in depth just wasn&amp;#x27;t an option, and mechanised war was a fiction anyway. With the benefit of hindsight, and ignoring the industrial value of the North, it&amp;#x27;s easy to jump to simple but wrong conclusions about why the war was fought that way.&lt;p&gt;Edit: Link to English source illustrating my point &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;raw_materials&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;raw_materia...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>