Part of his entry:As far as fiction goes, I’m exploring and re-reading. In the latter category, I’m about halfway through Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, which I last read in college, where I wasn’t much impressed. I suppose now that I’m a grandfather it makes more sense; at any rate, it’s a lot better than I remember. Surrounded by professors who seem to think...[read on]About Verdun, from the publisher:
Alongside Waterloo and Gettysburg, the Battle of Verdun during the First World War stands as one of history’s greatest clashes. Yet it is also one of the most complex and misunderstood, in a war only imperfectly grasped.Learn more about Verdun at the publisher's website, and visit John Mosier's faculty webpage.
Conventional wisdom holds that the battle began in February 1916 and lasted until December, when the victorious French wrested all the territory they had lost back from the Germans. In fact, says historian John Mosier, from the very beginning ofthe war until the armistice in 1918, no fewer than eight distinct battles were waged for the possession of Verdun. These conflicts are largely unknown, even in France, owing to the obsessive secrecy of the French high command and its energetic propaganda campaign to fool the world into thinking that the war on the Western Front was a steady series of German checks and defeats.
Although British historians have always seen Verdun as a one-year battle designed by the German chief of staff to bleed France white, Mosier’s careful analysis of the German plans reveals a much more abstract and theoretical approach.
Our understanding of Verdun has long been mired in myths, false assumptions, propaganda, and distortions. Now, using numerous accounts of military analysts, serving officers, and eyewitnesses, including French sources that have never been translated, Mosier offers a compelling reassessment of the Great War’s most important battle.
The Page 99 Test: Verdun.
Writers Read: John Mosier.
--Marshal Zeringue
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