A German soldier at the Battle of Verdun in World War I disposed of a huge number of dead German soldiers' bodies by loading them onto a wagon. It suggested German soldiers collecting dead bodies on the Verdun battlefield. The reason why the battle of Verdun was particularly tragic was that the battlefield was narrow and the front line was less than about 24 kilometers away, resulting in a huge increase in casualties. Soldiers were bombed to death on the spot without external wounds, and wounded by the scattered limbs of their comrades. Thousands of shells flew through the sky. The shells fell a little crazy and were covered with mud and blood. The whole trench was like a volcano and the exits were blocked with dead bodies.
The Battle of Verdun was the most devastating and longest battle of the First World War. The war lasted from February 21, 1916 to December 19, 1916. The German and French armies fielded about 100+ corps. The two armies killed more than about 250,000 people and wounded about 700,000 more. The number of casualties was second only to the Battle of the Somme with over one million. The bloody men called the Battle of Verdun a meat grinder. This battle exhausted the German army. Then the French counterattacked, confiscating vast tracts of land in eastern Verdun one after another, and the Germans steadily withdrew. The Germans were unable to realize their plan to occupy Verdun and break through the southern road to Paris, and after exhausting their troops, they could not see an escape route and ultimately ended up defeated.
The First World War broke out on July 28, 1914, and the opposing forces mobilized about 65 to 70 million soldiers. Between the beginning of August 1914 and November 1918, an average of more than 6,000 people died each day. In addition, about 17 million people were wounded in the war, of which about 4 million were completely disabled. Civilian casualties were also enormous, ranging from about 5 to 10 million. All the wars left a legacy of about 3 million soldier widows and about 6 million orphaned children.
The casualties of the Battle of Verdun were brutal and unparalleled in human history. The industrialization of the situation raised the military power to a new level. The First World War also marked the end of entire empires and signalled to many unjust people the birth of a new world order. The Treaty of Versailles was criticized as humiliating or too harsh. The failure of the new order became a major factor in the spread of totalitarianism in Europe and a breeding ground for the even more disastrous World War II.
