What he could not foresee, however, was how determinedly the French would fight to defend them.Ī sophisticated court insider, Falkenhayn carefully designed his plan to appeal to the Kaiser’s enormous vanity: The official orders for the attack were released on January 27-His Majesty’s birthday-and the Kaiser’s son, Crown Prince Wilhelm, would lead the V Army in the attack.Ī major flaw in Operation Judgment, however, was its lack of goals. Taking the Verdun forts, Falkenhayn reasoned, would present no great problem. In defending it, Falkenhayn believed, they would sacrifice their army and then have to sue for peace.Īs for the forts themselves, the German army felt certain that they would be easily pulverized by heavy artillery-the huge Krupp-made 420mm “Big Berthas” that had leveled the “indestructible” Belgian forts of Liège and Namur at the beginning of the war. Falkenhayn was right in arguing that a German victory here would be intolerable to the French, a moral and psychological blow at the country’s heart. More than mere forts, the formidable defenses symbolized the French army, French honor, and independence-indeed, France itself.

The choice of Verdun was a natural for Falkenhayn’s battle of attrition, for here were located probably the strongest fortified systems in the world. If they do so the forces of France will bleed to death-as there can be no question of a voluntary withdrawal-whether we reach our goal or not.” Verdun was the site picked for this grim hemorrhaging operation, code-named Operation Judgment.ĭid the Operation Judgment’s Objectives Justify the Intensity of the Assault? “Within our reach,” Falkenhayn’s memo read, “behind the French sector of the Western Front there are objectives for the retention of which the French General staff would be compelled to throw in every man they have. France was the crux, and knocking France out of the war would bring the British to the peace table. The key to winning the war, argued the chief of staff, lay in the West Russia, disorganized and unstable, could be dealt with later. Both sides had dug in, and the war of movement-and German dreams of a lightning victory-vanished into the sullen horror of trench warfare.įaced with this stalemate, Falkenhayn sat down in December 1915 to write a long memorandum to the Kaiser. But the Belgians had fought valiantly, France’s Russian ally had invaded the eastern German Empire, and the French had smashed into the exposed flank of the German army on the River Marne, halting its drive. Originally, according to the intricately developed Schlieffen Plan, the German armies were to have sliced through Belgium and into northern France, sweeping the French army and its British allies before it in an irresistible strike at Paris. A personal favorite of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Falkenhayn was faced with a problem: The war against France, Belgium, and Britain was not going as planned by Prussian strategists. Descended from a long line of Prussian military men, he was a cold, rational, distant man. The operation was the brainchild of Erich von Falkenhayn, chief of the German general staff as the year 1915 was coming to a close. Operation Gericht-which means “judgment” or “tribunal”-was the German offensive of the Battle of Verdun.

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