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the battles
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The Battles of the Marne
On September 4, 1914, the rapid advances of the German army through Belgium and northern France caused panic in the French army and troops were rushed from Paris in taxis to halt the advance. Combined with the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) the Germans were eventually halted and the War settled into the familiar defensive series of entrenchment's. -
the battle of verdun
A major military engagement of World War I, the Battle of Verdun was a ten month long ordeal between the French and German armies. The battle was part of an unsuccessful German campaign to take the offensive on the western front. Both the French and German armies suffered incredibly with an estimated 540,000 French and 430,000 German casualties and no strategic advantages were gained for either side. The Battle of Verdun is considered to be one of the most brutal events of World War I. -
The Battles of the Marne
by the end of May, 1918, the Germans had again reached the Marne after the enormous successes of Ludendorff's offensives of that year. The intervening four years had cost hundreds of thousands of lives and the armies were still, literally, exactly where they had started.
