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The horrifying aspect about this battle is that the Germans never intended to overrun Verdun. Their primary goal was to win through a war of attrition. The German calculus was that they had one number of men coming to military age each year and France had a smaller. Eventually, the theory went, after both sides fought for long enough, France would be the first to run out of fighting men.
At Verdun there is now a memorial to the battle. Aside from the graves there, the bones of soldiers who could not be identified were removed from the battlefield and put in a massive Ostuary. Visitors can walk around the outside and see these bones piled inside through low windows.
I don't have a lot of details, how many soldiers' bones are there? How many graves? What were those numbers in the German calculus?—Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.75.4.159 ( talk • contribs) 19:58 3 September 2003 (UTC)
The article had considerable confusion about the size of the battle and the casualty figures (probably due to the usual way in which total casualties — killed, wounded, prisoner, missing — get reinterpreted as killed only). In particular there was a claim in the opening that the battle caused a million deaths. This seems rather unlikely given the official French figures of 162,308 killed or missing. There was also a claim that it was the bloodiest battle in history, which also seems very unlikely: [1] makes it the twelfth bloodiest in the 20th century. I changed the numbers and claims accordingly.
there was about a quarter million killed in all and a half million wounded.
It would be nice to be able to estimate the maximum numbers of troops on each side in the battle. Gdr 13:31, 2005 Mar 18 (UTC)
@ Reaper1945: Do you have the page number for that data? Thanks Keith-264 ( talk) 00:07, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
@ Reaper1945: You're basing your edit on a 26-year old source. What has been written since? Regards Keith-264 ( talk) 22:20, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
The flags before the commanders names do serve a useful purpose as they make it easier to navigate through the commanders list as the anonymous editor already stated. There are no specific reasons why we aren't allowed to use the flags anyway and they only make the lists easier to read so please stop removing them. There is no reason to do so. The fact that I have to discuss such a minor thing in the talk page is ridiculous. MylowattsIAm ( talk) 14:37, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
How can a list from the left margin be difficult to read? No flags or bullets. Regards Keith-264 ( talk) 21:32, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
There's bound to be a help board on wiki for things like this. Changing Wiki because of one mobile phone seems back-to-front. Regards Keith-264 ( talk) 11:11, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
Are there too many commanders listed? Were some of them subordinate? Compare the Battle of Passchendaele (which doesn't have flags.) where only 5 Allied and 3 German Generals are mentioned.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Spinney Hill ( talk • contribs) 08:03, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
The description of the place in France of Verdun having been removed from the loc map, I wonder what "Location within France" adds to it? Regards Keith-264 ( talk) 11:23, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
There are many figures for total casualties reported in the casualties section which are both above and below the reported ranges in the infobox. While the rational for the ranges reported in the infobox are not apparent, the casualty section would also indicate that there is significant nuance to the various reported figures. The German dead reported in the infobox is aligned in the casualty section to a source which reports total casualties outside the range reported in the infobox. French dead and wounded reported in the infobox do not have corresponding figures reported in the casualty section. Consequently, those figures in the infobox are not verifiable?
I found the casualties section a particularly hard slug with multiple sources giving multiple figures. I would observe that significant amounts of numeric data is usually best presented in tabulated form. Unfortunately, these are not my strength. In this sentence (Churchill revised German statistics by adding 2 per cent for unrecorded wounded in The World Crisis, written in the 1920s and James Edmonds, the British official historian, added 30 per cent
) I note a contradiction in authorship, the work is not cited and the figures referred to by virtue of the percentages are not given. There is then this sentence (In the second edition of The World Crisis (1938), Churchill wrote that the figure of 442,000 was for other ranks and the figure of "probably" 460,000 casualties included officers
), it is apparently referring to figures from the first edition which have not been given. Casualties at Verdun from 1914 to 1918 do not appear relevant.
The last paragraph of the lead deals with casualties. The level of detail regarding casualties is inconsistent with the purpose of the lead being a summary. I am also a bit concerned that the costliness is OR and the verifiability of the symbolism.
Comments please. Cinderella157 ( talk) 10:24, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Battle of Verdun article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives:
1,
2Auto-archiving period: 100 days
![]() |
![]() | This page is not a forum for general discussion about Battle of Verdun. Any such comments may be removed or refactored. Please limit discussion to improvement of this article. You may wish to ask factual questions about Battle of Verdun at the Reference desk. |
![]() | This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
![]() | Battle of Verdun was a Warfare good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||
| ||||||||||
![]() | Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the " On this day..." column on December 19, 2006, December 19, 2007, December 18, 2010, December 18, 2013, December 18, 2015, December 18, 2016, December 18, 2018, and December 18, 2021. |
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||
This page has archives. Sections older than 100 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 4 sections are present. |
The horrifying aspect about this battle is that the Germans never intended to overrun Verdun. Their primary goal was to win through a war of attrition. The German calculus was that they had one number of men coming to military age each year and France had a smaller. Eventually, the theory went, after both sides fought for long enough, France would be the first to run out of fighting men.
At Verdun there is now a memorial to the battle. Aside from the graves there, the bones of soldiers who could not be identified were removed from the battlefield and put in a massive Ostuary. Visitors can walk around the outside and see these bones piled inside through low windows.
I don't have a lot of details, how many soldiers' bones are there? How many graves? What were those numbers in the German calculus?—Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.75.4.159 ( talk • contribs) 19:58 3 September 2003 (UTC)
The article had considerable confusion about the size of the battle and the casualty figures (probably due to the usual way in which total casualties — killed, wounded, prisoner, missing — get reinterpreted as killed only). In particular there was a claim in the opening that the battle caused a million deaths. This seems rather unlikely given the official French figures of 162,308 killed or missing. There was also a claim that it was the bloodiest battle in history, which also seems very unlikely: [1] makes it the twelfth bloodiest in the 20th century. I changed the numbers and claims accordingly.
there was about a quarter million killed in all and a half million wounded.
It would be nice to be able to estimate the maximum numbers of troops on each side in the battle. Gdr 13:31, 2005 Mar 18 (UTC)
@ Reaper1945: Do you have the page number for that data? Thanks Keith-264 ( talk) 00:07, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
@ Reaper1945: You're basing your edit on a 26-year old source. What has been written since? Regards Keith-264 ( talk) 22:20, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
The flags before the commanders names do serve a useful purpose as they make it easier to navigate through the commanders list as the anonymous editor already stated. There are no specific reasons why we aren't allowed to use the flags anyway and they only make the lists easier to read so please stop removing them. There is no reason to do so. The fact that I have to discuss such a minor thing in the talk page is ridiculous. MylowattsIAm ( talk) 14:37, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
How can a list from the left margin be difficult to read? No flags or bullets. Regards Keith-264 ( talk) 21:32, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
There's bound to be a help board on wiki for things like this. Changing Wiki because of one mobile phone seems back-to-front. Regards Keith-264 ( talk) 11:11, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
Are there too many commanders listed? Were some of them subordinate? Compare the Battle of Passchendaele (which doesn't have flags.) where only 5 Allied and 3 German Generals are mentioned.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Spinney Hill ( talk • contribs) 08:03, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
The description of the place in France of Verdun having been removed from the loc map, I wonder what "Location within France" adds to it? Regards Keith-264 ( talk) 11:23, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
There are many figures for total casualties reported in the casualties section which are both above and below the reported ranges in the infobox. While the rational for the ranges reported in the infobox are not apparent, the casualty section would also indicate that there is significant nuance to the various reported figures. The German dead reported in the infobox is aligned in the casualty section to a source which reports total casualties outside the range reported in the infobox. French dead and wounded reported in the infobox do not have corresponding figures reported in the casualty section. Consequently, those figures in the infobox are not verifiable?
I found the casualties section a particularly hard slug with multiple sources giving multiple figures. I would observe that significant amounts of numeric data is usually best presented in tabulated form. Unfortunately, these are not my strength. In this sentence (Churchill revised German statistics by adding 2 per cent for unrecorded wounded in The World Crisis, written in the 1920s and James Edmonds, the British official historian, added 30 per cent
) I note a contradiction in authorship, the work is not cited and the figures referred to by virtue of the percentages are not given. There is then this sentence (In the second edition of The World Crisis (1938), Churchill wrote that the figure of 442,000 was for other ranks and the figure of "probably" 460,000 casualties included officers
), it is apparently referring to figures from the first edition which have not been given. Casualties at Verdun from 1914 to 1918 do not appear relevant.
The last paragraph of the lead deals with casualties. The level of detail regarding casualties is inconsistent with the purpose of the lead being a summary. I am also a bit concerned that the costliness is OR and the verifiability of the symbolism.
Comments please. Cinderella157 ( talk) 10:24, 16 May 2024 (UTC)