The last two things we visited in Verdun were Fort Douaumont and Fort Vaux. We didn't visit the inside of Fort Douaumont as there were too many tourists, however we did explore the inside of Fort Vaux (will write about it in the next blog).
Fort Douaumont, or French "Fort de Douaumont", was the largest and highest of 19 defensive forts protecting the city of Verdun, since the 1890s. Construction work started in 1885 near the village of Douaumont, on some of the highest grounds in the area. The fort wasn't finished until 1913.
(How the fort looked like before the war)
By 1915, the French general staff had concluded, that even the best protected forts of Verdun could not resist bombardments from the German artillery. As a result, Fort Douaumont and other Verdun forts had been partly disarmed and left virtually undefended since 1915. They used the disarmed weapons on other fronts.
On February 25th, 1916, 19 German officers and 79 men entered and occupied Fort Douaumont without a fight against a small group of 57 French soldiers. The easy fall of Fort Douaumont, only three days after the beginning of the Battle of Verdun, shocked the French Army. In the early morning of May 8th, 1916, 679 German soldiers died in the fort because of a massive explosion of stored munitions.
(Aerial photo after the war)
With the help of 400mm long-range French railway guns "Alsace" and "Lorraine" on October 24th, 1916, Douaumont was recaptured by three infantry divisions of the French Second Army. Millions of lesser caliber shells had been fired at the fort since its capture by the Germans, and tens of thousands of men had died in attempts to recapture it. This event brought closure to the Battle of Verdun in 1916.
(French railway gun)
Here are a few photos from our visit. Pretty much everywhere you look, you see artillery craters, the scars of 1916.
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