The Road to Verdun (Ian Ousby, 2002)

I found this book extremely interesting. But then again, I never get tired of reading World War I items. Thoughts:

1. It's not easy for me to keep halfway straight the changes in the French government from Napoleonic through 1848 through Sedan in 1870 and beyond. While I'm not interested in keeping the details straightened out, this book did give a useful overview. It helps the lead-in to WWI make more sense. Good description of nationalism as it was understood then; conservatives; monarchists (though no real hope of further restoration of the monarchy); Bonapartist thinking; socialist (even Communist) thinkers; Catholics; remnants of Jansenist thinking; etc. Lots of discussions of folks developing theories of the French nation, drawing distinctions from the Germans (with special dislike of the Prussians). Interesting that Alsace-Lorraine (including Verdun) was in Charlemagne's middle kingdom, which was the historical borderground between what became France and the smaller entities that Bismarck put together following 1870.

2. The Sedan disaster of 1870 was probably a bigger deal for the French than I was thinking, leading to the Alsace-Lorraine question and all sorts of consequences. Including fear of combined Germany.

3. Poor preparedness by the French; diversion of attention to the planned Somme offensive; rise of Petain; fall of Joffre; German plans to use Verdun to "bleed France white;" role of Crown Prince in directing German attack (but not quite enough resources to pull it off). Attack starts February 1916; German high-water mark in June 1916; slow pushback, with some of Germany's initial gains not retaken until three days before the armistice.

4. Discussions of the battle and the sacred or mystical aspect it took on. The "voie de sacree" - sacred road linking the Verdun salient to France and the efforts to keep it open. The death-like appearance of the soldiers who were being relieved; the nervousness of the incoming soldiers. The shocking casualties. What the soldiers put up with, partly resulting from the difficulty of properly disposing of the thousands and thousands of corpses.

5. Links to other things recently read: The author mentioned Goethe's visit to Verdun in an earlier war. In "Remembrance of Things Past," Proust speaks fairly often of people having neurasthenic symptoms; this author states that Proust's father was the author of a treatise on the topic (a precursor to analyses of combat fatigue etc. "The Red and the Black" - this picks up with a discussion of governments etc. following 1830. The book also has discussion of the Dreyfus case, which was a major topic in the salons in Proust's book.

Etc. I liked it.