IWOG SOLDIERS

The architect of the Battle of Verdun, ERICH VON FALKENHAYN. The German army's chief of staff during the First World War, he laid out a plan in December 1915 to strike out at about 20 sunken French forts near Verdun not because they had any strategic value (they didn't), but because he considered them symbolic of French pride and independence. He assumed that the French would rush the bulk of their army to defend them, and be annihiliated.
Verdun became the largest attack in history up until that time...and the longest. Lasting from February 21 to December 15, 1916, the death toll would approach 800,000 men, and the landscape was utterly obliterated for miles. (Land mines are still found there to this day.) There were plenty of IWOGs in the war that itself was so IWOG to begin with, but Herr von Falkenhayn gets special mention as the man who set the Battle of Verdun into motion.

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