Above: First World War trenches, Butte De Vauquois, Verdun, France. Modern day. Source: War History Network license. Click to enlarge.

Above: The Battle of Verdun, 1916. French officers working on their maps and reports in a heated dugout near Verdun on the Western Front. Source: War History Network license. Click to enlarge.

Left: During the Battle of Verdun, April-June, 1916. French soldiers crawling through their own barbed wire entanglements as they begin an attack on enemy trenches. Source: War History Network license. Click to enlarge.

The Battle of Verdun lasted 9 months, 3 weeks, and 6 days. As such, it was the longest battle of the First World War, or World War I. Casualties and deaths were enormous: French forces suffered 379,000 casualties (163,000 dead), while German casualties totalled 336,000, of which 143,000 were killed at Verdun, in the northeastern-most region of France.

Left: Underground fortifications at the Battle of Verdun, 1916. One of the subsurface chambers in fortified Verdun was used as a hospital. The little dog in the foreground refused to be separated from his wounded master. Source: War History Network license. Click to enlarge.

Recommended further reading
The Pity of War: Explaining World War I by Niall Ferguson (Basic Books, 1999); Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy by David Stevenson (Basic Books, 2004); The Great War by Ian F.W. Beckett (Pearson Longman, 2001); The First World War: To Arms by Hew Strachan (Oxford University Press, 2009); and Pandora's Box: A History of the First World War by Jorn Leonhard (Harvard University Press, 2018). 

Multimedia: Video, Web, Photo, and Discussion
Video: The Battle of Verdun  |  Web: Imperial War Museum: What was the Battle of Verdun?   History Channel: 10 Things You May Not Know About the Battle of Verdun  |  Comment or add a discussion