On This Day

On This Day: 1916 - In the Battle of Verdun, a German unit captures Fort Douaumont, keystone of the French defences

Sergeant Kunze of the 24th Brandenburg Regiment squeezed his frame through a narrow embrasure, expecting a hail of French lead or the cold bite of a bayonet.

Author: On This Day In History Editorial Team Reviewed by: Editorial Review Desk Sources: 5

Sergeant Kunze of the 24th Brandenburg Regiment squeezed his frame through a narrow embrasure, expecting a hail of French lead or the cold bite of a bayonet. Instead, the subterranean corridors of Fort Douaumont greeted him with an eerie, hollow silence. It was the afternoon of February 25, 1916, and the “keystone” of the Verdun defenses-the strongest fortress in the world-lay practically abandoned. As Kunze moved deeper into the concrete bowels of the structure, followed eventually by Lieutenant von Brandis and Captain Haupt, the sheer absurdity of the moment began to dawn on the German invaders: they were seizing the most critical strategic point on the Western Front without firing a single shot in its defense.

The Road to the Event

The path to the disaster at Douaumont began not with a German Shell, but with a French pen. In 1915, the French High Command, led by General Joseph Joffre, had witnessed the spectacular collapse of Belgian fortresses under the weight of heavy German “Big Bertha” siege howitzers. This led to a fatal reassessment of the Séré de Rivières system of fortifications surrounding Verdun. On August 5, 1915, a decree stripped the permanent forts of most of their garrisons and, more crucially, their heavy artillery. The guns were moved to the front lines where they were deemed more “useful” for the offensive operations in Champagne and Artois.

By early February 1916, Fort Douaumont, which should have been a beehive of military activity housing over 500 soldiers, was manned by a skeleton crew of roughly 57 territorial gunners and maintenance workers. The surrounding defensive trenches were thinly held, and the barbed wire entanglements had been neglected. Meanwhile, across the line, General Erich von Falkenhayn was preparing “Operation Gericht” (Judgment). His plan was not necessarily to capture Verdun for its own sake, but to threaten it so severely that the French would be forced to “bleed to death” defending a point of national pride.

The German offensive opened on February 21, 1916, with a bombardment of unprecedented intensity. For four days, the French lines crumbled under a steel rain that reshaped the topography of the Meuse heights. By the morning of February 25, 1916, the French 37th African Division, which held the sector in front of the fort, had been shattered and was in full retreat. Amidst the chaos of the snowy, fog-choked battlefield, communication broke down entirely. The commanders of the fort assumed the infantry were still in front of them, while the infantry assumed the fort was fully operational and ready to provide covering fire.

What Happened

The capture itself was a comedy of errors that resulted in a strategic tragedy for the French. On the afternoon of February 25, 1916, patrols from the 24th Brandenburg Regiment were scouting the area, hindered by a blinding blizzard. Sergeant Kunze, leading a small party of pioneers, reached the fort’s moat and realized that the French “flanking chambers”-designed to sweep the ditch with machine-gun fire-were silent. Using a human pyramid to scale the wall, Kunze and his men entered the fort through an unmanned gun portal.

Inside, they found the few remaining French defenders scattered and unaware that the enemy had even reached the outer perimeter. Kunze managed to round up several dozen prisoners simply by wandering the halls and surprising men in their quarters. Shortly thereafter, Lieutenant von Brandis and Captain Haupt arrived with more troops, officially claiming the fort for the Kaiser. The “impregnable” Douaumont had fallen in less than an hour.

The French command remained in the dark for hours. When word finally reached the General Staff that the fort had been lost, the news was initially dismissed as impossible. The realization of the loss sent shockwaves through the French military hierarchy, leading to the immediate appointment of General Philippe Pétain to take command of the sector.

The Germans had secured a magnificent observation post and a safe harbor for their troops.

This sudden shift in the front line turned Douaumont into the literal and figurative center of the battle for the next eight months. The German army now held the highest point in the region, allowing their artillery spotters to direct fire with terrifying precision across the entire Meuse valley. For the French, the recovery of the fort became an obsession that would cost tens of thousands of lives.

Why Historians Still Study It

Historians remain fascinated by the capture of Fort Douaumont because it serves as the ultimate case study in the failure of “fortress psychology” and administrative negligence. It highlights the disconnect between the High Command (Grand Quartier Général) and the reality of the front lines. The decision to disarm the forts in 1915 is often cited as one of the greatest strategic blunders of World War I, proving that even the most formidable physical defenses are useless without a coherent doctrine for their employment.

The event also offers a window into the evolving nature of infantry tactics. The initiative shown by junior NCOs like Sergeant Kunze, who acted without specific orders to storm the fort, prefigured the “stormtrooper” tactics that would become more refined by 1918. It demonstrates how, in the chaos of industrial warfare, the actions of a single squad can occasionally outweigh the plans of a general staff.

Furthermore, the battle of Verdun as a whole, punctuated by the fall of Douaumont, represents the transition to “total war.” Here, the goal was not maneuver or territory, but the systematic destruction of an entire nation’s manpower. The fort became a microcosm of this attrition; between February 25, 1916, and its recapture on October 24, 1916, the fort was subjected to near-constant bombardment from both sides, eventually becoming a subterranean tomb for hundreds of German soldiers after an accidental ammunition explosion on May 8, 1916.

Competing Historical Interpretations

The primary debate among historians concerns the intent behind the German offensive. For decades, the dominant narrative was shaped by Falkenhayn’s post-war memoirs, in which he claimed the goal of the Battle of Verdun was to “bleed the French army white” through attrition. In this view, the capture of Douaumont was almost a distraction-a tactical success that inadvertently forced the Germans into a battle of attrition they eventually lost.

However, modern revisionist historians, such as Robert Foley, have questioned the existence of the so-called “Christmas Memorandum” where Falkenhayn supposedly outlined this plan. These scholars suggest that the Germans may have actually intended a traditional breakthrough, but when the French failed to collapse after the fall of Douaumont on February 25, 1916, the German command was forced to pivot to a strategy of attrition to justify the mounting casualties.

There is also a nationalistic divide in how the capture is remembered. German accounts for years emphasized the “heroic” storming of the fort, awarding the Pour le Mérite to von Brandis and Haupt (while initially overlooking Kunze, who was of lower rank). French accounts, conversely, focused on the “betrayal” of the fort by the High Command, using it as a symbol of the resilience of the “poilu” (the common French soldier) who had to win back with blood what the generals had lost with ink.

Enduring Consequences

The fall of Douaumont on February 25, 1916, dictated the pace and brutality of the Western Front for the remainder of that year. It forced the French to adopt the “Noria” system, where divisions were rotated in and out of the Verdun sector at a rapid pace to prevent total mental and physical collapse. This meant that nearly the entire French Army eventually served at Verdun, cementing the battle-and the loss of the fort-into the national consciousness as a shared trauma.

The struggle to retake the fort, which did not succeed until October 24, 1916, resulted in a landscape so devastated that it remains a “Zone Rouge” (Red Zone) to this day. The area is still saturated with unexploded ordnance and the remains of the missing. The capture of the fort also elevated Philippe Pétain to the status of a national hero, a reputation that would later have catastrophic implications for France during World War II when he led the Vichy regime.

Perhaps the most somber enduring consequence is the Douaumont Ossuary. Located near the fort, it contains the skeletal remains of at least 130,000 unidentified French and German soldiers. It stands as a permanent reminder that the capture of the fort on February 25, 1916, was not merely a tactical maneuver, but the opening of a door to a ten-month-long slaughterhouse that claimed over 300,000 lives. On September 22, 1984, the fort and the ossuary served as the backdrop for the historic handshake between Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand, transforming a site of capture and conflict into a symbol of Franco-German reconciliation.

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