The key to winning the war, argued the chief of staff, lay in the West Russia, disorganized and unstable, could be dealt with later. Both sides had dug in, and the war of movement-and German dreams of a lightning victory-vanished into the sullen horror of trench warfare.įaced with this stalemate, Falkenhayn sat down in December 1915 to write a long memorandum to the Kaiser. But the Belgians had fought valiantly, France’s Russian ally had invaded the eastern German Empire, and the French had smashed into the exposed flank of the German army on the River Marne, halting its drive. Originally, according to the intricately developed Schlieffen Plan, the German armies were to have sliced through Belgium and into northern France, sweeping the French army and its British allies before it in an irresistible strike at Paris.

A personal favorite of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Falkenhayn was faced with a problem: The war against France, Belgium, and Britain was not going as planned by Prussian strategists.

Descended from a long line of Prussian military men, he was a cold, rational, distant man. The operation was the brainchild of Erich von Falkenhayn, chief of the German general staff as the year 1915 was coming to a close. Operation Gericht-which means “judgment” or “tribunal”-was the German offensive of the Battle of Verdun.

After verdun ww1