Free The Price of Glory by Alistair Horne

serious; nevertheless, the Social Democrats were growing increasingly troublesome, and domestic reasons alone made it attractive to win a dynastic triumph — especially if, as his Chief of the General Staff promised, it would be such a cheap one.
    On the return journey from Berlin, Falkenhayn’s train was boarded at Montmedy (about an hour’s distance from General Headquarters at Mézières) by a General Schmidt von Knobelsdorf. While the Crown Prince was the nominal commander of the Fifth Army, it was Knobelsdorf, his Chief of Staff, who (in the German Army way of things) made the decisions. It was also Knobelsdorf who, it appears, had originally put the idea of an attack on Verdun in Falkenhayn’s mind, but now for the first time he learned that it was to comprise Germany’s main effort for 1916. When he passed on the news to the Crown Prince, the latter was ecstatic — but with qualifications (though one is entitled to wonder to what extent these emerged ex post facto in his memoirs):
My long-suppressed eagerness to lead my tried and trusted troops once more to battle against the enemy was now to be gratified. I was filled with happy anticipations; yet I could not regard the future with a confidence altogether serene. I was disquieted by the constantly repeated expression used by the Chief of the General Staff that the French Army must be ‘bled white’ at Verdun, and by a doubt as to whether the fortress could, after all, be taken by such means.
    On the day after Falkenhayn’s return, Christmas Eve, a flood of telegrams began, disguised under the foreboding code name of ‘Gericht’ ; meaning a tribunal, or judgment, or — more rarely — an execution place. Compared with Allied preparations for the Somme, things moved with astonishing speed. The first of the new army corps earmarked for the attack was transported in greatest secrecy from Valenciennes, and its commander, General von Zwehl, had arrived in his new headquarters by December 27th. By January 27th (the date was selected for auspicious reasons, it being the Kaiser’sbirthday), the final orders were published, and the attack scheduled to go in on February 12th.
    In discussions that took place between Falkenhayn and the Fifth Army from December 24th to January 27th, two vital points of discord emerge. Firstly, Knobelsdorf and the Crown Prince wanted to attack simultaneously on both banks of the Meuse. But Falkenhayn insisted that he did not have the forces to spare; repeating again and again that at least one-third of the total available German reserves must be kept in hand to meet the relief counter-offensives the Allies were certain to launch on other parts of the line. The attack would have to be limited to the Right, or Eastern, Bank, and involve a modest enough outlay of only nine divisions. The cautious Falkenhayn’s fears of Allied counter-attacks were by no means shared by other German leaders, perhaps in a better position to judge. On January 7th, General von Kuhl, the Chief of Staff of the Sixth Army which faced Haig, was summoned to Berlin, told of the forthcoming offensive, and warned of the certainty of an impromptu British riposte north of Arras. Falkenhayn added, generously, that after the repulse of this attack, a counter-offensive could be made in mid-February for which eight divisions would be available. Von Kuhl replied in almost so many words that Falkenhayn’s appreciation was nonsense, pointing (correctly) to the complete unpreparedness of the new Kitchener armies. On February 11th, the day before the curtain was due to go up at Verdun, Falkenhayn saw von Kuhl again and repeated that he hoped the expected Allied ripostes, when repulsed, would ‘bring movement into the war once again’. When this was relayed to the Commander of the Sixth Army, Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, he commented that ‘General von Falkenhayn was himself not clear as to what he really wanted, and was waiting for a stroke of luck that would lead to a