Terrible Cost: Why the Battle of Verdun Was a Major Blunder nationalinterest.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nationalinterest.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Rows of rails for anti-tank protection follow the Maginot Line in France. Walter Sanders/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images
World War I absolutely devastated France. Of the roughly 8.5 million French soldiers mobilized in 1914 to fight Germany and the other Central Powers, more than 6 million became casualties, either killed, wounded or declared missing during four years of grueling trench warfare.
In the wake of that catastrophic war, the French government vowed to protect its vulnerable northeast border with Germany from any future attacks. With fresh memories of fighting and living in squalid, open-air trenches, the French spent a decade building a 300-mile (482-kilometer) series of underground fortifications that would be both impenetrable and comfortable to live in. Behind an imposing line of pop-up gun turrets, tank traps and 12-foot (3.6-meter) concrete walls were fully equipped subterranean military bases complete with mess halls, hospitals, recreation