Through the Hohenzollern Mill

Category

Library Item

Item no

33466

Title

Through the Hohenzollern Mill

Description

"Go on, this is my battle."

"The true total cost of the German losses will never be known. The German casualty lists were issued in such a disconnected manner that it is impossible to form an accurate estimate, but careful students have placed the figure at not less than five million dead. The German Command seemed to have devised the most expensive methods of attack. First they employed close formation, by which method dense masses of men advanced, so close in formation that a shot could not fail to find a victim. In this manner thousands of German soldiers were needlessly mown down by our machine-gunners, who had only to pour in a steady hail of bullets. At Verdun the shock tactics were varied, but the basis of all attacks was to overwhelm by sheer weight of man-power. The system of advancing in waves was adopted, three companies of men advancing one after the other; often the first wave was mown down, the second got slightly farther than the first row of death, and the third wave spent itself in clambering over the bodies of the dead and dying. The result was that at Verdun, as in other places, the ground was often a congealed mass of mangled flesh and blood. Utterly reckless of human life, the Kaiser encouraged these mass attacks. There was no price he was not willing to pay with other men's bodies."

Artist / maker

Raemaekers, Louis

Date

1919

Size

31.9 x 26.4 cm

Type

Chromolithograph

Location

Art and Design Library

Copyright

Louis Raemaekaers' drawings are reproduced by kind permission of the Louis Raemaekers Foundation.