Verdun and the Somme

In 1916, Verdun and the Somme were two momentous military campaigns devised to break the stalemate at the Western Front, and have become, in the collective memory of the combatants, synonyms for Armageddon. They have shaped our image of the First World War. The traumatic front experience connected with these two campaigns is reflected in the war literature from both sides of the conflict. This study from the Philosophiae Doctores series analyzes British and German prose fiction written between 1916 and 1937, with different ideological points of view. The literary response to Verdun comes from German writers including Fritz von Unruh, Josef M. Wehner, Werner Beumelburg, and Arnold Zweig. The Somme perspective is provided by British authors Alec J. Dawson, Alan P. Herbert, Arthur D. Gristwood, Frederic Manning, and David Jones.