VILLAGE DÉTRUIT DE DOUAUMONT

Founded in Gallo-Roman times, the village of Douaumont enjoyed a simple, peaceful rural life until 1884, on its heights overlooking both the Woëvre plain to the east and the Meuse valley to the west.

From 1885, its 192 inhabitants suddenly swelled to 576 with the arrival of a large number of earth-moving workers, mainly Italians, to build Fort Douaumont.
This influx of people led to the development of a number of small businesses, contributing to the village?s real prosperity.

On the eve of the 14-18 war, the village still had 288 inhabitants, including many military personnel.

In 1915, the French general staff no longer believed in the effectiveness of the Forts? protection in the face of the arrival of new types of ammunition such as the torpedo shell, which had proved its effectiveness against Belgian Forts at the start of the war, and decided to partially disarm its Forts, including Douaumont.

During the great German offensive of February 1916, Douaumont remained a serious and symbolic objective for the German general staff, who captured it on February 25 without having to fight.

In contrast, the village of Douaumont itself came under heavy bombardment and deadly assault from late February to March 2, 1916, and fell along with a large number of French soldiers and officers.

It was during this battle that Captain Charles de Gaulle, commanding a company of the 33rd RI, was wounded and taken prisoner in Germany for the rest of the war.

On March 4, 1916, the entire ruined village of Douaumont and its fort were taken over by the Germans and subjected to incessant bombardment by French guns.

On May 8, 1916, the Fort, occupied by a large number of Germans, was hit by a shell which caused a violent explosion in a grenade and flamethrower depot.
The explosion killed more than 800 German soldiers. Unable to bury them all in the vicinity of the Fort, the German command decided to bury 679 bodies in a gallery of the Fort, which remains the only German necropolis in Verdun.

On October 24, 1916, the French army launched a major offensive under the command of General Mangin, and succeeded in recapturing the ruins of the village and the Fort, thanks to the Moroccan colonial troops engaged in the Douaumont sector, which remained French until the end of the war.

In 1919, Douaumont was included in the list of nine destroyed villages and the famous "red zone", where all reconstruction was forbidden.

Between the wars, however, Douaumont was chosen as the site not only for its war memorial (1926) and its Saint-Hilaire chapel-shelter, inaugurated in 1932, but above all for the great national necropolis, created in 1925 and over which the impressive Douaumont Ossuary was built and inaugurated on September 18, 1927the impressive Douaumont Ossuary was initiated by Monseigneur Ginisty, Bishop of Verdun, who wished to provide a more dignified final resting place for the remains of the soldiers gathered from the Verdun battlefield.

Douaumont and its ossuary became an even more symbolic place when, on September 22 1984, Messrs Kohl and Mitterrand, hand in hand, came to mark the reality of Franco-German reconciliation in front of the ossuary.

What to see
- The chapel
-saint-Hilaire shelter ;
- The war memorial ;

DATAtourisme France