It was, by a number of measures, the very worst place in the world. This, the Battle of Verdun, was the very origin of ultraviolence: the first time the world had seen killing on an industrial scale. Though other battles of the First World War would later claim more lives in total, at Verdun – where shelling raged all through the summer, and then through a bitter, frozen winter – claimed the highest proportion of its combatants’ lives, and in the most concentrated area. An estimated 300,000 men died here, and another 450,000 were gassed or wounded, over fewer than 8 square miles. It remains
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