Fatigued

I am finished with Verdun. The French held. But it had a tremendous impact upon their collective psyche such that they were spurned for not having the same determination against the Nazi invasion of 1940. An unfair characterization, that they'd lost their will; they were beat by panzer tactics round their static sense of security and belief that the belligerent carnage would never, could never, in all humanity, happen again. 

Hitler's War was simply a continuation of frustrated German aggression taking advantage of a world community grown more pacifist in the aftermath of the so-called Great War; sore losers. Yet not much different from the other imperialist powers who enjoyed provenance.

The most horrible thing about Verdun was that the military objective was not terrain nor even a breakthrough out of the trenches. The Germans simply wished to kill as many poilus as possible toward breaking their will to resist thus isolating the British - who had their own harrowing experience on the Somme simultaneously. Sanguine in the extreme. Vive la France. Unimaginable, the sheer terror of it all. 

Read this a while ago. Perspective.