For my project I would like to create a digital exhibit focusing on the French army during the Battle of Verdun, in which I would like to design an interactive map of the battlefield and the Forts which surrounded the city of Verdun. As I stated in my earlier project proposal, I have seen lots of maps focusing on this event, however not a single one of them have allowed for any level of user interactivity, and at best just have only consisted of a static layout of the important locations or timeline of events. The First World War has always been my greatest area of interest, and I have always thought it is such a shame how often the events of this monumental war are overshadowed by World War 2. Being able to contribute a lasting impact to the body of knowledge surrounding the First World War would be a dream come true, and if I could teach even a single person a little bit about my favorite part of history than I would consider it a success. I have already begun to build an extensive catalogue of the fortresses of Verdun through Omeka, and the next step would be to start mapping these points out through a software such as kepler.gl. One of my previous graduate program projects focused on the origins of French soldiers who fought at Verdun, and it was during this project that I really became acquainted with the kepler software and its capabilities. I was extremely impressed not only by the aesthetic qualities of the software, but also by its versatile design features and level of detail that the cator is able to implement. Hopefully, I will be able to make a map that is not only interactive with spatial elements such as moving around and exploring the different forts while seeing various images for references, but also interactive spatially as well. This has always been one of my biggest complaints when it comes to static maps of frontline movements, since it is hard for the user to imagine exactly how these frontlines evolved over time just by looking at an overlay. I want this project to answer not only the question of how the French army at the battle of Verdun repelled the overwhelming invading German forces in 1916, but also how the dozens of fortresses affected the very movement of those frontlines. Prior to the outbreak of the First World War, the French army famously began distancing itself from defensive tactics and came to the conclusion that forts no longer had a role to play in modern warfare. However, as the Battle of Verdun demonstrated, this was absolutely not the case, and the defensive positions around the city ultimately ended up being the thorn in the side of the Germans that prevented them from advancing any further. I think this also has the potential to address the somewhat erroneous claim that the German high command was never interested in taking the city in the first place, when in reality this was most likely Falkenhayn’s way of deflecting criticism in the aftermath of losing the battle. Hopefully this project will be able to reach a wide audience, and my goal is to teach both students and amateur historians why we should care about this battle and defensive tactics overall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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For my project I would like to create a digital exhibit focusing on the French army during the Battle of Verdun, in which I would like to design an interactive map of the battlefield and the Forts which surrounded the city of Verdun. As I stated in my earlier project proposal, I have seen lots […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127,"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions\/127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}