The city of Verdun formed a potentially vulnerable salient jutting out into the German lines. Situated on the River Meuse, Verdun, surrounded by a complex system of forts, had long played a crucial strategic defensive role on France’s eastern frontier. The German commander Erich von Falkenhayn later claimed that, by forcing the French to defend this symbolically important site, he had set out to bleed the French army to the point of exhaustion.
