Christina Holstein is a leading authority on the Battle of Verdun. For many years she lived close to the battlefield and has explored it in great detail.
She regularly conducts tours of the battlefield for individuals or groups and, with her specialized knowledge of the terrain, has acted as consultant to a number of other historians, TV producers and TV and radio journalists.
Over the years she has written five books in the Battleground Europe series on the Battle of Verdun 1916. She was the founding chairman of the Luxembourg branch of the Western Front Association.
Christina writes "It is always surprising that the 1916 Battle of Verdun was only launched on the Right Bank of the River Meuse, leaving French guns on the Left Bank to be turned on the advancing Germans.
Two weeks later, German troops finally attacked the Left Bank but their optimistic assumptions of success turned into three months of inch by inch struggle which completely failed to silence the French guns.
Often overlooked as a mere flanking operation, the struggle for the Left Bank contributed substantially to theultimate failure of the Verdun offensive".