The Eastern Front: A History of the Great War 1914-1918

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An Economist Best Book of 2024 "A superb historyso much has been forgotten including the course of the war in the east across multiple theaters of operation and the strategies pursued by both sides. It is all this and more that Mr. Lloyd has resurrected in compelling detail." Economist "Harrowingexcellenta masterly study." William Anthony Hay Wall Street Journal The first major history in fifty years of the often overlooked Eastern Front of the First World War where a more fluid conflict resulted in the destruction of great empires and the rise of the Soviet Union. Writing in the 1920s Winston Churchill argued that the First World War on the Eastern Front was incomparably the greatest war in history. In its scale in its slaughter in the exertions of the combatants in its military kaleidoscope it far surpasses by magnitude and intensity all similar human episodes. It was he concluded the most frightful misfortune to fall upon mankind since the collapse of the Roman Empire before the Barbarians. Yet Churchill was an exception and the war in the east has long been seen as a sideshow to the brutal combat on the Western Front. Finally with The Eastern Frontthe first major history of that arena in fifty yearsthe acclaimed historian Nick Lloyd corrects the record. Drawing on the latest scholarship as well as eyewitness reports diary entries and memoirs Lloyd moves from the great battles of 1914 to the final collapse of the Central Powers in 1918 showing how a local struggle between Austria-Hungary and Serbia spiraled into a massive conflagration that pulled in Germany Russia Italy Romania and Bulgaria. The Eastern Front was a vast theater of war that brought about the collapse of three empires and produced almost endless suffering. As many as sixteen million soldiers and two million civilians were killed or wounded in enormous battles that took place across as much as one hundred kilometers. Unlike in the west where stalemate ruled the day the war in the east was fluid with armies embarking on penetrating advances. Lloyd narrates the repeated invasions of Serbia as well as the great battles between Russian German and Austrian forces at Tannenberg Komarw GorliceTarnw and the Masurian Lakes. All along he takes us into the strategy of the generals who decided the wars course from the Germans Ludendorff and Hindenburg to the Austro-Hungarian chief Conrad von Htzendorf to the brilliant Russian Brusilov. Perhaps the most radical aspect of the struggle in the east was that the violence was not confined to combatants. The Eastern Front witnessed calculated attacks against civilians that ripped the ethnic and religious fabric of numerous societies paving the way for the horrors of the Holocaust. Lloyds magisterial definitive account of the war in the east will fundamentally alter our understanding of the cataclysmic events that reshaped Europe and the world. 42 illustrations