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The Eastern Front: A History of the First World War
The definitive history of the Eastern Front in the First World War, from the acclaimed military historian and author of Passchendaele and The Western Front
In the second volume of his landmark First World War trilogy, Professor Nick Lloyd tells the story for the first time of what Winston Churchill once called the 'unknown war': the vast conflict in Eastern Europe and the Balkans that brought about the collapse of three empires.
Much has been written about the fighting in France and Belgium, yet the Eastern Front was no less bloody. Between 1914 and 1917, huge numbers of people - perhaps as many as 16 million soldiers and two million civilians - were killed, wounded or maimed in enormous battles that sometimes ranged across a front of 100 km in length.
Through intimate eyewitness reports, diary entries and memoirs - many of which have never been translated into English before - Lloyd reconstructs the full story of a war that began in the Balkans as a local struggle between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, and which sucked in Russia, Germany and Italy, right through to the final collapse of the Habsburg Empire in 1918.
The Eastern Front paints a vivid and authoritative picture of a conflict that shook the world, and that remains central to understanding the tragic, blood-soaked trajectory of the entire twentieth century, including the current war in Ukraine.
In the second volume of his landmark First World War trilogy, Professor Nick Lloyd tells the story for the first time of what Winston Churchill once called the 'unknown war': the vast conflict in Eastern Europe and the Balkans that brought about the collapse of three empires.
Much has been written about the fighting in France and Belgium, yet the Eastern Front was no less bloody. Between 1914 and 1917, huge numbers of people - perhaps as many as 16 million soldiers and two million civilians - were killed, wounded or maimed in enormous battles that sometimes ranged across a front of 100 km in length.
Through intimate eyewitness reports, diary entries and memoirs - many of which have never been translated into English before - Lloyd reconstructs the full story of a war that began in the Balkans as a local struggle between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, and which sucked in Russia, Germany and Italy, right through to the final collapse of the Habsburg Empire in 1918.
The Eastern Front paints a vivid and authoritative picture of a conflict that shook the world, and that remains central to understanding the tragic, blood-soaked trajectory of the entire twentieth century, including the current war in Ukraine.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published March 28, 2024
About the author
Nick Lloyd
12 books61 followersOne of Britain’s new generation of military historians, Nick Lloyd is a Professor of Modern Warfare at King’s College London and the author of four books on World War I, including The Western Front, Hundred Days, and Passchendaele. He lives in Cheltenham, England.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 23, 2024
Where the Old World Ended.
The First World War is mainly remembered through the snapshot of troubles in Eastern Europe followed by four years of fighting in a small strip of territory in Belgium and France. Most have heard of Gallipoli and maybe even Jutland, but few in the west can recall Tannenberg, Przemyśl or Isonzo. As Winston Churchill called it, it was the ‘unknown war’. There are political and linguistic reasons. English texts are recorded by Russian exiles, whilst the Bolsheviks dismissed it as an imperial precursor to their revolution. Since 1991 and the opening of the Russian Archives our understanding of this war has been increased massively. There are many new works being pushing on this sphere of the fighting, but I would argue none do it quite so well as Lloyd in his second offering of his trilogy on the war.
The Eastern Front was dramatically different from its counterpart in the West. The sheer size of the area covered meant that static trench warfare dictated the fighting a lot less. Huge armies could move over sweeping landscapes, at first by cavalry and more increasingly by railway. The Russian Civil War, an extension of WWI was fought along the railways. Another major difference was the political bodies which fought and dissolved following the war. The old world truly did die in the East. The Tsarist and Habsburg Empires collapsed because they lost 3.5 million men between them. Violence and misery popped up out of the revolutions which followed, which was a prologue for the suffering and death which was to follow for the next few decades in the area.
The Eastern Front made Paul von Hindenburg and Eric Ludendorff, who destroyed the Russian army at Tannenberg in August 1914. Germany’s best victory came at the very start of the war. As we know once the Schlieffen Plan failed, they could not win the war. In Russia collapsing into Revolution twice in 1917, Germany was able to do a deal with Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who gave up huge swathes of old Tsarist land to come out of the war and secure their grip on mother Russia. Germany could now concentrate its forces on the Western Front, but it was too little too late. America had entered the war and Austria-Hungry was broken and would soon be routed by the Italians. Emperor Karl who had inherited the mess in 1916 had tried everything to get his shattered and ancient state out of the war, but to no avail.
The Eastern Front is a great piece of work by Nick Lloyd. His books on WWI are truly all worth reading. This is a complex topic with huge scope, however he is able to explain things on a tactical and strategic level. The main protagonists and the personalities and politics that drove them are stripped down and explained really well. For me this trio logo is a baseline to understand this war once the decision was made to mobilise. I cannot wait for the third and final instalment.
The First World War is mainly remembered through the snapshot of troubles in Eastern Europe followed by four years of fighting in a small strip of territory in Belgium and France. Most have heard of Gallipoli and maybe even Jutland, but few in the west can recall Tannenberg, Przemyśl or Isonzo. As Winston Churchill called it, it was the ‘unknown war’. There are political and linguistic reasons. English texts are recorded by Russian exiles, whilst the Bolsheviks dismissed it as an imperial precursor to their revolution. Since 1991 and the opening of the Russian Archives our understanding of this war has been increased massively. There are many new works being pushing on this sphere of the fighting, but I would argue none do it quite so well as Lloyd in his second offering of his trilogy on the war.
The Eastern Front was dramatically different from its counterpart in the West. The sheer size of the area covered meant that static trench warfare dictated the fighting a lot less. Huge armies could move over sweeping landscapes, at first by cavalry and more increasingly by railway. The Russian Civil War, an extension of WWI was fought along the railways. Another major difference was the political bodies which fought and dissolved following the war. The old world truly did die in the East. The Tsarist and Habsburg Empires collapsed because they lost 3.5 million men between them. Violence and misery popped up out of the revolutions which followed, which was a prologue for the suffering and death which was to follow for the next few decades in the area.
The Eastern Front made Paul von Hindenburg and Eric Ludendorff, who destroyed the Russian army at Tannenberg in August 1914. Germany’s best victory came at the very start of the war. As we know once the Schlieffen Plan failed, they could not win the war. In Russia collapsing into Revolution twice in 1917, Germany was able to do a deal with Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who gave up huge swathes of old Tsarist land to come out of the war and secure their grip on mother Russia. Germany could now concentrate its forces on the Western Front, but it was too little too late. America had entered the war and Austria-Hungry was broken and would soon be routed by the Italians. Emperor Karl who had inherited the mess in 1916 had tried everything to get his shattered and ancient state out of the war, but to no avail.
The Eastern Front is a great piece of work by Nick Lloyd. His books on WWI are truly all worth reading. This is a complex topic with huge scope, however he is able to explain things on a tactical and strategic level. The main protagonists and the personalities and politics that drove them are stripped down and explained really well. For me this trio logo is a baseline to understand this war once the decision was made to mobilise. I cannot wait for the third and final instalment.
April 3, 2024
Incredibly well written and researched book, in an area untouched by the majority of historians, at least in the sense of compiling all the major battles of the Eastern Front in one complete volume. Aims to inform the reader at a strategic and operational level compared to at a tactical level, which is detailed by the author in the prologue, and definitely accomplishes this aim. Therefore if you intend on looking at the battles from a tactical viewpoint, with more first hand accounts from the soldiers themselves, it is probably best to get books going more in depth on the individual battles. Looking forward to the final book of the trilogy due in 2027. Would throughly recommend.
June 4, 2024
A complement to Nick Lloyd's already-published "The Western Front," "The Eastern Front" is a remarkable achievement in military history: a thorough unearthing of the war in Eastern Europe, Italy, and the Balkans between Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, and the Western Entente Powers. Lloyd convincingly demonstrates the superiority of the German tactics in Russia, highlighted by the victory in Tannenberg in 1914, as well as the deplorable state of the Austria-Hungarian Army and the awful repetitiveness of the Isonzo Front in Italy. The military leaders, from Hotzendorf to Hindenburg, are brought to life in this narrative, offering an enticing hypothetical as to if Germany, and Austria-Hungary, had been able to halt the war after their many gains in the East from 1914 through 1917. There are few accessible narrative histories of the Eastern Front of the First World War in English, but Lloyd makes this volume the definitive history for the foreseeable future.
May 8, 2024
One of the greatest books I’ve ever read. I didn’t catch even the slightest hint of bias on a single page and the book never devolved into unfollowable autistic military details as many books of this type do. Incredible work, 100/100, immediately ordered his 1st book in the trilogy ‘The Western Front’ before I’d even reached page 100. Looking forward to his final entry in a few years too!
April 11, 2024
This is a well-written and fluent narrative of the battles of the First World War campaigns involving the Central Powers and the Entente Powers in Central and Eastern Europe. It covers the Russian, Italian, Serbian and Bulgarian fronts. The reader gets a real sense of the scale and horror of these conflicts that in many ways define the First World War as much as the trenches of the Western Front in France and Belgium.
Nick Lloyd does not get into the underlying political, strategic or economic factors that drove the war on the Eastern Front but plunges straight into the fighting after the assassinations in Sarajevo. The reader will need to explore the many other histories, such as the work of Dominic Lieven, to get those perspectives. Yet with its extensive use of primary sources and the masterly way in which Lloyd is able to shift the focus from one field to another, this is a good overview of the course of the fighting which is strongly recommended.
Nick Lloyd does not get into the underlying political, strategic or economic factors that drove the war on the Eastern Front but plunges straight into the fighting after the assassinations in Sarajevo. The reader will need to explore the many other histories, such as the work of Dominic Lieven, to get those perspectives. Yet with its extensive use of primary sources and the masterly way in which Lloyd is able to shift the focus from one field to another, this is a good overview of the course of the fighting which is strongly recommended.
May 1, 2024
An outstanding single volume account of the Eastern Front of WW1.
June 17, 2024
Very detailed but remarkably readable account - superb.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews