The First World War (1): The Eastern Front 1914-1918

Osprey Essential Histories #13

by Geoffrey Jukes

This book unravels the complicated and tragic events of the Eastern Front in the First World War. The author details Russia's sudden attack on German forces, despite her inadequate resources. A crushing defeat at Tannenberg was followed by Germany inflicting humiliation after humiliation on desperate Russian troops. For a while, those forces led by General Brusilov and facing Austria-Hungary fared better, but in the end this front too collapsed. Morale plummeted, the army began to disintegrate, and the Tsar was forced to abdicate - paving the way for the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917.

Genres: History, Military History, World War I, Nonfiction, Military Fiction

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 25, 2002

About the author

A former civil servant and scholar in international relations, Geoffrey Jukes spent 14 years in the UK Ministry of Defence and Foreign and Colonial Office, specialising in Russian/Soviet military history, strategy and arms control. He was a Senior Fellow in International Relations at ANU from 1967 to 1993, and an Associate of the Centre for Arab & Islamic Studies (the Middle East & Central Asia) until his death in 2010.

Reviews

[Marco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good view of an interesting part and rarely studied front.

[Jimmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like other books in Osprey's Essential Histories series, this book gives an extremely brief overview of the Eastern Front, mostly Russia and Romania; the Caucus region was briefly mentioned but only through the early months of 1915. Only half of the book covered actual combat operations. The Further Reading page has only seven books, three of them memoirs and all published before the seventies.