As in the west, industrial capabilities combined with emerging technologies produced weapon systems with rapid fire capabilities that were little understood in terms of their military effectiveness and would handicap military leaders who did not foresee or accept the heightening lethality of the battlefield. Warfare in the east featured long periods of prolonged battles that included large-scale manoeuvres and ultimately movement that military leaders and soldiers in the west could only envy.
For the purposes of this article the Eastern Front will be defined as those areas where the Imperial Russian Army fought the Germans and their main ally the Austro-Hungarians. The 1917 Russian Revolution, the rise of the Bolsheviks and the West’s decision to ignore the infant Soviet Republic at Versailles combined to relegate World War I’s Eastern Front to an “unknown” and “forgotten” status. Perhaps nothing symbolizes warfare on the Eastern Front in World War I more than book titles such as Winston Churchill’s (1874-1965) The Unknown War or Sir John Wheeler-Bennett’s (1902-1975) The Forgotten Peace, his study on the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
