Eastern Front 1914-1920: The History of World War I series: From Tannenberg to the Russo-Polish War (History of WWI) Paperback – Illustrated, 14 Nov. 2021

The eastern front during the first world war is usually fairly overlooked. Tannenberg, Austrian troubles, Brusilov, Revolution and then some untidiness generally seems to sum it up for most histories. The exception to this is Prit Buttar's magnificent four part series that takes in everything.This book is a bite size version. It's not badly written, gets most of the details right, has loads of pics and maps, plus little boxes that give potted histories of people, or drafts of speeches. Anyone new to the area will learn a lot from it.However, it does come with problems. Some of these are factual, such as Breslau being labelled as a dreadnought, when it was a cruiser and a colonel given as being a general. The maps aren't that detailed, often not even showing locations named in the text. The photos and the maps also take up a lot of space, which combined with a generous font mean that you don't get as much textual history as you'd expect.This is a decent enough book, but it would probably suit someone new to this field, or even someone doing a 6th form project. Anyone wanting it for undergrad work, or with much prior knowledge will find it enjoyable, but will not learn much else.

very good book,nice reading

This is an excellent general introduction to the Eastern Front in WWI, including the Russian Revolution and Polish war. The book covers a portion of WW1 that is highly neglected. I am generally a WW2 buff and I think that one really needs to read this book to understand WW2, particularly the pre-existing conceptions of the Russians and Germans. Of course, this period is critical in the development of communist Russia. In addition, the Eastern Front is much more interesting than the western front because battle lines moved around, there were large swings in momentum, significant victories and collapses. For me the most interesting parts are the Russian surrender and the German response. The authors have the opinion that the Germans made a mistake of pursuing war but not a political outcome. After defeating the Russians, the Germans made no significant peace proposals to the West, even though they had made huge territorial gains, and could have considered themselves to have "won" the war with a western treaty that was not even particularly advantageous. What more did they want? I don't know whether it would have been good to be left with a large and powerful germany in central Europe, but what we had instead, an unresolved Germany, WW2, the soviet era etc, certainly wasn't good for many. Would it even have been better for Britain (in hindsight) to have signed a treaty with the Germans at the beginning of 1918?So in summary, this is an excellent introduction, and the period of history is fascinating, both for the times and for the potential impact on 20th century history. It was a war that was won, but with no real impact on the victors.

A solid and insightful history of the Russian Army in World War I and the Civil War. Highly recommended for students of Russian and military history. Neither the Soviet Union nor the resurrected Russian Federation have ever published a book on the Russian Army in the First World War. Until they do readers will have to rely on books such as these to gain insight into the topic. This book is well illustrated with maps, diagrams, and photos.