This is a massive book: 506 pages of text; eighty-nine pages of references and bibliography; seventeen maps, all of them full page or more; and forty-two illustrations. It is also an important book, and it is easy for the reader to follow Nick Lloyd’s argument. The Eastern Front is a major corrective to how most readers here and in the United Kingdom, France, and the United States understand the Great War, as it was once called.
I have been studying and thinking about World War I, professionally, since I started my doctoral studies in 1972. I have never given much attention to the Eastern Front, barely understanding the war that involved the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the German Empire, and millions of soldiers. The war raged all over eastern Europe, Italy, and the Balkans, across nations, in a conflict that involved the massive movement of huge numbers of soldiers that is unimaginable to those who know the story of fighting on the much more static Western Front.
The Eastern Front: A history of the first world war by Nick Lloyd
Viking, $65 hb, 672 pp
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