'The First World War from a refreshingly unfamiliar angle . . . masterly' Dominic Sandbrook , Sunday Times
'Compelling . . . The Eastern Front is essential reading' Margaret Macmillan, Financial Times
‘A masterwork . . . This is the history of the Eastern Front I’ve waited all my life to read’ Simon Sebag Montefiore
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 twentieth century, and the current war in Ukraine.
Review
"A huge achievement. Nick Lloyd’s readable and compelling narrative takes his reader into the vast geographical expanses of Eastern Europe, Italy, the Balkans and Macedonia, showing how consequential these lesser-known fronts were to the struggle of 1914–18." ― Alexander Watson, author of Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914–1918
"An exemplary study of a much-neglected subject. Nick Lloyd is at the very top of his game…A fabulous historian." ― Roger Moorhouse, author of The Forgers
"Nick Lloyd searingly recreates the battlefields of the Eastern Front, Italy, and the Balkans in this taut, thrilling history in which he deploys all of his marvelous gifts to maximum effect: biography, political analysis, and operational military history." ― Geoffrey Wawro, author of A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of the First World War and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire
"One of the great strengths of Lloyd’s account, a masterly synthesis of sources from various countries, is that unlike many of the war’s participants, he never lost sight of how it all began." ― Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times (UK)
"Nick Lloyd brilliantly pulls together the manifold strands and brings to life the dark realities of an often ignored but hugely important theater which paved the way for the horrors of World War II." ― Adam Zamoyski, author of 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow
"Exhaustive, highly detailed and meticulously researched." ― Simon Heffer, The Telegraph (UK)
"The warfare that produced the fall of two empires and the socialist revolution that shook the world is presented here in all its horror and complexity by a master storyteller and an expert in the field." ― Serhii Plokhy, author of The Russo-Ukrainian War
"This is the story of the First World War’s Eastern Front told on a Homeric scale. Nick Lloyd gives us not only a compelling account of warfare on the ‘long front’ from Riga to Thessalonica but also an intimate and disturbing portrait of the fighting taken from regimental histories, diaries, and the testimony of the dead." ― Martyn Rady, author of The Middle Kingdoms
"No one is better at recreating the drama of the Great War than Nick Lloyd.… Even specialists will learn a great deal from this book. A masterpiece of First World War history." ― Sean McMeekin, author of Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II
About the Author
Nick Lloyd is a professor of modern warfare at King’s College London and the author of four books on World War I, including Passchendaele and The Western Front. He lives in Cheltenham, England.
Description:
'The First World War from a refreshingly unfamiliar angle . . . masterly' Dominic Sandbrook , Sunday Times
'Compelling . . . The Eastern Front is essential reading' Margaret Macmillan, Financial Times
‘A masterwork . . . This is the history of the Eastern Front I’ve waited all my life to read’ Simon Sebag Montefiore
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 twentieth century, and the current war in Ukraine.
Review
"A huge achievement. Nick Lloyd’s readable and compelling narrative takes his reader into the vast geographical expanses of Eastern Europe, Italy, the Balkans and Macedonia, showing how consequential these lesser-known fronts were to the struggle of 1914–18."
― Alexander Watson, author of Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914–1918
"An exemplary study of a much-neglected subject. Nick Lloyd is at the very top of his game…A fabulous historian."
― Roger Moorhouse, author of The Forgers
"Nick Lloyd searingly recreates the battlefields of the Eastern Front, Italy, and the Balkans in this taut, thrilling history in which he deploys all of his marvelous gifts to maximum effect: biography, political analysis, and operational military history."
― Geoffrey Wawro, author of A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of the First World War and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire
"One of the great strengths of Lloyd’s account, a masterly synthesis of sources from various countries, is that unlike many of the war’s participants, he never lost sight of how it all began."
― Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times (UK)
"Nick Lloyd brilliantly pulls together the manifold strands and brings to life the dark realities of an often ignored but hugely important theater which paved the way for the horrors of World War II."
― Adam Zamoyski, author of 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow
"Exhaustive, highly detailed and meticulously researched."
― Simon Heffer, The Telegraph (UK)
"The warfare that produced the fall of two empires and the socialist revolution that shook the world is presented here in all its horror and complexity by a master storyteller and an expert in the field."
― Serhii Plokhy, author of The Russo-Ukrainian War
"This is the story of the First World War’s Eastern Front told on a Homeric scale. Nick Lloyd gives us not only a compelling account of warfare on the ‘long front’ from Riga to Thessalonica but also an intimate and disturbing portrait of the fighting taken from regimental histories, diaries, and the testimony of the dead."
― Martyn Rady, author of The Middle Kingdoms
"No one is better at recreating the drama of the Great War than Nick Lloyd.… Even specialists will learn a great deal from this book. A masterpiece of First World War history."
― Sean McMeekin, author of Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II
About the Author
Nick Lloyd is a professor of modern warfare at King’s College London and the author of four books on World War I, including Passchendaele and The Western Front. He lives in Cheltenham, England.