The first of four volumes that together provide a comprehensive account of World War I, this book unravels the complicated and tragic events of the war's Eastern Front. In particular, this book details the history of conflict between Germany and Russia, which proved disastrous for the Russian forces and would ultimately pave the way for the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917.
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.
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.