The Eastern Front of World War I

Podcast Transcript

During the First World War, most of the attention, at least in the West, was focused on the Western Front.

However, the Western Front was not the only front in the war. There were actually multiple fronts, including the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans, and Italy.

The largest of these non-Western fronts was in the East. In a front extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The war in the East was almost as brutal as in the West, with casualties almost as high.

Learn more about the Eastern Front in World War I on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

When most people think of the First World War, they tend to picture the trench warfare in France and Belgium. To be sure, the Western Front was brutal, and it was where many of the resources of both the Allies and the Central Powers were put.

However, that was not the whole war.

There were fronts in Italy, the Balkans, the Middle East, and even limited fighting in Africa and Asia.

My goal for this episode is to provide a high-level overview of the events of the Eastern Front and how the war in the East eventually ended.

In many ways, the Eastern Front was the forgotten front, yet it suffered almost as many casualties as the Western Front and might have suffered even more if the war hadn’t ended almost a year sooner.

The Eastern Front extended from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, although the actual front moved considerably during the course of the war.

The primary beligerents on the Eastern Front were the Russian Empire, Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Romania.

The length of the Eastern Front was more than double the length of the Western Front. The distances alone made the conflict on the Eastern Front fundamentally different from that in the West, as the forces were more dispersed.

Russia entered World War I in August 1914 in defence of its ally, Serbia, after Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia following the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Bound by Pan-Slavic sentiment and its alliance with France, Russia mobilized against Austria-Hungary and Germany. Germany then declared war on Russia on August 1, 1914, creating the Eastern Front.

The Eastern Front in 1914 opened in a way that most people don’t associate with the First World War: it was rapid.

After Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Russia mobilized faster than Berlin expected and struck on two axes. In East Prussia, Russian General Paul von Rennenkampf’s First Army advanced from the northeast while General Aleksandr Samsonov’s Second Army pushed from the south.

Germany’s Eighth Army, placed under Paul von Hindenburg with Erich Ludendorff as his chief of staff, used intercepted Russian wireless and interior rail lines to defeat the two forces. At Tannenberg, in what is today Eastern Poland, from August 26th to 30th, the Germans encircled Samsonov’s army, captured tens of thousands of prisoners, and drove survivors east. In early September, during the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes, the Germans also expelled Rennenkampf from East Prussia.

Farther south, events ran the other way. In Austrian Galicia, Conrad von Hötzendorf launched offensives toward Lublin and Lviv but ran into stronger Russian forces. The Russian victories along the Z?ota Lipa and Gnila Lipa rivers culminated in the fall of Lemberg on September 3rd and the siege of the Habsburg fortress of Przemy?l beginning September 16th.

Austria-Hungary ceded most of eastern Galicia and reeled back toward the Carpathians, suffering immense losses and taking many prisoners, revealing its dependence on German support.

In October, Germany formed a new Ninth Army in Silesia to relieve pressure on its ally and to threaten Russian forces in Eastern Poland. An attack on Warsaw followed. Russia’s concentrated forces and stubborn defense forced the Germans to withdraw from the outskirts of Warsaw by late October.

November brought the Battle of ?ód?. German thrusts nearly closed a pocket on parts of the Russian front, then had to fight out of a counter-encirclement. The result was a bloody Russian withdrawal but no decisive outcome.

By December, winter weather and exhaustion produced more static lines along the Bzura and Rawka rivers west of Warsaw, while the siege of Przemy?l continued, and both sides consolidated in Galicia and along the East Prussian frontier.

In 1915 on the Eastern Front, the tide changed from early Allied gains to a decisive Central Powers dominance.

Winter opened with two crises for Russia.

In February, the Germans expelled Russian forces from East Prussia in the Winter Battle of the Masurian Lakes, while in the south, the Russians pressed hard in the Carpathians to break into Hungary and to relieve the besieged Habsburg fortress of Przemy?l.

The mountain fighting bled both sides in snow and mud. Przemy?l finally fell to Russia on March 22nd, yielding vast provisions and prisoners, yet Austria-Hungary managed to survive with growing help from the Germans.

The strategic tide turned in May. On May 2nd, German General August von Mackensen launched the Gorlice-Tarnów offensive in western Galicia with dense heavy artillery and carefully coordinated infantry. The Russian Third Army collapsed, creating a breach that German and Austro-Hungarian forces widened throughout spring and summer. Lemberg was retaken in June, and Przemy?l was recaptured soon after.

The breakthrough triggered the Russian Great Retreat. Through July and August, the Central Powers overran Poland and Lithuania, seizing Warsaw on August 5th and smashing the great ring of fortresses that anchored the old front. Kovno, Novogeorgievsk, and Brest-Litovsk fell as the Germans took enormous numbers of Russian prisoners.

In the north, German armies pushed through Courland of Western Lativa, while to the south, they advanced into the Volhynia(Vol-een-ya) Region, in what is today northwestern Ukraine.

The Russians scorched the earth behind them as they fell back to shorter lines. Shortages of shells and rifles began to deepen. In September, Tsar Nicholas II assumed personal command, a political gamble that tied the monarchy directly to battlefield fortunes, which, in hindsight, was a horrible move. Autumn saw heavy fighting around Vilnius and along river barriers as the Central Powers tried to close encirclements that largely failed.

By the end of 1915, the front had moved hundreds of kilometers east. The Central Powers controlled Poland, Lithuania, and much of Galicia, while Russia’s field armies remained battered but intact on their new, shorter defensive line.

In 1916 on the Eastern Front, the pendulum swung from Russian resurgence to exhaustion.

Russia opened with a diversionary attack at Lake Naroch in March, in what is today Belarus, to attempt to relieve pressure on Verdun in France. Poor preparation, soft ground, and strong German defenses produced heavy Russian losses with no gain. In June, General Alexei Brusilov launched a vastly better-prepared offensive across Volhynia (Vol-een-ya) and Galicia.

He used short, intense bombardments, surprise, and dispersed forward assaults to infiltrate weak points rather than trying to telegraph a single blow. The Lutsk breakthrough shattered Austro-Hungarian lines, yielded hundreds of thousands of prisoners, and forced Germany to rush reserves east. Austria-Hungary never fully recovered its independent to fight.

The Brusilov gains stalled near Kovel, where repeated Russian assaults met reinforced German defenses and heavy counterfire. Coordination broke down as other Russian fronts failed to mount decisive attacks.

Supply and ammunition shortages reappeared, along with mounting casualties and officer losses. Even so, Brusilov’s offensive achieved strategic effects across Europe. It compelled Germany to divert forces from the West and helped convince Romania to enter the war on the Allied side in late August, seeking Transylvania.

Romania’s entry quickly turned to disaster. The Germans entered Romania, crossed the Danube, and overran Wallachia. Turtucaia fell in September, Ploie?ti’s oil region was seized, and Bucharest fell on December 6th. A Romanian and Russian defensive stand in what is today Moldavia prevented total collapse, but most of Romania was occupied by Germany.

Elsewhere, Russia won notable victories over the Ottomans in the Caucasus, capturing Erzurum in February and Trabzon in April, although operations slowed as manpower and supply issues grew. By the end of 1916, the front had moved somewhat west in the south, yet Russia’s armies were now drained. Morale eroded, inflation spiked at home, and Brusilov’s tactical brilliance could not offset strategic fatigue plauging the entire Russian Army..

The Eastern Front in 1917 was defined by the gradual unravelling of Russia’s war effort. In February, the Romanov monarchy fell after strikes and mutinies in Petrograd, and a Provisional Government pledged to keep fighting while promising reforms. The Petrograd Soviet issued Order No. 1, which democratized military life and encouraged the formation of soldiers’ committees.

The result: discipline and obedience eroded across the army, and desertions increased.

Allied pressure for action led to the summer offensive, also known as the Kerensky Offensive. General Brusilov, now commander in chief, planned a coordinated strike in Galicia for June. Russian armies achieved early gains around Zborov and Lutsk, which provided a brief morale boost.

German and Austro-Hungarian reserves quickly counterattacked, restored the front, and then drove the Russians into a general retreat that became chaotic as units refused orders or dissolved. By August, the Brusilov plan could not compensate for broken logistics and failing cohesion.

Germany exploited the collapse of the Russian army in the north. In September, troops under General von Hutier crossed the Dvina River and captured Riga. In October, the German Navy and Army executed Operation Albion, an amphibious seizure of the Baltic islands in the Gulf of Riga, which tightened control over the approaches to Petrograd..

On the Romanian front, joint Romanian and Russian forces fought hard in July and August, stopping German advances and preserving the region of Moldavia, but Romania remained militarily isolated and dependent on a disintegrating Russian ally.

In November, the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Russian Government. The new regime sought peace, and the Eastern Front fell quiet as fraternization spread. An armistice took effect in December, and negotiations opened at Brest-Litovsk.

In 1918, the Eastern Front collapsed as a conventional theater of the war.

The armistice talks were going nowhere, so Germany launched Operation Faustschlag on February 18th after negotiations stalled. German and Austro-Hungarian forces advanced almost unopposed across Belarus, the Baltic, and Ukraine, seizing rail hubs and ports and compelling the Bolsheviks to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3rd.

Russia ceded control or influence over Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, recognized Ukrainian independence, and yielded regions in the Caucasus to the Ottomans. The Central Powers installed occupation regimes from Finland to the Black Sea and tried to extract food and raw materials, especially from Ukraine.

The short-term military effect was stark. With Russia out, Germany could redeploy dozens of divisions west for the 1918 Spring Offensives in France. Those extra troops helped produce the great breakthroughs of March to June. Yet the new eastern order also imposed heavy costs.

Garrisons, rail security, and administration tied down several hundred thousand Central Powers soldiers. The hoped-for Ukrainian grain never arrived at scale due to chaos, peasant resistance, and logistics. German morale at home continued to sag under blockade and shortages, and political strains worsened inside Austria-Hungary.

On the southeastern flank, Romania was forced to accept the Treaty of Bucharest in May, losing resources and transit rights, though it reentered the war on November 10th, the day before the war ended. In the Caucasus, the Ottomans pushed east under Brest terms, reaching Baku in September, but their position unraveled after defeats in Palestine by British and Arab forces.

With Germany’s surrender, the Brest-Litovsk map was swept aside. Newly independent Poland and the Baltic states moved to fill the vacuum, while Russia spiraled into civil war. Most important for the Western Front, Germany’s spring gains had not delivered victory, and the occupation burdens in the East could not offset Allied manpower and materiel superiority.

While it didn’t directly affect the other fronts, the Eastern Front had an incredible impact on the rest of the war indirectly by tying up so much manpower and resources.

In its own right, the Eastern Front saw an estimated 2.5 to 3.5 million people killed in combat, in comparison to 4 to 5 million killed on the Western Front. Had the war consisted of nothing but the Eastern Front, it still would have been the greatest war in human history at that point in time.