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The Forgotten Front: 15 Best Books on the Eastern Front of WW1 (Histories, Memoirs & Novels)
15
items Everyone knows the Somme. Far fewer know Tannenberg, the Carpathian winter of 1915 or the Brusilov Offensive, yet the Eastern Front broke three empires and made the Russian Revolution. If The Rest Is History's First World War episodes got you hooked,...
Sections
3
TANNENBERG TO BRUSILOV: THE HISTORIES
THE HABSBURG COLLAPSE
RUSSIA'S WAR: WITNESSES & NOVELS
TANNENBERG TO BRUSILOV: THE HISTORIES
The best narrative histories of the war in the east, from Russia's disaster in East Prussia to the last great Russian offensive of 1916.
The classic that put the Eastern Front back on the map. Sharp, opinionated and brilliant on why railways and supply decided as much as generals did.
The Eastern Front 1914-1917 by Norman Stone
The battle that destroyed a Russian army in East Prussia in days. Showalter is superb on the lakes, forests and railways that made the German encirclement possible.
Tannenberg: Clash of Empires 1914 by Showalter
Russia's most successful attack of the war, in 1916. A real lesson in how surprise and preparation can break a front, and the map shows how close it came.
The Brusilov Offensive by Timothy C. Dowling
The best modern one-volume account of how Russia actually fought, from mobilisation to collapse. Clear, fair and readable.
The Russian Army in the Great War by David R. Stone
The war from Berlin and Vienna, where the Eastern Front was never a sideshow. Prize-winning, and the best book on how the Central Powers held on so long.
Ring of Steel by Alexander Watson
THE HABSBURG COLLAPSE
Austria-Hungary went to war over Serbia and lost an army in Galicia within months. Two histories and three great novels of an empire marching to its end.
How Austria-Hungary blundered into war and lost much of its army in Galicia and Serbia in a few months. Darkly funny and devastating.
A Mad Catastrophe by Geoffrey Wawro
The longest siege of the war, in a fortress city on the San. Watson shows how the fighting here led straight to the horrors of the century that followed.
The Fortress: The Siege of Przemyśl by Alexander Watson
If you liked Catch-22, this is its grandfather. A Czech soldier so ‘obedient’ he drives the Austro-Hungarian army mad on the long road to the Galician front.
The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek
Three generations of a Habsburg family, ending as the empire marches into the war in Galicia. The most beautiful novel about the end of an empire.
The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
Roth's follow-up to The Radetzky March: a young Viennese goes to the Eastern Front, is captured and comes home to a world that no longer exists.
The Emperor's Tomb by Joseph Roth
RUSSIA'S WAR: WITNESSES & NOVELS
A nurse at the front, the novel of Tannenberg and the great Russian epics of war and revolution.
An English governess who became a front-line nurse with a Russian surgical unit, and photographed what she saw. Retreats, typhus and revolution, told day by day.
With the Armies of the Tsar by Florence Farmborough
Solzhenitsyn's novel of Tannenberg, as close to a witness account as fiction gets. This is a signed 1972 first edition, a serious collector's piece.
August 1914 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Signed First Edition)
Don Cossacks thrown into the Great War and then the Civil War. A Nobel-winning epic of horses, steppe and slaughter.
And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov
Zhivago serves as a doctor at the front before the Revolution sweeps everything away. This is the 1997 Folio Society edition.
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (Folio Society)
How the war on the Eastern Front destroyed the Tsar's Russia and made the Revolution. Huge, gripping and full of human stories.
A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes