The Eastern Front of WWI was much more chaotic.The adversaries fought over larger distances-the front stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Carpathian mountains- of nearly 1800 miles. It was also more fluid than the trench warfare that characterized the Western front. There was a private dimension to the war as well. Wealthy Russian women sponsored their own private hospital trains; however, the aristocratic volunteer nurses were only allowed to treat light wounds that were, of course, above the waist.

However, it was no less deadly. During the first 6 months of the war, the Russian army lost 1.4 million men as casualties of war, to disease, to dissertation, and to German capture. In a single day the Germans took 90,000 Russians as prisoners, including some 30 generals.This led to the quick collapse of the front, causing the Russians to retreat more than six hundred miles.

In the east, the situation was very different. The front was much more fluid and the distances were vast. The front went from the Baltic Sea to the Carpathian mountains, almost 4 times longer than the front in France, a distance of nearly 1800 miles. Despite being the largest numerically, the Russian army was the most corrupt. The Russian army had only 650,000 modern rifles in 1915 and over 10 million men. The army officers told the soldiers to take guns from their fallen comrades. The high ranking officers were promoted due to their relationship and service to the Czar. These officers sold contracts to foreign businessmen for kickbacks and rarely cared to check if any of the promised supplies were delivered. The Russian industry was also problematic throughout 1914, the factories were only able to produce 550 million rounds of ammunition while the army shot over 250 million rounds per month. Russian peasants chopped telegraph lines for wood, making communication difficult. Commanders used radios but lacked any familiarity with the device and were without codebooks. They communicated openly through the radios so the Germans could listen in and know the entire battle plan. The lack of codebooks made it easy for the Germans to intersect their actions and responses. Russian soldiers lack effective coordination and military plan. For instance, they would fire indiscriminately on planes; they ended up firing on their own planes as well.

Figure 8: Russian Troops at the Eastern Front

The Battle of Tannenberg was a major engagement between the Russian and German forces in August 1914 that resulted in the annihilation of the entire Russian second army. The Germans concentrated their forces on the Russian army with devastating results and used the rapid movement of troops that allowed the Germans to deal with a larger Russian force. The Russian retreat also contributed to its defeat and the massive loss of soldiers. The Germans had controlled all the roads, forcing the Russians to retreat through the swamps. When the battle was over, Germany suffered 13,000 casualties.On the other hand, Russia lost more than 30,000 men, killed or wounded, and 92,000 more taken prisoner. The Battle of Tannenberg was followed by another where the Germans won again, crushing another set of Russian army. In fact, a Russian commander was seen fleeing home in his car. In about only a month of fighting, the Russians lost 310,000 men; killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. Limiting the success of the German army was the lack of success of the Austrian army against the Russians. The Austrian army commanders experienced difficulty in uniting the different ethnic groups into a cohesive and effective force. The army was plagued by low morale, high rates of dissertation, and problems with supplies. By 1915, the Germans were complaining that they were ‘shackled to a corpse.’

Despite these successes and confidence of battlefield victory, German commanders knew that they could not overcome the sheer size of the Russian army. The Russians had suffered a staggering six million casualties by 1916; yet, they were s still fighting and improving their manufacturing sector. The Germans could not deliver a knock-out blow to the Russians and end the two-front war. The Russian retreat east was characterized by a scorched-earth strategy. The army destroyed crops, houses, and railways, creating zones of hundreds of miles without food and shelter. The army also removed the people from these zones as the Czar feared that the non-Russians would help the incoming German army. During the operation, 500,000 Jews and 750,000 Poles were forced to move east. The Russian army’s threat of mutiny, use of Bolshevik ideas, and flogging of soldiers failed to stop the widespread and increasingly open discontent.