Unlike the stalemate of the trenches, the little-known Eastern Front of the First World War cost 12 million casualties. It spanned thousands of miles from the Baltic to the Black and Caspian seas, spreading to the Arctic and Pacific, and involved thousands of British and US soldiers in secret operations in the far north, Siberia and Ukraine. While the west began to recover after the war, this savage conflict destroyed all the belligerents in the east. Berlin ended the Eastern Front hostilities prematurely at Brest Litovsk, having covertly financed and promoted the Bolshevik Revolution. This unleashed a ‘rainbow of death’ with the Red Army using famine, poison gas and concentration camps. This remarkable story of war and attrition is brought to life by personal accounts from all sides. AUTHOR: Douglas Boyd was an RAF Russian linguist trained in language, culture and history by emigre Russians, Balts, Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians at Joint Services School for Linguists. He reads German, Russian and several other languages required to translate first-person accounts of all sides that are essential to break up narrative for this book. SELLING POINTS: . Extraordinary interviews with combatants before they died, a rare firsthand glimpse into some of the fiercest fighting of the First World War . Includes incredible stories of the women who fought for Russia on the front line . Illustrated with rare images of the devastation along the Eastern Front . Details the background for the Bolshevik Revolution (November 1917) and the birth of state Communism
40 b/w illustrations