Speaker: Nick Lloyd

Topic: The Eastern Front in the First World War

Venue: Vinson Lecture Theatre

Time: 10:00-11:00 Sunday 15 September

Talk Summary:

Much has been written about the fighting in France and Belgium during the Great War, yet the Eastern Front was no less bloody. Between 1914 and 1917 as many as 16 million soldiers and two million civilians were killed, wounded or maimed in battles that sometimes ranged across a front 100 km in length. Through intimate eyewitness reports, diary entries and memoirs – many of which have never been translated into English before – Nick Lloyd is able to reconstruct the full story of a war that began in the Balkans as a local struggle between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, and which sucked in Russia, Germany and Italy, right through to the final collapse of the Habsburg Empire in 1918. This brutal conflict remains central to understanding the tragic, blood-soaked trajectory of the entire 20th century, including the current war in Ukraine.