The fight on the Eastern Front started with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian nationalists. Austria received the support of Germany, while Russia supported the Serbians. The Germans thought that the Russians would take many weeks or even months to mobilize, or assemble the entire army. However, the Czar had a standing army of 1.3 million and decided to launch an attack on Austria and Germany. They sent one group to attack and another to cut off the retreat of the Germans in East Prussia, a German state. They also sent some troops to Austria and the Austrian commander sent some of his forces to Serbia and put the rest in a wide ark. The Russians split into two flanking groups and ran into charged at the Austrians. The Austrians engaged, but left a hole in their front line, and the Russian Fifth Army penetrated through; because of this, the Austrians were nearly knocked out of the war. Then, the Russians tried to attack East Prussia, but they couldn't encrypt their radio broadcasts, and were easily defeated because the Germans knew where they were. Up until then the war had been a total stalemate with no side making advances on each other. The Germans and Austrians combined forces and tried to invade Russia on January 23rd, but it failed miserably because it was a bad idea to invade Russia in the winter. They tried again and... failed. Winter passed and the Germans were able to break through and forced the Russians to retreat out of Poland.

In early December of 1915, Russia met with allies to coordinate their plans for the coming year. Some of Russia's allies thought that Russia was incompetent, but those worries were put to rest by Russia's success against the Turks. Germany thought that Russia wouldn't be able to do anything in 1916 after their retreat and quickly launched an attack. The Russians recovered and launched an attack on the southwest front. After some initial success, the front line stabilized. The Russians told the Romanians to enter the fight but the Austrians obliterated them and sent them to their graves. At about this time, the economy started to grow, but the Russian public began to get uneasy.

After multiple defeats on the front and the wiping out of the Russian 2nd army, Russian morale was low. The Russian government was in a tough situation; the war effort increased food shortages and the people began to riot. It didn't help that workers were treated unfairly by the higher class, further fueling their discontent.

February Revolution

On March 8, 1914, angry protesters clamoring for bread in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) refused to leave the streets. Three days later an army garrison was called to quell the uprising. They shot towards the people, killing some. The protesters didn't waver. The next day several lawmakers from the Duma (parliament people) formed a provisional government. Later, Czar Nicholas II abdicated the throne in favor of a provisional government.

October Revolution

On November 6-7, the Bolsheviks, a communism-supporting faction, staged a coup against the new government. Led by Vladimir Lenin, the Bolsheviks took power by taking over strategic locations and government buildings in a bloodless coup.

Battle of Tannenberg

In the beginning, the Russians planned to split up so they could use a pincer attack to trap the Germans. With General Rennenkampf in the north and General Samsonov in the south, these two generals were separated by the Masurian lakes. The two Russian generals also hated each other, due to a event in the Russo-Japanese war, making cooperation impossible. Since the Russians often used uncoded messages to communicate, the Germans found out about Russian plans by just tapping the radio signals. The Russians decided to use try and trap the Germans by using a pincer attack.

Now that the Germans knew about the Russian plans, they came up with their own. The German army would split up to stop the Russian 2nd Army that was commanded by General Samsonov while they held enough troops in the north to keep General Rennenkampf in check. The Germans sent their troops to engage the Russians in the south. When the Germans attacked, Herman von François held back his troops against orders. This would be important because later von François' troops struck Samsonov's left flank in a surprise attack. This sent the Russians back to the east.

Then, against orders again, von François' troops went east to try and surround the Russians. Now the Russians were half encircled and two other detachments arrived to secure the Russian right flank and encircle the Russians. Now that Samsonov's army was in trouble, General Rennenkampf was ordered to come to Samsonov's aid. Unfortunately, he would not arrive in time. Samsonov was hindered by a terrible view of the battlefield and could not see that his flanks were being battered. If he had saw, he could have retreated or dispatched men to guard the flanks.

The Germans ended up completely encircling the Russians. Instead of facing the consequences of defeat, Samsonov killed himself. The Russians lost their whole 2nd army (about 170,000 men) while the Germans only lost 13,000 men.

Battle of Mărăşeşti

The final battle on the Eastern Front was the Battle of Mărăşeşti. From August 6 to September 8, 1917, it was a battle with Germany against Romania. It was a German victory. At the time, Romania was occupied mostly by Central Powers. After the Battle of Mărăşeşti, a Central Power win, tension was still high.

This battle was broken up into three main parts. The first part was from August 6th-12th, and during this time the Romanian and Russian armies had manged to stop enemies advances forcing the Germans to slowly change their attack north-westward. The second part, August 13th - 19th, Romania had completely taken the power from Russia and the fighting had reached its climax, ending the enemies attempts to move forwards. The third stage, August 20th - September 3rd, the Germans tried their last attempt to sway the battle their way by changing the offensive strategy they had. Although the Central Powers won, they had several thousand more casualties compared to Romania.

Though this was the last battle on the eastern side, what made it important was the treaties that followed it. The most notable was the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

Whereas people in the Western Front fought mainly in trench networks, people in the Eastern Front had a vast amount of movement on the land.

Pincer attacks were strategic onslaughts where an army would split and surround an enemy.

Artillery and poison gas were used on the Eastern front to great effect.

Each German soldier had more ammunition then their Russian counterpart, so they were more effective on the battlefield. Supplies were very important on this front because the Russians had worse supply lines and they were not efficient in distributing supplies.