"The East Gives Nothing Back": The Great War and the German Army in Russia

Contemporaries tended to interpret the Chief of Staff’s pessimism

as the reflection of his personal dislike for the eastern command

team of Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff.1 Yet, for the

balance of the Great War, the Russian Front never quite repaid the

efforts of the Second Reich. Even the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk proved

the work of Faust’s Lemures, who helped to dig Germany’s grave

while its leaders dreamed of fresh resources and eastern empires.