The other great battlefront of World War I was on Germany's eastern border. There the armies of three great empires - Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary - clashed in a series of titanic struggles which were to change the face of Europe forever. The great plains, forests and mountains of the eastern Europe meant that this was a very different type of warfare from the trench stalemate of the Western Front. A war of movement, with sweeping offensives, involving millions of men, ebbing and flowing around isolated fortresses. Cavalry was much used. As the war started, Russia mobilised more quickly than the Germans expected, and two great armies lurched into East Prussia. There they were soundly beaten at Tannenberg by a brilliant new German team - Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff - and put on the defensive against a succession of German assaults.
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