This is John Bachelor, conversation with Professor Nick Lloyd, Professor of Modern Warfare at King's College London.

His new book is The Eastern Front, a history of the Great War in 1914- 1918.

This is the second volume.

The Western Front, Nick and I talked about three years ago, this is more compelling because

it's unknown to me.

And largely unknown to me.

Largely unknown to American history students

because we learn the US involvement,

the Wilson reluctance to go to war, too brown to fight, the Roosevelt challenge the politics of the United States at the time of the war, progressivism.

As Neolankto informs us in his book.

This is the war in the Eastern Front fought between empires, the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Habsburgs, the Russian Empire, the Romanovs, the German

Empire, the Hoensolons, and then there are minor, minor compared to Russia and Germany kingdoms.

You know them now is countries broken free from the Soviets, Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, the Balkans. This is a man who's central to understand the first war and the failure of the first war.

Conrad von Hotsendor, is his name, called Conrad in general.

He is the chief of the general staff of the Habsburg Empire.

He goes to war.

To punish Serbia is the initial belief for its involvement at the time suspect

but now demonstrated in the assassination of the Archduke and Sarajevo.

However, Conrad is a complicated figure, as Nick explains,

and his failure to understand his own army required

hundreds of thousands of casualties and his compulsion to depend upon the Germans

but resent the Germans was part of the crisis of again and again and again in the eastern front of the war.

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