This is a

in the coming weeks also continuing my conversation with Professor Nick Lloyd,

Professor of Modern Warfare at Kings College London.

His new book, The Eastern Front, this is part of his series of the Great War in 1914 to

1918. In this particular section, the professor gives us a very quick vision of the collapse of the Austrian

and Italian armies early 1917. The Germans win in the Eastern Front at this moment. The collapse of the

Austrians is profound. The Italians, however, it's about the 10 or 11 battles of the

a sonzo River and here the German divisions come in with new tactics the

professor describes and the Italians cannot stand up to it. The losses are unbelievable in a matter of weeks.

Unbelievable here in the 21st century. those men gone damaged the ones who survived damaged and gone.

This is 1917 consider what happened in 1937, 20 years later.

The men who were gone, were not there to stop, to participate

on the slowdown of the juggernaut that emerged from the bitterness of the German experience.

The Germans won the Eastern Front.

It's an irony.

They broke on the Western Front. They won the Eastern Front and they never forgot it.

Not in 1937, not in 2027.

The Eastern Front today is Chaos. That's the Bloodlands. Here's Nick Lloyd on the

darkest days of the Eastern Front when the Germans won, 1970.

Much more of this in the coming weeks.

Yeah, I mean you are right about the devil having a sense of humor because I think when you see those two campaigns together, which I do in the book, you can see how there's a double blow for the Allied cause in that November of 1917.

It's possibly one of the darkest moments of the entire war for the Allied powers,

...