Comparing the Eastern and Western fronts in WWI

the eastern and western fronts even though they were fronts of the same were very different in character a lot of it came out of the fact of who was fighting it and especially how big the actual fronts were so the Western Front which was generally this region right over here was a much smaller front than the Eastern Front the Eastern Front was essentially this entire this entire region this entire region right over there and because of that trench warfare did not become as major of a factor on the Eastern Front in fact it was fairly useless on the Eastern Front if you imagine trying to dig a bunch of trenches so if you try to dig a bunch of trenches trenches are huge advantage for the defending army as long as you can block off the entire region with trenches so over here you can't go around the trenches you essentially if you want to make some ground an attacking army has to cross the trenches and because you have now machine guns and the the the defending soldiers could essentially sit behind their trenches they can essentially mow down they could essentially mow down the attacking army very easily and that's what caused the Western Front especially after the sleepin plan was not able to be executed on as quickly as possible it turned into just a stalemate so you just had a stalemate a hugely defensive stalemate because both parties had their trenches it was very it was hugely advantageous for the defending side on the Eastern Front you had this huge front it was very hard to you couldn't have you didn't have enough people to dig trenches across this entire front and so you can imagine if you try to dig a trench if you tried to dig a trench but you weren't able to cover the entire front then the attacking army doesn't have to storm your trench they don't have to do that anymore they could just they could just go around your trench and because trench warfare was not as significant of a factor on the or wasn't as anywhere near as much of a factor on the Eastern Front it was a much more fluid front you had offensives and counter-offensives between the German the Germans Austrians on one side and the Russians on the other now the other factor and this was mainly a with Russia as a variable the other factor was just what was going on in Russia so Russia had several things going for it the main thing is it a huge army in a huge standing army even before the war and it was able to amass even more so it had a huge it had a huge army but what was going against it and this is why it eventually had to get into a very unfavorable treaty with the Central Powers near the end of the war is it had huge internal problems internal and I'm not just talking about the military I was talking about I'm talking about the entire empire and it arguably was due to the war due to the the economic and the human cost of the war but as we enter into 1917 you first have the february revolution tsar nicholas ii has to abdicate the throne because of because of the rights that are going on because of the the the the unhappiness the unease with people literally going hungry people obviously the the morale of the troops going down and then on top of that the russian military even though it had a huge army in the beginning of the war the russian industry wasn't ready to fully supply that army and as good of a ways say the German army was and on top of that it had communication problems and it even in the beginning phases of the Eastern Front and even had issues in terms of coordinating its actual armies and so what we'll see and we'll cover this in much more depth in in a future video but what we'll see is Western Front sleep and plan not executed as fast as possible ends up in a stalemate this did allow the Germans to bring some of their troops back to the Eastern Front to fight the Russians this goes back and forth as we'll see but once you enter into 1917 you have a revolution in Russia first you have the february revolution tsar nicholas ii has to abdicate and then in later that year you have the Bolsheviks overthrow the interim government and you had now have communist Russia the Bolsheviks were no mood to continue to fight the Germans the military was in no mood to continue to fight the Germans in the austro-hungary Aust and austria-hungary and so they essentially get into a treaty with them and and and and kind of take themselves out of the war so we'll cover that in a little bit more detail in a future video