The Eastern Front in World War I has been neglected for too long. "Breakthrough: The Gorlice-Tarnow Campaign, 1915" is the first English-language study of the first of the great breakthrough battles of the war--one of the Great War's critical campaigns.

The book covers the initial attack of the German Eleventh Army and the Austro-Hungarian Third and Fourth Armies in Galicia as they outflanked the Russian position in the Carpathian Mountains that threatened Hungary. Subsequent chapters cover the retaking of Galicia, including the recapture of Przemysl and Lemberg. The examination...

Published during the centennial of the events it considers, this book provides a comprehensive examination of one of the most interesting and influential campaigns of World War I, a campaign that was the apex of mobile warfare at the time. By the late summer of 1915, the Russian threat to Austria-Hungary had been eliminated by the Central Powers. That allowed Erich von Falkenhayn, head of the German supreme command, to turn his attention to his next strategic target the conquest of Serbia which was imperative to opening a land route to the Ottoman Empire. Until that task was accomplished,...