Burned Oil Rigs and Cut Woods: The Environmental Dimension of the First World War on the Eastern Front (2024)
The impact of war on the environment is undeniable. In the twentieth century, large and small conflicts have caused severe damage to nature, polluting vast areas.The impact of the First World War on the environment has been the subject of study by historians, but the Eastern Front in Europe has received rather less attention than the Western Front. The Eastern European theatre of military operations, which spread over a vast area on the border of three empires (Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary) and absorbed no less in the way of troops and equipment than the Western European theatre of military operations, should also be studied. This article examines several important manifestations of the environmental impact of conflict: firstly, the human-caused disasters that occurred when the fighting took place in an area filled with industrial facilities (oil fields and refineries) which, due to their novelty, did not attract the attention of military strategists before the war; secondly, the work of the armies of the Entente and the Central Powers to reorganise the front landscape, to adapt it both to the conduct of combat operations and to survival in territories clearly not intended for the accumulation of millions of people and hundreds of thousands of domestic animals.
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