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The Russian invasion of East Prussia occurred during World War I, lasting from August to September 1914. As well as being the natural course for the Russian Empire to take upon the declaration of war on the German Empire , it was also an attempt to focus the Imperial German Army on the Eastern Front , as opposed to the Western Front .
Military success alternated and the Prussian army faced defeat in the end, in spite of major victories. On 15 February 1763 the Peace of Hubertusburg was signed between Prussia and its opponents. The status quo ante was restored. The war established Prussia as the fifth major power in Europe, but Prussia lost 180,000 soldiers during the war.
According to Prit Buttar, . Provided that the Russians did not concentrate all their forces against East Prussia - and therefore sent substantial numbers of troops against the Austro-Hungarian Empire - Eighth Army should be able to hold out without conceding too much ground until victory over France was assured.
Russian troops in the trenches at the Russian invasion of East Prussia. European diplomatic alignments shortly before the war. The Russian Empire's entry into World War I unfolded gradually in the days leading up to July 28, 1914. The sequence of events began with Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Serbia, a Russian ally.
German forces fought the Allies on both the eastern and western fronts, although German territory itself remained relatively safe from widespread invasion for most of the war, except for a brief period in 1914 when East Prussia was invaded.
A French propaganda poster from 1917 portrays Prussia as an octopus stretching out its tentacles vying for control. It is captioned with an 18th-century quote: "Even in 1788, Mirabeau was saying that War is the National Industry of Prussia."
In the years prior to 1914, Austro-Russian co-operation was both crucial for European peace and difficult to maintain. Old suspicions exacerbated by the Bosnian crisis stood in the way of agreement between the two empires, as did ethnic sensitivities. The Russian military was the largest in the world consisting of 1,400,000 men.
Before World War II, the events of 1914–1918 were generally known as the Great War or simply the World War. [1] In August 1914, the magazine The Independent wrote "This is the Great War. It names itself". [2] In October 1914, the Canadian magazine Maclean's similarly wrote, "Some wars name themselves. This is the Great War."