The manoeuvre war of 1914-1918 in Eastern Europe led to the rapid militarisation of areas from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. The conflicts of the mass armies destroyed landscapes, changed ecosystems and biodiversity. Natural spaces were replaced by their anthropogenic analogues, which formed the framework for infrastructure projects and were subjected to the new logic of industrial confrontation. Nature was not only a victim but also an actor in the unfolding catastrophe; it influenced strategic decisions, destroyed tactical plans and decided the lives and deaths of combatants. The First World War became a testing ground for the "scorched earth" policy, the subjugation of foreign nature by means of large-scale technological projects and the ruthless exploitation of natural resources in the occupied territories. The toxic legacy of the war of movement in Eastern Europe determined the fate of mankind and its natural environment for a long time.
The plot of the book unfolds in the environmental and spatial dimensions of the Austrian province of Galicia, which was transformed from a deserted periphery into a battlefield of three Eastern European empires during the First World War. For the first time, rivers, forests, mountains, animals and oil wells become independent protagonists of the narrative. For the combatants and military doctors of the Russian army, contact with the foreign environment was just as existential as the battles themselves. The image of nature, narrated in words and images, in propaganda and first-person documents, became an integral part of the Russian cultural memory of the Great War.