Similarly, Russia succumbed to the same pitfall but for very different reasons. In the early 1920s, the newly formed Red Army of the Soviet Union had to choose between three different “last wars”: the eastern front of 1914–17, the Russian Civil War (1918–21), and the Polish-Soviet War (1919– 21). Although all of these conflicts showed the value of strategic movement of forces, and operational maneuver, the “military specialists” imported to shape the new Red Army included thousands of former Tsarist officers who found it perilous to advocate for anything other than: politics were paramount to war. Conversely, not all countries were guilty of ignoring or misusing history during the interwar period. German commanders such as Erwin
