The First World War was also the first positional, trench war. After the front was stabilized in the fall of 1914, the fighting degenerated into a merciless and senseless massacre that had no analogues in world history, when for every meter of advance forward one had to pay with thousands of lives - all attempts to go on the offensive were choked in blood and mud, the attacking chains were mowed down by machine guns and hurricane artillery fire, the troops dug deeper and deeper into the ground... But the carnage continued both underground, where teams of sappers laid galleries and counter-galleries, trying to undermine entire sections of the front, and on the surface, where among stakes, gouges and millions of kilometers of barbed wire assault groups, armed flamethrowers, submachine guns and special trench knives... This book is the first study in Russian literature of the Great Trench War of 1914–1918, the monstrous cruelty of which not only cost Europe millions of lives, but also broke the fate of European civilization, becoming the first act of the tragedy of the 20th century century.