The confrontation on the Eastern Front of the Great War is still teetering on the brink of oblivion, despite considerable interest in a number of aspects of the topic. The subjective factors of making the most important decisions, including those that were made in the highest command instances, have been poorly studied. An analysis of the causes of different decisions with fatal consequences is hardly possible without taking into account images and visions about the enemy and their evolution under the influence of military experience. A special problem in this case is the verification of a significant part of the information from official historiography of interwar period and, moreover, memoiristics. Military elites are not always able to admit mistakes or claim personal responsibility for misjudging the enemy and own capabilities. An unobvious factor was the persistence of established stereotypes despite the huge amount of new information, large-scale changes in the character of military operations and repeated failures in the planning and implementation of strategic operations. Based on the on the recorded experience from the military elites of the Central Powers, it is possible to classify stereotypes, the causes and channels of their spread, to assess the role in decision- making and the implementation of occupation policy.
