The condition of the Ottoman empire at the beginning of 1917 was desperate. The afterglow of the victories at Gallipoli and Kut ül-Amara had long dissipated. In the previous year the Russians had taken Erzurum, Rize, Trabzon, and Erzincan and in the process had mauled the Ottoman forces opposing them. On the Caucasian front alone the Ottomans had lost over 100,000 men to combat, desertion, and hunger. They had committed their last standing reserves, seven divisions, to the European front in support of the Austro-Hungarian army and had none left. In the Anatolian countryside tribesmen roamed without clothing and were reduced to eating grass, mud, and coal. Starvation stalked even Istanbul, where prices for essentials were soaring uncontrollably and the possibility of bread riots loomed. The empire as a whole was exhausted, worn down, and bankrupt. Only the onset of an unusually severe winter, which brought combat operations to a halt on the Caucasian front, preserved what remained of the army and prevented military collapse.

Russia's generals, by contrast, were “full of fight” at the outset of 1917. The Entente had achieved material superiority on virtually every front, American entrance into the war looked more likely with every passing day, and the Russian economy was now capable of supporting a modern industrial war. Russia's increase in productive capacity, however, had come at a prohibitive cost. It imposed extreme dislocation and disruption upon Russian society, and ultimately society snapped.