Brusilov Offensive

The '''Brusilov Offensive''' ({{lang-ru|Брусиловский прорыв}} ''Brusilovskiĭ proryv''), also known as the June Advance, was the [[Russian Empire]]'s greatest feat of arms during [[World War I]], and among the [[most lethal battles in world history]]. Prof. [[Graydon A. Tunstall]] of the [[University of South Florida]] called the Brusilov Offensive of 1916 the worst crisis of World War I for [[Austria-Hungary]] and the [[Triple Entente]]'s greatest victory. It was a major offensive against the armies of the [[Central Powers]] on the [[Eastern Front (World War I)|Eastern Front]], launched on June 4, 1916, and lasting until late September. It took place in what today is [[Ukraine]], in the general vicinity of the towns of [[Lviv|Lemberg]], [[Kovel]] and [[Lutsk]]. The offensive was named after the Russian commander in charge of the Southwestern Front, Gen. [[Aleksei Brusilov]]. Although the Brusilov Offensive was the greatest Russian feat of arms in the entire war, its cost had been high for [[Russian empire|Russia]]. More importantly, the Russian people saw it as just another military failure, and this certainly contributed to the [[Russian Revolution (1917)|revolution in 1917]]. ==Background== Early in 1916 [[French Third Republic|France]] called upon Russia to help relieve the pressure on [[Battle of Verdun|Verdun]] by launching an offensive against the [[German Empire|Germans]] on the [[Eastern Front (World War I)|Eastern Front]], hoping Germany would transfer more units to the East to cope with the Russian attack. The Russians responded by initiating the disastrous [[Lake Naroch Offensive]] in the [[Vilnius|Vilno]] area, during which the Germans suffered only one-fifth as many casualties as the Russians. Gen. Aleksei Brusilov presented his plan to [[Stavka]], the Russian high command, proposing a massive offensive by his Southwestern Front against the [[Austria-Hungary|Austro-Hungarian]] forces in [[Galicia (Central Europe)|Galicia]]. The main purpose of Brusilov's operation was to take some of the pressure off French and [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|British]] armies in France and the [[Italian Army]] along the Isonzo Front and, if possible, to knock Austria-Hungary out of the war. == Russian plan == Gen. [[Alexei Evert]], commander of the Russian Western Army Group, favored a defensive strategy and was opposed to Brusilov's offensive. [[Tsar]] [[Nicholas II of Russia|Nicholas II]] had taken personal command of the army in 1915. Evert was a strong supporter of Nicholas and the [[Romanov]]s, but the Tsar approved Brusilov's plan. The objectives were to be the cities of Kovel and Lemberg, which had been lost to the [[Central Powers]] the previous year. Although Stavka had approved Brusilov's plan, his request for supporting offensives by neighboring fronts was effectively denied. ==Preparations== Mounting pressure from the western Allies caused the Russians to hurry their preparations. Brusilov amassed four armies totaling 40 infantry divisions and 15 cavalry divisions. He faced 39 Austrian infantry divisions and 10 cavalry divisions, formed in a row of three defensive lines, although later German reinforcements were brought up. Brusilov, knowing he would not receive significant reinforcements, moved his reserves up to the front line. He used them to dig entrenchments about 300 meters long and 90 meters wide all along the front line. These provided shelter for the troops and hindered observation by the Austrians. The Russians secretly crept to within {{convert|100|yd|m}} of the Austrian lines and at some points as close as {{convert|75|yd|m}}. Brusilov prepared for a surprise assault along a {{convert|300|mi|km|sing=on}} front. The Stavka urged Brusilov to considerably shorten his attacking front to allow for a much heavier concentration of Russian troops. Brusilov, however, insisted on his plan and the Stavka relented. ==Breakthrough== On June 4 the Russians opened the offensive with a massive, accurate but brief artillery barrage against the Austro-Hungarian lines. The key factor in this was the brevity and accuracy of the bombardment, in marked contrast to the customary protracted barrages of the day which gave the defenders time to bring up reserves and evacuate forward trenches, and damaged the battlefield so badly that it was hard for attackers to advance. The initial attack was successful and the Austro-Hungarian lines were broken, enabling three of Brusilov's four armies to advance on a wide front (see: [[Battle of Kostiuchnówka]]). The success of the breakthrough was helped in large part by Brusilov's innovation of [[shock troops]] to attack weak points along the Austrian lines to effect a breakthrough, which the main Russian army could then exploit. Brusilov's tactical innovations laid the foundation for the German [[infiltration tactics]] (also called [[Hutier tactics]]) used later in the Western Front. ==Battle== On June 8 forces of the Southwestern Front took Lutsk. The Austrian commander, [[Archduke]] [[Josef Ferdinand]], barely managed to escape the city before the Russians entered, a testament to the speed of the Russian advance. By now the Austrians were in full retreat and the Russians had taken over 200,000 prisoners. Brusilov's forces were becoming overextended and he made it clear that further success of the operation depended on Evert launching his part of the offensive. Evert, however, continued to delay, which gave the German high command time to send reinforcements to the Eastern Front. In a meeting held on the same day Lutsk fell, German Chief of Staff [[Erich von Falkenhayn]] persuaded his Austrian counterpart [[Franz Graf Conrad von Hötzendorf|Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf]] to pull troops away from the Italian Front to counter the Russians in [[Galicia (Central Europe)|Galicia]]. [[Field Marshal]] [[Paul von Hindenburg]], Germany's commander in the East (Oberkommando-Ost), was again able to capitalize on good railroads to bring German reinforcements to the front. Finally, on June 18 a weak and poorly prepared offensive commenced under Evert. On July 24 [[Alexander von Linsingen]] [[Battle of Kowel|counterattacked]] the Russians south of Kovel and temporarily checked them. On July 28 Brusilov resumed his own offensive, and although his armies were short on supplies he reached the [[Carpathian Mountains]] by September 20. The Russian high command started transferring troops from Evert's front to reinforce Brusilov, a transfer Brusilov strongly opposed because more troops only served to clutter his front. All forces involved were reaching exhaustion and the offensive finally died down in late September and ended as Russian troops had to be transferred to help [[Kingdom of Romania|Romania]], which was being overrun by Austro-Hungarian, German and Bulgarian forces. ===International reactions=== On 18 June 1916, an article "Hero of the Hour in Russia, Described Intimately by One Who Knows Him Well" by Brusilov's brother-in-law, Charles Johnson, appeared in the [[New York Times]]. ==Results== [[File:Defenders NGM-v31-p369-A.jpg|thumbnail|300px|Russian infantry]] Brusilov's operation achieved its original goal of forcing Germany to halt its attack on Verdun and transfer considerable forces to the East. It also broke the back of the [[Austro-Hungarian army]], which suffered 750,000 casualties (including 380,000 troops taken prisoner). The Austro-Hungarian army was never able to mount a successful attack after that. Instead, it had to rely on the German army for its military successes. The early success of the offensive convinced Romania to enter the war on the side of the [[Triple Entente|Entente]], though that turned out to be a bad decision since it led to the [[Romanian Campaign (World War I)|failure of the 1916 campaign]]. Russian casualties were also considerable, numbering around 1.4 million. The Brusilov Offensive is listed among the [[most lethal battles in world history]]. The Brusilov Offensive was the high point of the Russian effort during World War I, and was a rare manifestation of good leadership and planning on the part of the [[Military history of Imperial Russia|Imperial Russian Army]]. After that, the effectiveness of the Russian army began to decline due to the deteriorating economic and political situation on the home front, which the army's heavy casualties certainly did nothing to alleviate, and also due to spectacular incompetence on the part of many of its generals. Even as the Germans and the Austro-Hungarians were being pushed back along their front line, at least 58,000 Russian troops deserted.{{Citation needed|date=December 2010}} This was an omen of the situation that developed when the tide of the war began to turn in Germany's favor. The operation was marked by a considerable improvement in the quality of Russian tactics. Brusilov used smaller, specialized units to attack weak points in the Austro-Hungarian trench lines and blow open holes for the rest of the army to advance into. These were a remarkable departure from the "human wave" tactics that had dominated the strategy of all the major armies until that point during World War I. The irony was that the Russians themselves did not realize the potential of the tactics that Brusilov had devised. It was Germany that seized on the model and utilized "storm troopers" to great effect in the 1918 offensive on the [[Western Front (World War I)|Western Front]], a strategy which was quickly copied and used even more effectively by the Western Allies. Shock tactics were later to play a large role in the early German [[blitzkrieg]] offensives of [[World War II]] and the later attacks by the [[Soviet Union]] and the Western Allies to defeat Germany, and continued until the [[Korean War]] and the [[First Indochina War|First Indochinese War]], which spelled the end of the era of mass trench warfare in all but a few nations, mostly in [[Africa]]. ==External links== {{Commons category|Brusilov Offensive}} * [http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/brusilovoffensive_brusilov.htm Primary Documents: Alexei Brusilov on the Brusilov Offensive, June 1916] * [http://www.worldwar1.com/tlbruoff.htm 4 June 1916 - The Brusilov Offensive] on [http://www.worldwar1.com Trenches on the Web] * http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/battles_kovel_stanislav.html {{World War I}} {{coord missing|Ukraine}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Brusilov Offensive 1916}}