The
Brusilov Offensive ( ) was the Russian Empire
's greatest feat of arms during World War I, and among the most lethal battles in
world history. Professor
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, launched on
June 4,
1916 and lasting
until early August.
It took place in what today is Ukraine
, in the
general vicinity of the towns of Lemberg
, Kovel
, and
Lutsk
. The offensive was named after the Russian
commander in charge of the Southwestern Front,
Aleksei Brusilov.
Background
Early in
1916 France called upon Russia
to help relieve the pressure on Verdun
by launching
an offensive against the Germans
on the
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 Vilno
area, during
which the Germans suffered just 1/5 as many casualties as the
Russians. General Aleksei Brusilov presented his plan to
Stavka, the Russian high command, proposing a
massive offensive by his Southwestern Front against the
Austro-Hungarian forces in
Galicia.
The main purpose of
Brusilov's operation was to take some of the pressure off French
and 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
General
Alexei Evert, commander of the
Russian Western Army Group, favoured a defensive strategy and was
opposed to Brusilov's offensive.
Tsar Nicholas II had taken personal command
of the army in 1915. Evert was a strong supporter of Nicholas and
the
Romanovs, 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 in 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. The Russians secretly crept to within of the Austrian
lines and at some points as close as . Brusilov prepared for a
surprise assault along a 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 point of 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 the 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 Conrad von
Hötzendorf to pull troops away from the Italian Front to
counter the Russians in
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.
At last on
June 18, a weak and poorly
prepared offensive commenced under Evert. On
July 24,
Alexander von Linsingen counterattacked the Russians south of Kovel
and temporarily checked the Russians.
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 Brusilov's 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
Romania,
which was being overrun by Austro-Hungarian and German
forces.
Results
Brusilov's operation achieved the
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 lost nearly 1.5 million men (including 400,000 prisoners).
The Austro-Hungarian Army was never able to mount a successful
attack from this point onward. 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
Entente, though with
disastrous consequences.
Russian casualties were also considerable, numbering around half a
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
Imperial Russian Army.
Thereafter the effectiveness of the Russian Army started to
decline, due to the deteriorating economic and political situation
on the home front, which the army's heavy casualties did nothing to
alleviate. Even whilst the Germans and the Austro-Hungarians were
being pushed back along their front line, at least 58,016 Russian
soldiers deserted. This was only a premonition for things to come
when the balance was in Germany's favour.
The operation was marked by a considerable improvement in the
quality of Russian tactics. Brusilov used smaller specialized units
of soldiers to attack weak points in the Austro-Hungarian trench
lines and blow open holes for the rest of the Russian Army to
advance into. These shock tactics were a remarkable departure from
the "human wave" tactics that were prevalent until that point
during World War I by all the major armies at the time. The irony
was that the Russians themselves did not realize the potential of
the tactics that Brusilov produced. It would be Germany that seized
on the model and utilized "storm troopers" to great effect in the
1918 offensive on the
Western Front, which was hastily
copied and used to an even greater effect by the Western Allies.
Shock
tactics would later play a large role as well 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 would
continue until the Korean War and the
First Indochinese War, which
ended the era of the mass-Trench warfare in all but a few nations,
mostly in Africa.
References
Bibliogaphy
- B. P. Utkin Brusilovskij proryv (2001)
- Liddell Hart, B.H. The Real War: 1914–18 (1930), pp.
224-227.
- Операция русского Юго-Западного фронта летом 1916
года
- Schindler J. "Steamrollered in Galicia: The Austro-Hungarian
Army and the Brusilov Offensive, 1916", War in History,
Vol. 10, No. 1. (2003), pp. 27–59.
- Tucker, Spencer The Great War: 1914–18 (1998) ISBN
9780253211712
Notes
- Graydon A. Tunstall, “Austria-Hungary and the Brusilov
Offensive of 1916,” The Historian 70.1 (Spring 2008):
52.
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