Brusilov Offensive

Background

By the spring of 1916 the Allies had agreed, at a conference in December 1915, to attack together in the summer. Events overtook the plan. The Germans opened their offensive at Verdun in February, and the French pressed Russia for a diversion. A Russian attack at Lake Naroch in March failed badly. In May Conrad von Hötzendorf, the Austro-Hungarian chief of staff, launched his own offensive against Italy from the Trentino, and moved six veteran divisions and fifteen heavy batteries from Galicia to the Tyrol to do it.

General Aleksei Brusilov, a former cavalryman, had taken over the South-Western Front at the end of March. At a Stavka conference in April, with the Tsar present, he argued that every front should attack at once, so that the Central Powers could not use their railways to shift reserves from quiet sectors to threatened ones. Evert, commanding the Western Front, opposed any offensive. Brusilov asked for no reinforcements and was allowed to attack. His objectives were Kovel and Lemberg, both lost in 1915.

Stavka planned its main summer blow further north, and refused Brusilov's request for supporting attacks by the neighbouring fronts. Then the Italians, reeling from Conrad's offensive, begged for help. On 26 May the Tsar brought the timetable forward: Brusilov would attack on 4 June, the other fronts about ten days later. On the Austro-Hungarian side, the defeat of the winter and March attacks had bred complacency, and the best troops and guns were in the Tyrol.

The armies

Brusilov had four armies, north to south: Kaledin's 8th, facing Lutsk and Kovel; Sakharov's 11th; Shcherbachev's 7th; and Lechitsky's 9th, reaching to the Romanian border. Together they held about 40 infantry and 15 cavalry divisions, some 600,000 men and 1,938 guns. Opposite them stood Archduke Joseph Ferdinand's 4th Army, Puhallo's 1st, Böhm-Ermolli's 2nd, the German general Bothmer's Südarmee and Pflanzer-Baltin's 7th Army in Bukovina: about 39 infantry and 10 or 11 cavalry divisions, 500,000 men and 1,846 guns. Linsingen's German-led Army of the Bug lay to the north. Numbers were close to even. Brusilov's edge lay in method.

The Austro-Hungarians held three defensive lines, and Lutsk had been heavily fortified after 1915. Brusilov had each army choose its own breakthrough sector, about 15 km wide, so that no single build-up gave the game away. His men sapped forward, in places to within 100 m of the enemy wire, and dug large dugouts to hide the assault troops. They tunnelled under their own wire so that it could stay up until the attack. False radio traffic, planted orders and dummy guns hid the real sectors. Gunners and infantry planned their fire plans together. At Lutsk, Kaledin massed 148 battalions against the 53 of Joseph Ferdinand's army.

The battle

4–5 June: the bombardment. Russian guns opened at 4.30 a.m. on 4 June along the whole front, from the Pripet marshes to Bukovina. It was a short bombardment by the standards of 1916, aimed rather than massed. In the 8th Army, Winogradsky's brigade used 76 mm field guns to cut 24 gaps in the wire, in sectors agreed with the infantry beforehand. Heavier 122 mm guns and 152 mm howitzers hit strongpoints, and a creeping barrage covered the assault. Infantry attacks by all four armies followed. Because every army attacked, the defenders could not tell where the main blow was falling.

5–7 June: Lutsk. Before Lutsk, Kaledin's gunners resumed their methodical work on 5 June, and the fire rose again just before the main assault at about 9 a.m. Near Olyka a Russian corps overran the Austro-Hungarian 2nd Infantry Division; its 82nd Regiment lost more than 4,500 of its 5,000 men. By the end of 5 June Kaledin held the first and second lines. Joseph Ferdinand had spent his reserves and was nearly out of shell. On 6 June his X and II Corps and Szurmay's corps were driven back over the Styr. Many of X Corps surrendered with the river behind them. On 7 June the Russians entered Lutsk, where the 4th Army's abandoned stores were burning. Joseph Ferdinand was relieved the same day. His army, about 110,000–118,000 strong on 4 June, was down to roughly 28,000–35,000 within a week.

Further south. Shcherbachev's 7th Army took Jazłowiek and pushed Pflanzer-Baltin back to the Strypa. On 9–10 June Lechitsky's 9th Army broke through at Okna and Dobronoutz, and the Austro-Hungarian 7th Army began to retreat on 10 June. It lost 76,200 of its 194,200 men by 8 June, and 133,600 in a fortnight. Part of it fell back west and part south over the Prut, splitting the army in two. Bothmer's Südarmee tried a counter-attack on 11 June, which got nowhere. By 14 June Austro-Hungarian losses stood at about 205,000, including 150,000 prisoners.

8–30 June: the Germans arrive. On 8 June Falkenhayn agreed to send five German divisions to Linsingen, concentrating near Kovel. Linsingen struck the Lutsk salient from 15 June with Puhallo's 1st Army, the 4th Army (now under Tersztyánszky), Marwitz's German X Corps and Gruppe Bernhardi. Three days' fighting changed little, even with Gruppe Falkenhayn added on 21 June. A renewed thrust under Marwitz from 30 June pushed one Russian corps back only about 5 km. In the south, Lechitsky took Czernowitz on 17 June and Kolomea on 18 June, and his cavalry reached the Carpathian foothills on 20 June. The victory was not cheap: South-Western Front casualties had reached about 285,000 by the end of June.

2–8 July: the other fronts fail. Evert at last attacked at Baranovichi on 2 July, with an imprecise bombardment and dense infantry attacks of the old kind. He suspended it on 9 July, having lost 80,000 men for about 5 km. Brusilov, by contrast, attacked again on 4 July with Lesh's 3rd and Kaledin's 8th Armies, and by 6 July Linsingen had fallen back to the Stokhid river. CDB90's engagement ends on 8 July, with the first phase of the offensive over.

Aftermath

The offensive went on. Reinforced with the Guards, Brusilov attacked towards Kovel from 28 July. Sakharov took Brody the same day and Lechitsky took Stanislau on 11 August. On 9 August Brusilov called off the attempt on Kovel, which German troops dug in behind the Stokhid had held. Attacks continued until 20 September, for heavy losses and little gain. On 28 July Hindenburg took command of the front as far south as the Austro-Hungarian 2nd Army.

Total losses are argued over, partly because prisoners dominate the count. Russian figures run from about 500,000 for the first phase to a million for the whole offensive. Austro-Hungarian losses are put at between about 616,000 and 1.5 million, with 400,000 or more taken prisoner. German losses run from 148,000 to 350,000.

Romania, encouraged by the early success, declared war on 27 August, and its 1916 campaign ended in failure. Germany halted its attacks at Verdun and moved divisions east. At the end of August Hindenburg replaced Falkenhayn. Austria-Hungary never again fought an offensive without German help, and German units were spread through its line as 'corset stays'. Keegan called the offensive the greatest victory on any front since trench warfare began. After the war Conrad and his officers blamed unreliable Slav regiments for the collapse. Dowling and Schindler blame Habsburg generalship and Brusilov's methods instead. Russia's losses are often linked to the revolution of 1917.

Wargaming it

This is a front-sized operation, so it suits an operational game at division or corps level. A full front-wide game needs simple supply and railway rules: the fight is about whether the defender can move reserves faster than the attacker can break new sectors. The decisive opening, though, was won by a few brigades of guns and a few miles of trench. That suits a tactical or grand-tactical game of the Lutsk or Okna breakthrough, with battalions or regiments as units, over 4–7 June.

The interesting rules are about preparation and command. The Russian player should spend points before the game on saps, tunnels under the wire, deception and registered fire plans, and have to commit them to sectors the enemy cannot see. The Austro-Hungarian player has deep wire and three lines but few reserves and a shortage of shell. Both sides should face friction from poor communications. A hidden-deployment or double-blind system shows Brusilov's main idea well: four armies attack at once, and the defender must decide where the real threat lies.

Good 'what ifs': Evert attacks on schedule in mid-June; Conrad keeps his Tyrol divisions in Galicia; the German divisions arrive a week later; Brusilov, rather than pressing on towards Kovel in July, consolidates or turns south. A campaign game can carry the outcome into Romania's decision to enter the war.

Maps and pictures

Pictures from the time

Photographs by the armies' photographers and the press, and drawings made at the time: free-to-use pictures from the battle's category on Wikimedia Commons. Each opens its file page there, with the full caption and source.