The Brusilov Offensive by Timothy Dowling

The Brusilov Offensive
Vol. 10, Number 6, June 2016
This month in Over the Top we visit the "Big Story" of one hundred years ago, the launching of the Russian
offensive commanded by Alexei Brusilov. Professor Timothy Dowling of Virginia Military Institute, who has
written a history of the operation, provides our main article. I am sure you will find it highly informative.
Whatever the merits of Brusilov's generalship, though, the most impressive thing about his June 1916
operation is that he was smart enough to target the weaker of the two largest Central Powers, the armies of
Austria-Hungary. Readers of our August 2012 issue, which presented a biographical sketch of the Habsburg's
leading general, Franz Graf Conrad von Hötzendorf, might recall his many contributions to the collapse of the
empire. Conrad had helped stir up the war by his earlier advocacy of a punitive war against Serbia. He gave his
political masters terrible advice during the July Crisis of 1914. And, within a year, he had found his underpowered forces deeply engaged on three fronts.
Conrad nevertheless exceeded these malfeasances with his initiative of 1916. In the prior year, the Eastern
Front had been pushed far to the east – thus providing both Germany and his own empire a greater safety
margin and intimidating most Russian senior commanders. At this moment, maybe his first opportunity to
settle his forces, he chose to weaken his position in the east. Why? Well, Italy had to be punished for joining
the Allies, of course. What better time to withdraw forces from in front of his most dangerous enemy?
You will read in Professor Dowling's article the price Austria-Hungary paid for Conrad von Hötzendorf's 1916
decision. The cumulative cost of his efforts before and during the war can be summarized thus: 1,495,200
Austro-Hungarian soldiers died during the Great War, including 480,000 who perished as prisoners of war,
MH
and the Empire he had pledged to defend disappeared.
Brusilov Discussing the Attack with the Tsar and the Senior Generals
. 2.
Images and Cover from Tony Langley's Collection
The Brusilov Offensive
by Timothy Dowling
The Offensive Opens
murderous assault on Verdun, they had launched an
In the summer of 1916 Russia finally appeared ready
offensive in the area around Lake Naroch in March
for the war that had broken out nearly two years
1916. Despite a six-to-one manpower advantage, the
earlier. After a year of fighting in which the Russian
Russian armies had been unable to push the Germans
armies lost all of Poland and nearly two million men, a
back or even force them to transfer reinforcements
change in leadership managed to bring some
from the west.
semblance of order to the military. Tsar Nicholas II,
who formally took command of Russia's armed forces
Thereupon, Generals Aleksei Evert and Aleksei N.
on 15 September 1915, was passive at best. He did,
Kuropatkin, commanding the Northwestern and
however, eliminate much of the political infighting that
Northern Fronts, respectively, argued that any
had paralyzed the general staff during the early stages
offensive was useless. The Russian Army, they argued,
of the war.
still did not have enough artillery or shells to dislodge
the Central Powers from their entrenched positions on
At the same time, General Aleksei A. Polivanov,
the Russian Front. When the Austro-Hungarian drive in
installed as Minister of War in July 1915, managed
the Tirol brought a cry for help from the Italians,
sweeping and effective reforms. He drafted an
therefore, most Russian commanders turned a deaf
additional million men into the Russian armed forces,
ear. They even argued against the general offensive
reorganized recruitment to improve the physical
planned for the summer, though the tsar had given his
fitness of the men, and reformed Russian infantry
personal assurances to the French and British that
training. Polivanov also oversaw tremendous increases
Russia would support the drive on the Somme.
in the availability of arms and ammunition, which
Russia had sorely lacked during the first years of the
The sole exception was General Aleksei A. Brusilov.
war. For the first time since the war began, the Russian
Newly appointed as commander of the Southwestern
Imperial Army seemed ready to fight.
Front in April 1916, Brusilov was convinced that an
The Russian commanders, however, were reluctant to
use the instrument at their disposal. In response to
French pleas for relief in the face of the Germans'
offensive could succeed and offered to launch an
attack in support of the Allied nations' drive on the
Western Front that summer. His fellow commanders
and his subordinates were equally aghast at the
. 3.
proposition; even Mikhail V. Alekseev, the chief of
general staff and de facto commander of the Russian
armed forces, believed the operation would be of little
use in the offensive he was planning. Alekseev warned
Brusilov that he could expect neither reinforcements
nor additional materiel for his attack, but Brusilov
remained adamant. "I ask only the express permission
to attack on my front at the same time as my
colleagues," he said. "Should it be the case that I meet
no success, I will then restrict my efforts to engaging
the enemy forces."
Brusilov's forces took more than 350,000 Habsburg
soldiers prisoner, and entire Austrian corps – even
armies – broke before the onslaught. The Russians
regained much of the territory lost on the front in 1915
and advanced to the foot of the Carpathian Mountains,
where they threatened Hungary itself. Only rapid
action by Germany's military leaders held the front
together and prevented the collapse of the Habsburg
Empire in 1916.
The results were astonishing in military terms, but the
political consequences were perhaps even more
significant. Contemporaries – and Brusilov himself –
claimed that the offensive had relieved Verdun and
rescued the British and French position in the west,
saved Italy, and forced Austria-Hungary to consider a
separate peace. While those claims are debatable,
Brusilov's success undoubtedly brought Romania into
the war, extinguished the offensive capability of the
Habsburg armies, and forced the Austro-Hungarian
Empire to accept German military commanders of a de
facto unified force. And yet, ironically, the Brusilov
Offensive did more than any other single action to
create the conditions for revolution within the Russian
Imperial Army. It thus stands out in the military and
political history of the Eastern Front, if not the entire
war, as a turning point for both sides.
In fact, Brusilov's forces met with stunning success. The
Russian armies on the Southwestern Front broke the
Austro-Hungarian line in several places – including
Habsburg positions deemed impregnable – and drove
them back as much as 160 kilometers in some sectors
in what was by most estimates the greatest Russian
military achievement of the war. Brigades
disintegrated in the face of the meticulously planned
and precisely executed Russian assault.
At the very least, Brusilov's campaign was a significant
development in Russian military thought. Unlike the
war in the west, the conflict in the east never settled
into a pattern of stalemate and stagnation. While
elements of trench warfare existed, armies on the
Eastern Front frequently covered large amounts of
territory in sweeping movements. Given the vast
expanses of eastern Europe, commanders on both
sides proved more flexible in their tactics and more
willing to try new approaches, from creeping
bombardments to gas shells.
The Brusilov Offensive of 1916 certainly reflected the
innovative, ever changing approach to the war
characteristic of the front, and it was certainly unlike
any other Russian campaign. Where most commanders
relied on numerical superiority and the bayonet,
sending infantry columns up to 70 men deep forward
across the lines, Brusilov created a primitive form of
unified arms combat. He borrowed liberally from
tactics developed on the Western Front, drew heavily
on the experiences of the Russo-Japanese War, and
Colonel Timothy C. Dowling, Ph.D. is professor of
history at the Virginia Military Institute. He is the
author of The Brusilov Offensive, published in 2008.
This article contains extended excerpts from that
work and is presented here courtesy of Indiana
University Press. All rights reserved. Professor
Dowling has also written articles on AustriaHungary, Ernst Jünger, and many topics pertaining
to the Second World War and the Cold War.
.4.
Brusilov thus looked elsewhere for answers in how to
balance the requirements of surprise and firepower in
offensive. He hit upon what was basically a twofold
solution. The first part of his strategy involved the
adoption of tactics developed in the Champagne
region in September 1915. There the French had
forsaken the doctrine of concentration of forces in
favor of preparation, creating holding areas for the
reserves close to the front lines (places d'armée), and
then sapping trenches exceptionally close to the
German front lines to reduce the time between the
artillery bombardment and the infantry assault. The
bombardment, when it came, was relatively brief yet
concentrated – a process known to the Germans as
"drumming fire." This approach, also known as a
"Joffre Attack," proved effective in small-scale
engagements with limited aims, and the French sent
instructors to Russia to encourage their ally to adopt it.
developed several novel tactics of his own. He made
use of the old (cavalry and artillery) and the new
(aviation and armor) in developing a coordinated
system of warfare.
Brusilov was almost alone among Russian commanders
in believing such tactics could succeed on the Eastern
Front. He had, in fact, ordered his Eighth Army to
undertake preparations for a Joffre Attack nearly a
month before he was elevated to command of the
entire Southwestern Front. Brusilov's particular genius,
though, was to apply these small-scale measures on a
broad front. This, he believed, would create surprise
not by concealment, but by overwhelming the AustroHungarian forces with information and options. By
having all four armies on the Southwestern Front
engage in similar preparations along the entire front,
Brusilov hoped to keep the Central Powers from
concentrating their reserves as well as to prevent them
from shifting forces to meet an attack. His first
directive to his army commanders, therefore, informed
them that the attack would be carried out along the
entire 450 kilometers of front stretching from the Styr
River in the north to the Pruth River on the Romanian
border. The main objectives would be the railroad
junctions at Kovel and Lutsk, but every sector was to
be mobilized.
Brusilov Monument, St. Petersburg
This was, in part, driven by necessity. Brusilov did not
have an overwhelming numerical superiority of forces:
while the Russians had some 132,000 more men on
the Southwestern Front than did the Central Powers,
there were sectors where the Russians were actually at
a disadvantage. Nor did he have at his disposal either
the artillery or the shells for the massive
bombardments of the Western Front, or even for the
"Mackensen Wedge" – a primitive form of the creeping
barrage. According to studies of the Russian offensives
of December 1915 and March 1916, it required either
400 heavy shells or 25,000 light ones to blow a 50meter gap in a belt of three-strand German barbed
wire. By the summer of 1916, the Central Powers had
entrenched themselves behind three belts of 18- or 20strand wire along most of the Eastern Front. Even if his
forces could have blown holes in these defenses,
Brusilov believed the resulting gaps would be
insufficient for a successful frontal attack. Troops
entering such a small attack zone were vulnerable to
enfilading fire and could not push through in large
enough numbers to overwhelm the defenders.
Knowing he would not receive reinforcements or
additional supplies, Brusilov relied on preparation to
give the Russians the advantage. As a first step, the
reserves of each army were brought forward and put
to work. This had several advantages. It created a longterm, unified command within each army, and it
increased the manpower at the front without giving
away the location of the impending offensive. It also
provided additional manpower for the tasks at hand,
which consisted largely of digging. All along the line
.5.
Russian soldiers dug places d'armée about 300 meters
long and 90 meters wide. They used the dirt from the
excavations to create broad ramparts that would both
hinder enemy observation and provide shelter from
incoming artillery. Once this was done, they dug
communication trenches to the front and began
sapping trenches toward enemy lines. For the first
time, moreover, the Russians actually dug tunnels
under their own defenses in order to facilitate the
attack. Brusilov wanted the point of departure for the
Russian infantry assaults to be no greater than 100
meters, and he preferred that the distance be 60
meters or less when possible.
that his own artillery commanders received this
intelligence. With this information in hand the four
Russian army commanders each selected, in
consultation with Brusilov, one sector of their front on
which to concentrate the attack. According to
Brusilov's directions this section was to be 15 -20
kilometers wide, though it could be as narrow as 10 or
as wide as 30.
Key Dates in Aleksei A. Brusilov's Life
1853 - Born in Tbilisi, Georgia
1878 - Decorated for service in Turkish War
1900 - Promoted to general major
1912 - Promoted to general of cavalry
1914 - Commands Eighth Army
1916 - As commander of Southwest Front mounts
the "Brusilov Offensive"
1917 - As Supreme Commander mounts a second
grand offensive, aka "Kerensky Offensive," which
fails, and is subsequently relieved
1920s - Service with Red Army
1926 - Dies in Moscow
Russian Tunnel Dug Under Enemy Lines
While the soldiers' spades flew, Brusilov set other
preparations in motion as well. He sent fliers specially
instructed in aerial photography over enemy lines with
specific directions to reconnoiter rear areas as well as
the front lines. Where qualified personnel were
lacking, he instructed unit commanders to train
mechanics to perform double duty. The resulting
photographs were combined with intelligence gleaned
from defectors and POWs to give a picture of the
Habsburg front that was in many cases more accurate
than the maps the Austrians themselves possessed.
Photographers made particular note of the Habsburg
artillery positions, and Brusilov took pains to be sure
Well-Constructed Austrian Trench
Once the breakthrough point was chosen, the Russians
constructed a model of the Habsburg lines in the rear
of their own positions and practiced taking it again and
again. Attack groups were to be no larger than five
divisions, with the attack broken into at least four
waves. The first wave, equipped with hand grenades,
was to push into the enemy's front trench and take out
any flanking guns the artillery had missed. The second
.6.
instructed his commanders to construct phony artillery
batteries out of wood, and when the real guns were
brought forward on the night of the attack, one gun
from each battery remained in place and firing
intermittently in order to mislead the enemy into
thinking nothing had changed.
wave would follow 200 paces behind and then attack
the second line of trenches directly. Once the breach
was secured, the third wave would bring the Russian
machine guns forward and set about expanding the
gap along the line. The fourth line was to secure the
flanks of the gap, allowing the Russian cavalry to pour
through into the enemy rear.
Neither the Austrians nor the Germans, however,
seemed much concerned by the activity behind the
Russian lines. The German commander-in-chief, Erich
von Falkenhayn, was preoccupied with the assault on
Verdun and believed the Russians incapable of serious
offensive action. The Austro-Hungarian commanders
were less convinced of this but remained confident
enough to draw several of their best units from the
Russian Front to Tirol, where they hoped to eliminate
"the real enemy" – Italy.
The Russian artillery units likewise practiced their craft
on the models. Brusilov instructed each commander to
develop a set of specific targets for his guns instead of
simply raining down shell on the forward trenches. He
brought in French and Japanese artillery instructors to
train his gunners properly, and placed the light artillery
under the direct orders of the infantry commander to
ensure that the attacks would be coordinated. The
light artillery's task was to open at least two gaps 4.5
meters wide or more in the enemy wire and then
concentrate on destroying the enemy's machine gun
emplacements. Once these were destroyed, the light
artillery would shift forward with the infantry,
destroying the enemy's heavy artillery as it came
within range. Their own heavy artillery would focus on
destroying the enemy's communications trenches
before turning its attention to the front lines. All of this
was to be accomplished within ten to 12 minutes of
concentrated fire, after which the heavy artillery would
lift to the enemy rear in an attempt to prevent the
reserves from moving forward.
Already in February, the Austrian Fourth Army had
swapped its 3rd Infantry Division, comprised mostly of
German-speaking Austrians and carrying a decent
fighting reputation, for the raw and relatively
unprepared 70th Honvéd (Hungarian Reserve) Infantry
Division. The Habsburg commander-in-chief, General
Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, then shifted four
additional divisions from the Russian Front to Tirol in
March 1916. In addition, Conrad weakened other units
on the Russian Front by diverting individual battalions,
including some of those with the greatest combat
experience, and nearly all of the Habsburg armies'
heavy artillery to the Tirol Front.
Brusilov took no pains to conceal these preparations;
part of his plan was to overwhelm the Habsburg
commanders with information in order to paralyze
them. With so many attacks being prepared in so many
places, Brusilov believed, the Central Powers would be
unable either to focus their energies on defending a
single point or to shift their forces strategically. He also
mounted a counterintelligence campaign, sending false
instructions over the radio, and conveying incorrect
maps with messengers he believed likely to defect. He
To make up for the inexperience of the new units on
the line, the Austrian High Command (AOK) dispersed
seasoned battalions and career officers in hopes of
creating "cores" of experience on which to build. The
result, however, was to leave most units on the
Russian Front far under strength in terms of officers
and experienced leadership. Some regiments counted
only one career officer for every two companies.
Russian Artillery Would Play a Key Role
.7.
Former Cavalry Commander Brusilov Assigned His Mounted Forces Important Roles
Yet the Habsburg commanders remained complacently
satisfied with both supply levels and the condition of
the troops; nearly every status report for May and June
evaluated preparations as "satisfactory." The AustroHungarians believed, based on their battles with the
Russians in the Bukovina during December 1915 and
the German experience around Lake Naroch, that they
had found the correct formula for halting the Russian
steamroller – well-prepared positions defended by
artillery and hardened machine gun emplacements.
The Habsburg forces therefore concentrated on
constructing their defensive lines throughout the
winter and spring of 1915-1916.
The Habsburgs' situation quickly deteriorated,
however; amid the dust and confusion created by the
Russian shelling near Sapanov, the appearance of 13
armored vehicles from General Vladimir V. Sakharov's
Eleventh Army threw the defenders of the AustroHungarian Second Army into total disarray and created
a breach in the Austro-Hungarian lines along the
Tarnopol-Lemberg (Lvov) railway line. At roughly the
same time, around noon on the opening day of the
offensive, a Russian infantry thrust collapsed the
Austro-Hungarian First Army's forward position on the
east bank of the Ikvanie River and threatened the seam
from the opposite direction. Slightly panicked, the
Habsburg generals began shifting their reserves; the
commander of First Army, General Paul Puhallo von
Brlog, sent units in piecemeal in an attempt to regain
several positions taken by the Russians. By nightfall,
however, First Army had suffered nearly 5,000
casualties without regaining its defenses.
Even when Brusilov launched his offensive in the
predawn hours of 4 June 1916, the commanders of the
Central Powers took little notice. German
Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff dismissed the
attacks as insignificant – "demonstrations," as he
wrote later – while von Falkenhayn simply thought the
Russians were making local attacks in reconnaissance
for the joint Allied offensive later that summer. In the
Austro-Hungarian headquarters the celebration of
Conrad's 60th birthday continued undisturbed by
reports of the attacks.
Farther south, things went even worse for the AustroHungarians. After weathering the initial Russian
barrage with few casualties and seemingly little
damage, the Austro-Hungarian Seventh Army under
General Baron Karl von Pflanzer-Baltin suddenly and
inexplicably collapsed. Around noon on 5 June, a
concentrated and well-prepared Russian artillery
barrage using 23 heavy guns brought from the Black
Sea fortress of Ochakov shredded the inexperienced
79th Honvéd Infantry Brigade on the southern end of
the Habsburg line. More than 4,500 of the brigade's
At the start of the attack, Brusilov had available on
the Southwest Front:
• 4 armies (7th, 8th, 9th, and 11th)
• 40 infantry and 15 cavalry divisions
• 600,000 men
• 1,926 artillery pieces of all sizes
.8.
Text continues on page 10.
Brusilov 1916
U.S. Army Map
.9.
His intent was to regroup and strike the Russian armies
in the flank as they moved toward Lemberg (Lvov).
Conrad, however, countermanded the order, which
would have created a 100-kilometer gap between
Seventh Army and Suedarmee, the mixed GermanHabsburg force just to the north. This forced Seventh
Army to stretch across a much broader front, on which
it was simply unable to resist the continuing Russian
pressure. Unit after unit of Seventh Army either
collapsed or retreated as its forward line fell under the
Russian assault. From 9 -10 June, XIII Corps retreated
nearly 30 kilometers; most of the Austrian 8th Cavalry
was captured on the afternoon of 11 June, and by the
end of that day Group Benigni, on the southern flank
of Seventh Army, had been shattered. "Benigni is not
capable of resistance," Pflanzer-Baltin reported. "There
is at present no possibility of holding against an enemy
attack."
5,200 men became casualties or prisoners, and the
Russians captured four Habsburg batteries as well.
Pflanzer-Baltin rushed forward his reserve units and
managed to contain the breakthrough at the second
position, but by then the Russians, following Brusilov's
prescription, were broadening the gap to the
southwest. By nightfall on the second day, the Russian
Ninth Army had gained more than five kilometers,
captured nearly 15,000 Habsburg soldiers, and driven
the Austro-Hungarian Seventh from its forward
positions on the southern part of the line.
Seventh Army, in fact, was wholly incapable of even an
orderly retreat. Many of Benigni's troops had already
begun moving south before Conrad's order to move to
the northwest was transmitted, and in the confusion
and under the continued Russian attacks, the army
simply fell apart. The larger part of Pflanzer-Baltin's
forces retreated to the northwest, while Benigni's
forces and the cavalry units commanded by General
Hadfy, separated from the main part of Seventh Army
by at least 30 kilometers, scattered across the
Bukovina. "It was a pitiful parade," one soldier wrote.
"Endless columns of horse-drawn vehicles in one row
after another with artillery placed in between. The
battle trains of the divisions streaming back on all
sides, pressing together on Valava. The troops came
from all sides, tired and harassed." The Austrian 24th
Infantry Division lost half its strength – some 7,000
men – in the retreat, and one Russian corps reported
taking more than 24,000 Habsburg soldiers prisoner
during 10 -11 June alone. By 15 June, several divisions
had been reduced to fewer than 3,500 soldiers, and
Conrad sent word that no reserves would be
forthcoming; they were desperately needed in the
north. It was there, in the area between Lutsk (Luck)
and Kovel, that the success of the Brusilov Offensive
and the fates of two empires would be decided.
Abandoned in a Rush: An Austrian Pontoon Bridge
Two days later, the northern sector gave way as well.
This time it was an Austrian unit, the 15th Infantry
Division, that collapsed. Weakened by two days'
shelling and with nearly all of Seventh's reserves
having been sent south to hold the line at the Dniester
River, the unit was simply incapable of withstanding
the onslaught of the (largely dismounted) Russian II
Cavalry Corps in the afternoon of 7 June. Some 7,000
troops simply surrendered when the Russians
appeared out of the dust and the remainder fled to
defensive positions behind the Strypa River without
having fired a shot. As the Russians drove into the gap
thus created, Pflanzer-Baltin ordered a strategic
retreat behind the Dniester and Pruth rivers some 80
kilometers to the west in order to cover the Carpathian
passes.
Kovel was the key to Brusilov's plan. Where the rest of
his attack was, according to the general plan, designed
merely to prevent the Habsburgs shifting troops north
once the main assault was launched, Kovel was a
strategic objective. The city served as the main rail link
between the northern and southern segments of the
.10.
Communications had been so badly disrupted that
many reserve units could not be located, while in other
areas there was no forward command where they
could report. Two divisions of reserves were thus
squandered, and the corps commanders now
desperately sought permission to withdraw, even
though both wings of the army still held their front
lines. When the order finally came, at 7:00 p.m., chaos
ensued. Not until the center of Fourth Army reached
the eastern bank of the Styr River, some 75 kilometers
west-southwest of its original position, did the retreat
halt.
Eastern Front; if the Russians could capture it, the
Austro-Hungarians and Germans would be separated
and the likelihood that either could be defeated before
its ally managed to send aid would be increased. For
that reason, the Russian Eighth Army under General
Aleksei M. Kaledin was the focus of the entire
offensive. Brusilov instructed Kaledin to mobilize all
four of the army's corps and the entire mobile reserve
– 148 battalions in all – for the strike at Kovel.
After limiting his attack to shelling the AustroHungarian positions on the first day of the offensive,
Kaledin had finally unleashed Eighth Army against
Olyka on 5 June. The artillery barrage, which had lasted
throughout the night of 4 -5 June, increased in
intensity around 8:30 a.m., until by 9:00 a.m. "a
firestorm of unprecedented intensity crackled along all
lines of the position, stirring up thick yellow sand and
dust clouds that then hung over the field." The Russian
infantry, which had sapped to within 45 paces of the
Austrian lines during the barrage, then rose from its
trenches and moved forward, materializing out of the
swirling dust before the Habsburg units had a chance
to react.
The debacle continued the following day, as the
Russian Eighth Army overwhelmed the AustroHungarian Fourth. The Habsburg position on the Styr
had been under construction since the fall of 1915 in
order to protect nine bridges in the vicinity. The
apparent strength of the position was now countered,
however, by Russian positions on the heights
overlooking the bridgehead from the south and the
east. In the battle on 7 June, though, the break came in
the center, just where the Habsburg line seemed
strongest. The Austrian 13th Infantry Division, having
barely had time to deploy before the Russian
onslaught began at 7:30 a.m. on 7 June, was unable to
locate its artillery – which had been divided between
two other divisions during the retreat of the previous
night – and fell back almost immediately. Several
Habsburg units then fled across the Styr when the
Russian artillery barrage opened and when, shortly
after 8:30 a.m, the Habsburg artillery ran out of shells,
the rout was on. Many Galician units simply
surrendered on the spot and other Habsburg units
soon followed. By evening, it was clear that any
attempt to hold even the west bank of the Styr would
be fruitless.
Almost before the battle had begun, the AustroHungarian Fourth Army was decimated. The 70th
Honvéd Infantry Division lost almost 7,000 men from
its initial strength of 12,200; most were taken prisoner
while still in their foxholes and dugouts. X Corps lost 80
percent of its strength, including 4,682 men (of 5,330)
from the 82nd Infantry Regiment. Officers reportedly
deserted their men and fled to the rear, taking the
units' artillery with them. Shocked, the Habsburg
commanders reacted blindly, sending their reserves
forward without any strategy.
Bridge Across River Styr Destroyed
by Retreating Habsburg Forces
.11.
The Austro-Hungarian troops, defeated and
disheartened, scrambled backward without thought or
order. Most of the bridges over the Styr were blown up
before the evacuation was complete and many soldiers
drowned trying to swim to safety. Corps Szurmay
(Fourth Army) lost 11,000 men during the retreat that
night, most of them taken prisoner. Each day brought
further Russian pressure as Kaledin deployed cavalry
and armored vehicles in pursuit of the reeling AustroHungarian armies.
As a whole, this strategy was surprisingly successful. By
the time Brusilov was ready to renew the offensive,
the Central Powers had already realigned their forces
and solidified their defenses. Falkenhayn and
Hindenburg also took care to deploy German aerial
forces in the east; these soon forced their
outnumbered and inferior Russian counterparts from
the sky, negating yet another of Brusilov's tactics.
Without the advantages of careful preparation and
surprise, the Russian attacks were much less
successful. A joint attack by Kaledin's Eighth Army and
Lesch's Third on 4 July drove the Central Powers back
behind the Stochod River, but never again did the
Brusilov Offensive repeat the success of early June. The
Stochod proved an impenetrable natural barrier, and
whenever Brusilov's forces sought a breakthrough
elsewhere they were soon met by German forces.
When the Habsburgs' Polish Legion collapsed and fled
on 7 July, leaving the Stochod line in danger, von
Falkenhayn quickly dispatched the German 121st
Infantry Division from the west, Hindenburg sent a
division from the north, and Linsingen shifted the
German 108th Infantry – which he had been holding as
an army reserve – north to plug the gap.
Had the Russian commander had enough resources at
his disposal, he might have broken the line completely
and taken Kovel; as it was, Kaledin had to break off the
attack just short of Vladimir-Volynsk on 12 June, having
advanced some 45 kilometers along an 80-kilometerwide front in just over four days. Kaledin's forces had
taken nearly 45,000 Habsburg soldiers prisoner, and
the roads to both Lemberg and Kovel lay open. At the
same time, however, Eighth Army had suffered some
35,000 casualties of its own, and its supply of shells
was running dangerously low. The offensive had
reached a critical juncture, and the question was which
side would be able to regroup first.
Both Conrad and von Falkenhayn had been quick to
recognize the gravity of the situation as it developed
and, despite great personal reluctance on both sides,
acted quickly to save the Central Powers' position.
The defence [by the Central Powers], however, had
been successful only because 20 German divisions
in all had been brought here, notwithstanding the
fact that the Battle of the Somme had been raging
since July 1st on the Western front.
General August von Cramon,
German Liaison Officer with the Austrians
Von Falkenhayn, while he remained focused on
reaching a decision in the west via his Verdun strategy,
had long aspired to complete control over operations
on the Eastern Front and leveraged every opportunity
to realize this. Falkenhayn was therefore willing to
divert forces from the northern portion of the Eastern
Front – which was, not coincidentally, under the
command of his rival, Paul von Hindenburg – to
stabilize the sector around Kovel. By mid-July, in fact,
the German commander had sent more than ten
divisions to prop up the Habsburg portion of the front.
Brusilov soon resorted to the discredited tactics of his
predecessors, throwing massive infantry columns
against the enemy positions with little or no
preparation. After suffering nearly one million
casualties in June 1916, Brusilov's four armies on the
Southwestern Front took more than half a million
more in the first two weeks of July. Among the dead,
wounded, and missing (mostly captured) were more
than 5,000 officers. Sakharov's Eleventh Army
managed to capture Brody, in the center of the
Habsburg line, in three days of bloody fighting, but the
battle so drained the resources of both sides that the
sector remained quiet thereafter.
Conrad, of course, wanted more troops; he was
dissatisfied with von Falkenhayn's plan to remain on
the defensive and drain Brusilov's reserves while the
German Army sought a decision in the west. The
Habsburg commander had even gone so far as to
abandon his dream of destroying Italy by calling a halt
to operations on the Tirol Front on 10 June, and by 22
June he had recalled I Corps and the 43rd Honvéd
Infantry Division to Galicia as well, in hopes of
mounting a counteroffensive and restoring the
Habsburg position and prestige.
.12.
The near-collapse of the Austro-Hungarian First Army
in the face of a renewed Russian attack at Kovel in midJuly proved to be the final straw in the GermanAustrian struggle for overall command. At the end of
July, Hindenburg was formally appointed to lead a
unified command of the Eastern Front.
The Russian assault met with similar "success" all along
the line. The initial assault of II Guards Corps, carried
out with marked zeal, broke the center of the enemy
line and captured several German batteries. Massive
Russian infantry assaults also created gaps in the line
of the Austrian 29th Infantry Division and the Division
Rusche in the early afternoon, while I Guards Corps
managed to flank the German 19th Infantry Division
and roll up the front of the neighboring Austrian unit
as well.
The move came precisely as the last significant phase
of the Russian offensive opened on 29 July. Having
finally amassed the artillery, shell, and manpower
reinforcements he desired, Brusilov now hurled it
against Kovel in a last, desperate effort. Three other
armies to the south (Ninth, Eleventh, and Seventh)
would make pinning attacks to make sure the Central
Powers remained outnumbered in what came to be
known as "The Kovel Pit." Once again, though, Brusilov
lacked the elements of preparation and surprise that
had made his initial assault so successful, and this time
he was facing largely experienced German troops
rather than raw Austro-Hungarian recruits. At least one
British liaison officer predicted it would end in disaster.
"Brusilov thinks he can rush these German positions by
surprise, as he has done Austrian ones," he wrote, "but
he is simply destroying the morale of the best troops in
the army." It was, in reality, worse than that; Brusilov's
final, fruitless efforts destroyed the flower of the
Russian Army physically, and removed from the army
as well most of the Polivantsy [elite men], so carefully
recruited and trained.
In each case, though, the Austro-German forces simply
retreated behind the Stochod and thus stymied the
Russians. Wave after wave of Russian infantry, in
columns 20-men deep and urged on by saber-wielding
officers, was stopped cold by artillery fire from behind
the rain-swollen Stochod directed by German aerial
units. "The section chosen for the attack seems to have
been about as ill-selected as can be imagined," Knox
wrote. "The men had to ford a marsh wading up to
their middles. The losses, which are estimated at 70
percent, were greater owing to the ten months in the
rear having been spent too much in close-order drill.
The wounded sank slowly into the marsh, and it was
impossible to send them help."
It appeared at the outset as if the Guards Army might,
after all, prevail. The Habsburg 41st Infantry Division,
defending the salient in the center of II Corps's front,
had been unable to dig adequate trenches in the wet,
sandy ground and thus was exceptionally vulnerable to
flanking artillery. Following a sustained barrage on the
morning of 28 July, the Russian 71st Infantry Division
managed to break into the second line of the enemy
position. This had the effect, however, of leaving the
Russians in the shallow trenches prepared by the
Austrians while the defeated Habsburg units now held
strong positions at the edge of the forest. Aided by
flanking artillery and enfilading fire from neighboring
units, the Habsburg troops pinned the Russians along
the riverbank for the remainder of the day and
inflicted heavy casualties.
Russian Dead at Captured Trench
Unbelievably, Brusilov not only continued the assaults,
but intensified them, dismounting the Guards Cavalry
Division to add weight to the infantry assault. For the
next three weeks, waves of Russian infantry assaulted
the Stochod defenses, only to be mowed down. The
casualties were almost too great to count. "All we
know," Hindenburg wrote later, "is that sometimes in
our battles with the Russians we had to remove the
mounds of enemy corpses from before our trenches in
order to get a clear field of fire against fresh assaulting
waves."
The I Siberian Corps, which had a reputation as a
particularly fierce and reliable unit, mounted six
separate attacks on the northern shoulder of the Kovel
salient during the night of 8 August, yet withdrew at
dawn having not even dented the enemy lines. The
Guards Army fared no better. Linsingen had
successfully turned the tables on Brusilov, using
German air power to locate the Russian places d'armée
and to direct defensive artillery fire while denying
these possibilities to the enemy. Though Brusilov's
forces continued to mount periodic attacks through
November 1916, the offensive was effectively over by
mid-August.
.13.
Austrian Defenders Holding the Line After Retreating Across a River
Later and more specialized historians, however, have
brought these conclusions into question. The historian
who has most closely examined the myths and
actuality of the Brusilov Offensive is undoubtedly
Rudolf Jerabek, who challenges the notion that
Brusilov's campaign saved the Italians. He argues that
the Tirol Offensive had ground to a halt already on 20
May 1916 and thus, "even before the start of Brusilov's
relief offensive it had become clear that there could be
no more thought of a victorious battle in the area
around Venezia." This view, which has since won the
support of other historians, holds that it was Conrad's
ineffective planning and intra-command squabbling at
AOK, along with terrain, that combined to halt the Tirol
campaign, not any action on the part of the Russians.
In his memoirs Brusilov noted that the campaign
"proved that the opinion that the Russian Army had
already given up after the mishaps of 1915, which had
for one reason or another spread across Russia, was
false." Not only had the offensive demonstrated the
vigor of the Russian Imperial Army, it had also exposed
the weakness of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in
particular and of the Central Powers' position in
general. While the Brusilov Offensive might not have
achieved a strategic breakthrough, many historians still
credited it with saving Italy, relieving German pressure
on Verdun, and with putting the Entente in position to
make a decisive strike in 1917.
In the end, the Brusilov Offensive destroyed the
military capacity of the Habsburg Empire, brought
Romania into the war, forced Vienna to accept
Berlin's almost total control in the East, and relieved
the fronts in both Italy and France from enemy
pressure.
Holger H. Herwig
A similar case, if perhaps not quite as strong, can be
made with regard to Verdun. If, for instance, it was the
insertion of German troops into the front south of the
Pripet as "corset stays" that staved off the Habsburg
collapse in June and July 1916, then certainly it was the
withdrawal of German forces in February and March
that had created the conditions for the Brusilov
Offensive's success in the first place. And while the
.14.
claim that the Russian campaign beginning in June
1916 lightened the burden on the French and English is
not without some truth, it is clear that von
Falkenhayn's Verdun strategy had failed long before
Brusilov launched his attack.
It seemed unlikely in any case that the Russian Army
would ever return to full strength. Brusilov's forces
suffered two million casualties, including one million
dead, between 4 June and 1 November 1916. Just as
worrisome, though, were reports that the troops
already at the front were showing signs of unrest.
Disaffection with the war had long been a problem on
the Russian home front, but until autumn 1916
instances in the front lines were rare. As replacements
for the casualties of the Brusilov Offensive filtered into
the ranks, however, they brought disaffection and
even revolutionary sentiment with them. Most
significant among the losses during the summer of
1916 were the officers. In the first two-plus years of
the war, while the Russian Army grew from 1.2 million
men to 6.6 million, the size of the Russian officer corps
went from 41,000 to nearly 150,000. Taking into
account the 63,000 officers killed during that time
means that nearly 170,000 men had entered the
Russian officer corps during the war. The majority of
these men, even in elite units, stemmed from nonnoble families and received remarkably little training.
Fully 70 percent of the junior officers in the Russian
Army were of "peasant origin" by the end of 1916, and
fewer than ten percent of all officers had been fully
trained in a military academy.
Russian Prisoners of War (German Artist Max Rabes)
More certain are the effects that the Brusilov Offensive
had on the Habsburg Empire, which, after all, bore the
brunt of the attack. The Austro-Hungarian armies had,
by October 1915, suffered over 3.1 million casualties.
Well over two-thirds of the total fighting strength of
the Habsburg armies of June 1916 – some 1.1 million
men on all fronts – had been lost. It was the beginning
of the end for the Habsburg Empire.
The Butcher's Bill
Only the crudest estimates of casualties are
available for the Brusilov Offensive. The AustroHungarian Army suffered a staggering total of 1.4
million men (including 400,000 taken prisoner).
Comparable estimates for the Russian Army are
something over 1.0 million, including over 400,000
killed.
And, though less notably so, the Brusilov Offensive also
marked the beginning of the end for the Russian
Empire. The one, clear, "positive" result of the
campaign, it seemed at the time, was that the Russian
success had – finally – convinced Romania to enter the
war on the side of the Entente. It was hoped that this
would add resources to the Allied side and stretch the
Central Powers even thinner, but the reverse actually
turned out to be true. The Romanian Army performed
so poorly that, after declaring war on 27 August 1916,
it managed to lose nearly two-thirds of its territory by
November. Bucharest was abandoned in early
December, and it was the Central Powers who profited
from Romania, gaining over two million tons of grain;
250,000 head of livestock; 200,000 tons of timber; and
the country's annual output of one million tons of oil.
Without those supplies, neither Germany nor AustriaHungary might have survived the winter of 1916 -17.
Russia, on the other hand, was forced to send some 27
divisions, which might have been profitably used
elsewhere, to stiffen the Romanian defensive line
along the Danube. This lengthened the Russians' front
by some 250 kilometers and effectively ended any
hopes of mounting further offensives.
Morale clearly began to crumble in the spring and
summer of 1916, and despite the success of the
Brusilov Offensive, desertion rates on the
Southwestern Front during the operation were
remarkably high. Brusilov, like most officers at the
time, believed that the phenomenon was a passing
one, and that a quiet winter of defensive construction
and training would reinvigorate the Russian Army once
again. Instead, the disease of disaffection spread and
the army collapsed in 1917, weakened intolerably by
the losses in both men and morale of the Brusilov
Offensive. Brusilov had accomplished more than any
other Russian commander throughout the war, with
far less in the way of men and materiel, yet the results
were not what he had expected, nor what most
historians have recorded.
.15.
Copyright 2016 © Michael E. Hanlon