Brusilov offensive

In the summer of 1916 the Russian Empire struck the Austro-Hungarian armies in Galicia and Volhynia, in what is now western Ukraine, with an attack planned by General Aleksei Brusilov. Opening on 4 June and petering out in September, it was Russia's most successful operation of the First World War and one of the bloodiest offensives in history. It shattered much of the Habsburg army and drew Romania into the war, but its enormous cost helped to wear down Russia itself.

At Chantilly in December 1915, Russia, France, Britain and Italy agreed to launch simultaneous attacks during the summer of 1916. Russia's first effort, at Lake Naroch in March, failed badly, with Russian losses about five times those of the Germans. Meanwhile Austria-Hungary was shifting troops, including experienced divisions from the east, to an offensive against Italy, replacing them with raw recruits.

At a war council in April, Brusilov, commanding the South-Western Front, proposed a major attack on the Austro-Hungarians. His fellow commander Alexei Evert preferred to stay on the defensive, but Nicholas II, who had taken personal command of the army in 1915, approved the plan. Brusilov's requests for supporting attacks by the neighbouring fronts were refused, and the start was brought forward after Italy appealed for help.

Brusilov could count on few reinforcements, so he relied on preparation and surprise. His men dug their trenches forward, in places to within about 100 metres of the enemy, and tunnelled beneath their own wire. Fake radio messages, planted orders and dummy guns disguised his intentions. Rather than one massed blow, each of his four armies would attack on a chosen sector about 15 kilometres wide, giving the defenders no clear point at which to concentrate their reserves.

The guns opened fire on 4 June, cutting gaps in the wire with precise fire before the infantry went in. Alexey Kaledin's 8th Army broke through two defensive lines of the Austro-Hungarian 4th Army and took Lutsk by 7 June. Within four days that army had shrunk from 117,800 men to about 35,000. Further south, the 7th Army had lost 76,200 of its 194,200 soldiers by 8 June. Platon Lechitsky's 9th Army pushed into Bukovina, capturing Czernowitz on 17 June and Kolomea the next day, and Russian cavalry reached the Carpathian foothills on 20 June.

Germany rushed five divisions to the area under Alexander von Linsingen, whose counter-attacks around Lutsk made little headway. Evert's long-delayed offensive near Baranovichi in early July repeated the failed mass assaults of March, losing 80,000 men for an advance of about 5 kilometres. Brusilov's front, reinforced to some 700,000 men, took Brody at the end of July and Stanislau on 11 August, but repeated attacks on the rail hub of Kovel failed, and on 9 August Brusilov called them off. Fighting dragged on into the autumn rains with little further gain. Between late June and early July Brusilov also had about 13,000 German civilians deported from the parts of Volhynia his troops had taken.

Losses on both sides were immense and remain disputed. Russian casualties are put at between half a million and a million; Russian archive figures give nearly 498,000 for the first six weeks alone. Austro-Hungarian losses were around 616,000, many of them prisoners, and German losses are estimated at between 148,000 and 350,000.

The offensive forced Germany to send troops east, easing the pressure on the French at Verdun, and left Austria-Hungary dependent on German support for the rest of the war. Its early success persuaded Romania to join the Entente, with unhappy results for that country in 1916. For Russia, though, the losses could not be replaced, and many historians see them as a major cause of the army's collapse and of the revolution of 1917. Brusilov's tactics of short, surprise attacks along a broad front later influenced the infiltration methods used by German stormtroopers in 1918.

Our 1914 map shows the Russian Empire and Austria-Hungary facing each other across Galicia and Volhynia, the lands where the offensive was fought, which today lie in Ukraine.