Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Brusilov offensive
Summary
The Brusilov offensive (Брусиловский прорыв Brusilovskiĭ proryv, literally: "Brusilov's breakthrough"), also known as the "June advance", of June to September 1916 was the Russian Empire's greatest feat of arms during World War I, and among the most lethal offensives in world history. The historian Graydon Tunstall called the Brusilov offensive the worst crisis of World War I for Austria-Hungary and the Triple Entente's greatest victory, but it came at a tremendous loss of life. The heavy casualties eliminated the offensive power of the Imperial Russian Army and contributed to Russia's collapse the next year.
The offensive involved a major Russian attack against the armies of the Central Powers on the Eastern Front. Launched on 4 June 1916, it lasted until late September. It took place in eastern Galicia (present-day northwestern Ukraine), in the Lviv and Volyn Oblasts. The offensive is named after the commander in charge of the Southwestern Front of the Imperial Russian Army, General Aleksei Brusilov. The largest and most lethal offensive of the war, the effects of the Brusilov offensive were far-reaching. It relieved German pressure on French forces at Verdun, and helped to relieve the Austro-Hungarian pressure on the Italians. It inflicted irreparable losses on the Austro-Hungarian Army, and induced Romania to finally enter the war on the side of the Entente. The human and material losses on the Russian side also greatly contributed to the onset of the Russian Revolution the following year.
Under the terms of the Chantilly Agreement of December 1915, Russia, France, Britain and Italy committed to simultaneous attacks against the Central Powers in the summer of 1916. Russia felt reluctantly obliged to lend troops to fight in France and Salonika, and to attack on the Eastern Front, in the hope of obtaining munitions from Britain and France.
In March 1916 the Russians initiated the disastrous Lake Naroch offensive in the Vilnius area, during which the Germans suffered only one-fifth as many casualties as the Russians.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.