Introducing The Eastern Front and the Brusilov Offensive:
When the First World War is mentioned, the first images in the eyes of the public are likely the battlefields of France and Belgium, where British, French and German armies would conduct near suicidal operations against each other. Some may think of the fighter and bomber pilots, first of their kind, dancing about in the air in aircraft made of canvas and wood. Others still might think of the monumental Battle of Jutland and Admiral Sir David Beatty’s famous “There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today”. It is with good reason that these images are the first to be conjured up in our minds today; they were bloody and inherently consequential parts of the war, where great numbers of men died painful deaths. But, further east – much further east – on the steppes of Russia and the grasslands of modern day Eastern Europe, great battles were fought by millions of men; men of the Imperial Russian Army, the Austro-Hungarian Army and the German Army.
This front of the war, known – rather obviously – as the Eastern Front was created in August of 1914 when the Russian Empire which, at the time, bordered Germany, launched an invasion of East Prussia. Giving a detailed history of the Eastern Front and the long series of battles, campaigns and offensives that took place between 1st August 1914 and 4th June 1916 (the start of the Brusilov Offensive; the focus of this article), is an exercise that is best left for another day. However, it is still important to understand the context in which the Brusilov Offensive – named after General Aleksei Brusilov, the chief architect of the thing – was begun.
It is first and foremost crucial to understand that, barring a few successes here and there, after the initial invasion of East Prussia in 1914, the Imperial Russian Army was constantly on the back foot. Throughout 1914 and well into early 1916, the Russian Army was being forced to retreat from position after position until it could finally stabilise the front in late 1915 and early 1916. Over the past 2 years, the Russians had been pushed completely out of Poland (which was then a Russian “province”), with the Austro-German forces having made considerable gains in Russia proper. As the front stabilised, the Russians launched two offensives against the Austrian 4th and 7th Armies in December 1915 (stretching into January of next year) and March 1916. However, despite Russian troops making tactical breakthroughs in both these offensives, lacklustre training and improper planning meant that what little advances the Russians achieved were reversed and their forward units annihilated, suffering over 150,000 casualties in the two offensives.[i]
General Aleksei Brusilov, newly appointed commander of the Russian Southwestern Front (an Army Group in today’s parlance), sought to turn the tide for Russia and planned, despite some initial argument from other Russian generals, an offensive for June of that year. The offensive would become one of the most successful operations of World War 1, it would turn the Austrian 4th and 7th Armies to dust, with the former suffering 70% casualties in 8 days and the latter 40% in just 4. The Austrian 4th Army was 117,000 strong at the start of the offensive – by the 12th of June, it was reduced to 35,000; the Austria 7th Army had, at the start, 192,000 men and by the 8th, they had lost almost 80,000.[ii] These staggering losses are, today, just statistics. But, in June of 1916, for a man called Bernard Bardach, they were a very real reminder of the horror of World War 1.
Who was Bernard Bardach?
To put it simply and to put it short, Bernard Bardach was a medical officer in the Austro-Hungrian Army in World War 1. As Helmut Konrad notes when giving a brief account of his life, very little is known about him or his life before and after World War 1.[iii] However, his war diaries as translated and published by Peter Applebaum in Carnage and Care on the Eastern Front (2018) present us with a comprehensive look into some of the Austro-Hungarian Army’s most consequential operations in the war, including the successful Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive, and its operations against Italy in the Austrian and Italian Alps. Bardach would enter the war as a Surgeon Major and, at the time of the Brusilov Offensive he was a Lieutenant Colonel (Medical). When the Russians began their attack on the 4th of June, 1916, he was part of the 2nd Infantry Division’s (part of the 4th Army) medical team, and found himself in the town of Chorlupy, quite near the front line. The rest of this article will attempt to narrate the events of the first five days of the offensive as recorded by Lieutenant Colonel Bernard Bardach.
4th of June, 1916 – 8th of June, 1916:
As the first week of fighting unfolds, Bardach gets slowly more pessimistic and defeatist. On the 4th, the first day, he is initially dismissive of the Russian offensive. This attitude is perhaps a result of his division’s weeks’ long effort to fortify their positions, as Bardach outlines. His initial assessment, at the end of the 4th is as follows:
“Losses are relatively light, only a few wounded have been brought into the division medical unit by evening. … We are still very confident and in good spirits … in the evening.”
On the 5th, the scale of the Russian attack becomes apparent. Throughout the day, the positions the 2nd Division had spent weeks carefully preparing are methodically overrun by Russian troops. Entire battalions are cut off and forced either to surrender or fight to the last man. At the end of the 5th, Bardach’s assessment is – on the whole – more negative.
“Terrible news from the front: unbelievable losses—whole battalions, especially of the fortieth and eighty-second infantry regiments, have been trapped during the breakthrough, and trenches are filled with piles of corpses. My heart dies in my throat. We lose many artillery pieces. Our position becomes even more critical, and by 5:00 p.m., the order arrives to evacuate.”
By the 6th, the reality of the situation has set in for Bardach and his diary entry becomes almost entirely negative; reflecting the many upsets the 2nd Division, and the 4th Army in general, had suffered over the past 2 days.
“Our troops withdraw to the shabby remains of our third position, which are unfortunately very poor. Only time will tell, whether we will be able to make a halt here. This is our worst debacle during the war thus far. … The third position naturally cannot be held either. We retreat from Romanow at 2:00 p.m. and arrive in Gerazdza, … The road is naturally full of baggage trains: everything is streaming back to Luck in three to four columns; we can hardly get through.”
The comment about the road being packed full of baggage trains is perhaps most relevant. Lutsk (in modern Ukraine), or Luck as Bardach writes, is the closest large city to the 4th and 7th Armies and the defeated remnants of the 2 Armies’ forward units are streaming there to rest and recuperate the best they can. On the 7th, however, the Russian offensive reaches Lutsk. In a series of events that are typical of the disjointed Austrian Army at this point of the War, Bardach finds himself separated from his medical unit and must take up residence in the lines of the 2nd Division’s divisional artillery. By now, the dire situation of the Austrian 4th Army now begins to reflect in Bardach’s diary.
“Our 40th Battalion – of which only about 400 men remain from an original 5,000 – are fighting like lions [in defence of Lutsk in an attempt to dislodge a Russian bridgehead] … They report that there is a 1.5-metre high pile of Russian corpses in front of the barbed wire. … The Russians … now start heavy artillery fire which, with the added batteries, soon becomes a violent bombardment. They quickly succeed in breaking into our positions … Everyone and everything is streaming backward and soon the order is given for a general retreat across the Styr River.”
By the 8th, with the Russians having crossed the Styr River in the night, Bardach appears to have lost all hope.
“Our poor remnants will probably be of very little use against them. Will we get out of this horrible situation in one piece, and if so, how? There are no signs of reinforcements yet, and if they come, it will be too late. Nothing can be undertaken amid all this clamorous activity.”
By the 12th, Bardach’s 2nd Infantry Division which had a strength of over 11,000 men on the 4th of June had been reduced to 1,600. By the end of June, the 2nd Infantry division – indeed the whole 4th Army – would have been effectively destroyed by the Russian offensive. By some miracle, Bardach survived the Brusilov Offensive and would later find himself in the Alps, a theatre filled with equally bloody campaigns. After the war, he would remain in Austria until the (in)famed Kristallnacht, after which he would emigrate to New York.
Conclusion:
There is not much of a conclusion here to be drawn. The effects of the Brusilov Offensive, on both Russia and the Central Powers, has been studied down to the last minute detail. The massive numbers of Russian dead (though the Central powers suffered more) would, in the eyes of some historians, cripple the Russian Army’s ability to launch proper offensives later in the future. The instability brought about by losing over 400,000 men dead and wounded would only hasten the near inevitable Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. As for the Central Powers, the destruction of the Austrian Eastern Front (Army Corps) would make it into a vassal, as far as the Eastern Front was concerned, of the better led German Army.
But, in the midst of all this, one cannot forget the human cost of the offensive. The two armies would fight each other to a standstill between June and September, 1916. Combined, almost a million men would be killed and well over a million injured. Such were the horrors of modern war.
[i] J. Schindler, “Steamrolled in Galicia: The Austro-Hungarian Army and the Brusilov Offensive, 1916”, in War in History, 10:1 (2003), pp. 27-59
[ii] C. Horne, Source Records for the Great War, Vol. IV (1923)
[iii] H. Konrad, “Bernard Bardach: A Biographical Sketch”, in P. Applebaum, Carnage and Care on the Eastern Front: The War Diaries of Bernhard Bardach, 1914-1918 (2018), pp. 1-16
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