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524 Lutsk : The End of an Illusion (II)
advantages that had recently allowed them to appear both tactically and operationally
hopelessly inferior.
Brusilov had already repeatedly made things difficult for the Austro-Hungarian
troops as the Commander of the Russian 8th Army. In autumn 1914, he had advanced
to the west via Lviv (Lemberg), demolished the Imperial and Royal 3rd Army and
enclosed Przemyśl for the first time. Then the 8th Army had been in the Carpathians
and derailed three offensives of the Central Powers. And now the Russian general was
to make a contribution to the allied conduct of the war, separate the German and the
Austrian fronts and offset the defeats of 1915.
Brusilov wanted to lead the main thrust of his attack to Lutsk, against the Imperial
and Royal 4th Army of Archduke Joseph Ferdinand, who had already contributed in
September 1915 to the painful setback in the ‘black-yellow offensive’. Three corps of
the Russian 8th Army were to commence this thrust towards Lutsk from the region of
Olyka. Two other Russian armies were to support this offensive by means of accompa-
nying thrusts. Brusilov even baffled his superiors with the claim that he did not need
any additional formations but instead wanted to see if he had enough with the troops
of his front. Since the Russian divisions had been completely filled out, masses of men
were suddenly available again, like at the start of the war. The weaponry and the equip-
ment had also been improved. Two corps of the Russian 8th Army were completely
armed with Austrian rifles ; a further 50,000 rifles from captured Imperial and Royal
stockpiles were in reserve.1227 These were all after-effects of the failure near Lutsk in
1915, the ‘autumn swine’ of the Imperial and Royal Army.
In May 1916, however, it appeared for the time being that the Central Powers ex-
clusively held the initiative.
The Germans stormed Verdun and the Austrians struck out in South Tyrol. Ten days
later, the Stavka asked Brusilov when he could begin his offensive, since the Italian
High Command had most urgently requested a relief offensive in view of a defeat that
could perhaps decide the war. The Chief of the Russian General Staff Mikhail V. Alek-
seev initially hesitated to forward this appeal. He nonetheless enquired with Brusilov
whether he was ready to strike. Finally, the start of the offensive was fixed for 4th June.
Alekseev, however, doubted to the last the method of attack on a broad front planned by
Brusilov and implored him on the evening of 3 June to postpone the offensive, regroup
and proceed against the Austrians with a narrow spearhead. Brusilov refused.
Since March it had been observed on the Imperial and Royal front that the Russians
were attempting to negotiate the manoeuvring area. Deployment and provisioning
were reported, without this producing any greater response than occasional attempts
to disturb the Russians. Even sharp-worded orders from the army group commander,
the German General Linsingen, could not dispel a certain languidness on the part
of the Imperial and Royal troops. Officers and enlisted men did not appear in any
THE FIRST WORLD WAR
and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918
- Titel
- THE FIRST WORLD WAR
- Untertitel
- and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918
- Autor
- Manfried Rauchensteiner
- Verlag
- Böhlau Verlag
- Ort
- Wien
- Datum
- 2014
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-3-205-79588-9
- Abmessungen
- 17.0 x 24.0 cm
- Seiten
- 1192
- Kategorien
- Geschichte Vor 1918
Inhaltsverzeichnis
- 1 On the Eve 11
- 2 Two Million Men for the War 49
- 3 Bloody Sundays 81
- 4 Unleashing the War 117
- 5 ‘Thank God, this is the Great War!’ 157
- 6 Adjusting to a Longer War 197
- 7 The End of the Euphoria 239
- 8 The First Winter of the War 283
- 9 Under Surveillance 317
- 10 ‘The King of Italy has declared war on Me’ 355
- 11 The Third Front 383
- 12 Factory War and Domestic Front, 1915 413
- 13 Summer Battle and ‘Autumn Swine’ 441
- 14 War Aims and Central Europe 469
- 15 South Tyrol : The End of an Illusion (I) 497
- 16 Lutsk :The End of an Illusion (II) 521
- 17 How is a War Financed ? 555
- 18 The Nameless 583
- 19 The Death of the Old Emperor 607
- 20 Emperor Karl 641
- 21 The Writing on the Wall 657
- 22 The Consequences of the Russian February Revolution 691
- 23 Summer 1917 713
- 24 Kerensky Offensive and Peace Efforts 743
- 25 The Pyrrhic Victory : The Breakthrough Battle of Flitsch-Tolmein 769
- 26 Camps 803
- 27 Peace Feelers in the Shadow of Brest-Litovsk 845
- 28 The Inner Front 869
- 29 The June Battle in Veneto 895
- 30 An Empire Resigns 927
- 31 The Twilight Empire 955
- 32 The War becomes History 983
- Epilogue 1011
- Afterword 1013
- Acknowledgements and Dedication 1019
- Notes 1023
- Selected Printed Sources and Literature 1115
- Index of People and Places 1155