General Alexei Brusilov
Aleksei Brusilov conducted the most successful offensive by any army in the First World War. Born in Tiflis in 1853 into a family of hereditary officers, he was orphaned at six, entered the Corps of Pages, and served in the cavalry, spending years at the officers' cavalry school as an instructor and then its head — an unglamorous specialism that gave him an unusual interest in training. He commanded the Eighth Army in Galicia in 1914 and 1915 with more success than most Russian commanders, and was given the South-Western Front in March 1916. His offensive of June 1916 broke with the practice of both sides. Instead of massing men and guns at one point — which announced the attack, invited reserves and produced a salient — he attacked along a front of some 480 kilometres at many points at once, so that the defenders could not tell which was the main effort or where to send reserves. He dug trenches forward to within seventy metres of the Austrian lines, built full-scale replicas of the positions for troops to rehearse on, and used a short, accurate bombardment rather than a week-long one. The Austro-Hungarian army lost around 1.5 million men killed, wounded and captured, and never recovered as an independent fighting force. Germany moved divisions from Verdun and the Somme, and Romania entered the war. Russia could not exploit it; reserves arrived late, and the losses were about half a million. He briefly commanded the whole army in 1917, and later served the Bolsheviks against Poland. He died in 1926.
- Lived: 1853 CE – 1926 CE
- Nationality: Russian
- Roles: general
