Talk:Brusilov offensive

message: Moved from article by Kosebamse 06:55, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Norman Stone also made the point that under Brusilov, the artillery cooperated much better with the infantry, rather than each blaming the other for lost battles, or blaming the logisticians for shell shortages, which had been the case up to Lake Naroch.  --Wally Tharg (talk) 22:03, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Old talk

message: Battlebox says 1.5 million Russian losses - article says 0.5 million. Which one is it?
--itpastorn 13:26, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Losses

message: According to the latest edition of the Guiness Book of Records the Brusilov Offensive was the bloodiest battle in world history. Colin4C 17:22, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Pure nonsense. --129.187.244.28 (talk) 06:48, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Guinness Book of Records

message: Could an editor here check the (very short) summary of this offensive at World War I#Eastern Front and provide some cites? Thank you.LeadSongDog come howl 20:47, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request 

message: I know that 100m is approx. 91 yards and 75m is approx. 69 yards, but these figures in metres have a very low level of statistical significance. Therefore I suggest using 90 and 70 yards instead.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.163.242.239 (talk) 21:42, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Metres to yards 

message: The Oxford Companion to Military History says :
Although the Austrians eventually stopped the offensive, they lost 1.5 million killed and wounded to 0.5 million Russians
Paperspots12 (talk) 23:57, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: To avoid further misunderstanding we must agree on the time limits of Brusilov Offensive. I'll copy here my old comment from WP:MILHIST talk page:
*"According to definition from Russian sources, Brusilov Offensive took place from 4 June to 13 August 1916, which was a planned operation. However, according to German/Austrian point of view it continued until 20 September or even later.
*Russian sources place combined German-Austrian losses to 1.5 million (including 400,000-500,000 thousand POW, about 300,000 killed, the rest missing) and give a figure of about 500,000 Russian losses, and this seems to correspond to the June-August period. But German/Austrian sources, likely according to their extended definition of operation, give just about 750,000 German-Austrian losses and 1,000,000 or more Russian ones.
As far as I understand, the German definition includes a period of less successful Russian operations subsequent to the main planned offensive; also, by that later period Austrian-Hungarian army, disorganized by the main offensive, got into a better shape, possibly with some missing soldiers returning to the regular army."
It seems that The Oxford Companion to Military History supports figures related to the shorter period, and this seems to have more logic, since it was one single operation planned and led by Brusilov, rather than several actions. Of course, the subsequent history also should be taken into account in this article, but the infobox and lede section should focus on the primary operation. GreyHood Talk 13:46, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Losses

message: All those losses numbers are very likely to be massively inflated, as this offensive would be 3 times more bloody than e.g. Verdun. However as there are no better sources available we should use them. Some editors already pointed out, that there are 2 timeframes. The first was until July/August with the first Kerensky offensive. There the Russians had ~550.000 casualties and the central powers about 700,000. Most sources however  count the following offensives too, which would make 1-1,5 million casualties for the Russians and up to 1,5 millions for the central powers. I added that. StoneProphet (talk) 16:05, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Is it possible that some historians have added the 80,000 Russian and 16,000 Central Powers losses from the supporting Baranovichi Offensive as well?  We also need to be careful that we define our terms ‘casualties’ and ‘losses’ accurately, otherwise we may inadvertently count the PoWs twice.  --Wally Tharg (talk) 21:49, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Losses

message: Apologies for slight spamming from the Lake Naroch page - not sure how often these Eastern Front pages get looked at. Do we have any evidence that Brusilov was intended to take the pressure off the British and French as the article currently claims? Haig's Despatches are clear that Brusilov was intended to divert attention from the A-H StrafOffensiv against Italy, which it did.
The Allies (UK, France, Italy & Russia) were committed to simultaneous offensives in the summer of 1916. Verdun kicked off at the end of February (which makes it unlikely that the Russians could have organised lake Naroch on the hoof so quickly), and there is no evidence that the French were asking the British for help until about May, when they finally realised they were in serious trouble, reserves being consumed, "Verdun sera prise" by early July, so the Somme kickoff was brought forward from mid-August. That's human nature for you - when a fire breaks out the panic and screaming doesn't start until it's too late. Before that, to British consternation, the French were talking of diverting resources to Salonika - which Britain had wanted abandoned and everybody had agreed should be wound down - and the British politicians were worried that the Russians would launch their offensive prematurely and require antics in the Balkans to help them when they got into trouble.
The main Russian offensive was supposed to be against the Germans (Brusilov v A-H was not supposed to be the main offensive). Not sure if Lake Naroch was supposed to be the main offensive, or was brought forward because of Verdun (possible but seems unlikely to me).
John Keegan does claim that Lake Naroch was launched to distract attention from Verdun, but doesn't go into it very deeply in a general history of the war, or it may just have been his reasonable but mistaken supposition - I have to say I'm dubious for the reasons listed above, but we have to go with what the books say. Norman Stone in his more detailed book on the Eastern Front doesn't mention it at all. Paulturtle (talk) 09:05, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Interaction between Fronts

message: People, you are all in some debries of unclear informations and some lies, it's absolutely asonishing, how the questions about this offensive and about the Eastern Front could be at all so unprofessional. May be some time I try to add some sources in English (although my English is not perfect), but it is of sense to translate some informations about the happenings on the Eastern Front. It's really funny to see these statements in in the mainstream "something about 1000000 casualities". Are there no any exact informations in English about the Russians in the WWI? I see only proposals - somebody wrote somewhen, but we don't have any concrect informations. Farmount1989 (talk) 16:22, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Brussilov-offensive 

message: Nelipovich researched this battle by the primary documents from Russian archive of First World War. This is the most authoritative expert on the First World War in Russia. All figures are calculated on the Russian archives. More authoritative source on the Russian losses not. I think we should use the losses of the Russian army from Nelipovich's book. This book is in the public domain. Yura2404 (talk) 22:16, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Russian losses

message: This article gives the impression that this was the first use of said tactics, that Brusilov inspired the use of small groups of infantry seeking out weak points as opposed to the massed assaults used previously - and that this was the inspiration for similar tactics being used on the western front later on.
However, the germans had been experimenting with the use of these kinds of tactics since 1915 - and had (rather famously) put them to use during the opening attacks at Verdun, 4 months BEFORE the Brusilov offensive began. The tactics can certainly be called innovative at the time, regardless of who used them. But giving the impression that the other parties in the war simply "picked this up" from the Brusilov offensive simply can't be right.
37.191.140.144 (talk) 20:53, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I've reduced the scope of the claim. Brusilov's actions may have influenced infiltration tactics as they were later used -- hard to tell.  I've left the citation needed tag.  If no one comes up with anything, this paragraph may be removed.  --A D Monroe III(talk)  03:40, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: After more than a year without any cite added, I've removed the questionable statement.  (A vague version of this still exists in the Aftermath section.)  --A D Monroe III(talk)  14:34, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  First use of shock troops/infiltration tactics? 

message: I went ahead and added the casualties given by Keegan and Stevenson, which seems more reliable than the numbers given by Mernikov. --Wassersäufer (talk) 09:21, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I, in turn, added all casualty estimates to the Aftermath section. Albergo Paradiso (talk) 15:55, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Casualties 

message: i found this "gem" in aftermath, "This helped to end the era of mass trench warfare in all but a few nations, most of them localized in Africa."
Africa?? that is rubbish. north south korea, india pakistan, the wars in the middle east. all feature more and greater trenches than any african nation did in decades, ww2 was essentially entrenched, a lot of the white russian campaign was, even i am breaking my head trying to find a good example of trenchwarfare in africa, probably some of it occured in the states bordering south africa during decolonisation.
to this day trenches are everywhere. syria, lebanon, gaza the first irak(-iran) war and more were characteristically trenchwarfare for a greater part than any war (except perhaps the alamein battle) ever was in africa, racist! 178.85.44.61 (talk) 16:46, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I’m afraid we won’t get very far improving Wikipedia by calling each other racists ... we’ll improve it by making emotionally neutral edits that take information from peer-reviewed sources.  --Wally Tharg (talk) 21:58, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Aftermath

message: I don’t often do this, but I’ve deliberately added a dead link to General Platon Lechitsky, Russian commander of 9 Army (the southernmost in this offensive, and according to Stone, one of the two most successful).  He has dead links on a couple of other pages (on Russian units that he commanded beforehand).  But before we do so, we’ll have to agree how we spell his name ...
On the wider point, I think that any general who has risen to command a field army warrants a Wikipedia page.  (Discuss: 10 marks.)  --Wally Tharg (talk) 22:18, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Reference to Platon Lechitsky, and call for a Wiki bio page

message: TL;DR: I'm removing "decisive" from the infobox result per WP infobox battle guidelines.  Please skip the rest unless this really interests you somehow.
Sigh.  You've been warned.
In the infobox, I changed the result from "Decisive Russian victory" to "Russian victory", with the comment .  An IP editor has reverted this change without comment. So, dutifully following WP:BRD, I'm starting this discussion to reach consensus on this matter.
This exact subject, adding a word or two to the results in battle infoboxes to give a more nuanced qualification the level of victory, has been debated countless times in thousands of articles.  It's been realized that this is always subjective, plagued by nationalistic POV, and neither readers nor historians ever seem to agree, and (worst of all) neither do infobox editors.  Infoboxes, by their specific purpose and design, will always be poor at nuance.  As noted in my comment, it's been decided that qualifying the level of victory in battle infoboxes is not helpful to readers, and especially not helpful to maintaining Wikipedia.  There is no reason to start this debate again here for this one article.
And, even without that, this particular battle wouldn't qualify as "decisive" anyway.  Yes, Brusilov's significant yet under-appreciated military abilities were most amply demonstrated in this offensive, but that doesn't make it decisive in any way.  Its actual goal was to relieve German pressure on the Western Front.  In the end, as stated in this article's Aftermath section, the massive Russian losses in this offensive hastened the Russian Revolution and exit of Russia from the war, releasing the majority of German divisions from the Eastern Front to fight in the West in 1918, ultimately achieving the exact opposite of its goals.  The long term-result result would better qualify as a "decisive German victory" rather than a Russian one.
So, per my comment, I will soon again remove "decisive" from the result unless someone can pretty quickly come up with any counter-argument for violating Infobox battle guidelines in this article.  --A D Monroe III(talk)  15:37, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Per above, I have removed "Decisive" from results.  --A D Monroe III(talk)  00:47, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infobox Results BRD 

message: Maybe not well known, but famous Ottoman 57. Regiment was sent here after the Gallipoli Campaign. Enver Pasha was eager to appease his German allies. Sources say they engaged Russians around September. About 1/3 perished. I could not find any references in the article.  —Hudavendigar (talk • contribs) 19:49, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ottoman Troops 

message: Commander of the Ottoman 15. Army (I think) Cevat Pasha should be among the list of commanders.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.41.176.219 (talk) 00:50, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cevat Pasha

message: Tucker's estimations of Russian losses are way higher than anything I've read before. Has he counted them differently or something? NutteLarsson59 (talk) 01:06, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Tucker indicated absolutely correct numbers. back in the early 2000s Russian military historian Sergey Nelipovich, based on Russian military archives, calculated the losses of the Russian army in Brusilov’s offensive. From May to December 1916, Brusilov's Southwestern Front lost 1,440,000 killed, wounded and prisoners. Nelipovich has everything written out with links to archives. 500,000 men are the losses of the Russian Southwestern Front in just 1,5 months of the offensive. And during the May-October offensive, Brusilov's Southwestern Front received almost 1,500,000 soldiers as reinforcements.Vaclaw1990 (talk) 07:31, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: 500,000 men are the losses that throughout the 20th century Soviet and Russian sources distributed as losses during the entire Brusilov offensive. Western researchers could not verify these figures. They were not allowed into Russian archives. Only Nelipovich in the 21st century indicated that real losses were almost 3 times greater.Vaclaw1990 (talk) 07:38, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Other sources that indicate Russian casualty figures of 500,000 or 1,000,000 during the Brusilov Offensive demonstrate ignorance of Nelipovich's work. His description of Brusilov’s offensive with a detailed analysis of Russian losses is available on the Internet in the public domain in Russian.Vaclaw1990 (talk) 07:42, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Russian losses