alternatehistory.com

…Representatives from the major Entente Powers, Britain, France, Italy and Russia, met at French headquarters in Chantilly to coordinate actions with each other. The First Conference in July 1915 provided nothing of note. The Second in December led to a guarantee that in the event of an attack on one power, the others would launch relief offensives. Furthermore, General Joffre in command of the French proposed that a combined series of offensives be launched simultaneously in 1916. This would prevent the Central Powers from transferring troops between fronts and defeating the offensives in detail.

No agreement was made at the time exactly when to start this coordinated attack. This led to the assault being preempted by the German attack on Verdun. In 6 days, the Germans advanced up to 10 kilometers in places, threatening the French defensive lines and taking Forts Douaumount and Vaux. Further attacks continued to push the French back and inflict heavy casualties.

On March 12th, another conference emerged, specifying a date of May 15th to June 1st for the beginning of the attacks, with a lesser Russian attack starting on March 18th. That attack, an offensive at Lake Naroch proved a disaster with over 100,000 Russians lost over two weeks for less than a fifth that many German losses. A similar attack by the Italians on the Isonzo River met with similar if smaller results, as the previous 4 battles had shown the area was lousy for offensive fighting.

None of the Entente powers had been able to make the May 15th deadline, however the Austrians almost did. Launching from South Tyrol on May 17th the Austrian offensive was aimed to take Venice and cut off the Italian armies attacking on the Isonzo. While initially successful the Italians were able to contain it in three weeks and further push the Austrians back slightly when circumstances elsewhere resulted in the withdrawal of troops. Still the attack caused the Italian government to fall and shook Italian morale.

Of the Entente offensives the first was performed by the Russians and became known as the Brusilov Offensive, after the commanding officer of the Russian Southwestern Front. Brusilov was probably the most competent of the Russian generals of the period, having performed very well in 1914 and early 1915 against the Austrians. Brusilov was intelligent enough to be able to make the most of his limited resources. He had limited artillery ammunition, so he would only perform a short sharp preparatory bombardment and otherwise husband his ammunition for interdiction of key targets. Without the ability to totally degrade defenses he would need to have specialists breach holes in the front for the rest of the army to follow. Without any guarantee of reinforcements, he brought up his reserves to the front and had them dig concealing entrenchments to be able to take part in the early waves of combat without being detected by the Austrians. Finally, without a decisive advantage in numbers to allow him to prevent any counterattacks from containing his breakthroughs, he decided to launch a broad front attack to make any breakthrough too large to contain.

Brusilov’s Offensive started on June 7th and quickly achieved limited success. Two of Four Russian armies managed breakthroughs and the Austrians were forced to withdraw. The Austrians had taken huge losses, including 100,000 prisoners, and were forced to withdraw to the lines as of September 1915. By June 20th reserves and transfers from the Italian front had stabilized the lines.

A second major Russian offensive was launched in the North by General Evert against the Germans on June 20th. This rapidly turned into Lake Naroch but on a larger scale over the coming weeks. The failure of this offensive and the containment of Brusilov’s along with the slow German push forward at Verdun and continued Italian impotence proved of diplomatic import.

Brusilov was able to renew his offensive in late July, however the Austrians gave significant ground before him and did not suffer major losses. The reason for this became apparent on August 14th when Romania declared war on Russia. The Romanian Army was able to attack north and get behind the Russians, Ninth Army was nearly destroyed, while Seventh Army was mauled. The Russians were forced back to their start lines, and then some by mid-October. The Russians had inflicted about 500,000 dead and wounded with 150,000 more captured. In exchange they had lost 700,000 dead and wounded of their own, along with 200,000 prisoners and a good deal of ground and heavy equipment.

Of course, while this was going on the Germans continued to slowly grind forward at Verdun and the Anglo-French started their own Offensive on the Somme on July 10th …



-Excerpt from European Wars for Americans, Harper & Brothers, New York, 2004



As I warned church has interfered, so update is short next week should be better, crosses fingers