The Brusilov Offensive, fought while the battles of Somme and Verdun raged, was responsible for over 2.5 million casualties—possibly several hundred thousand more—and may have been the deadliest battle in human history.
Historian and documentarian Indy Neidell explores how, in hindsight, the Brusilov Offensive was the only realistic chance for World War I to end before it did in 1918. The Imperial Russian Army very nearly forced an armistice, thanks to Gen. Aleksei Brusilov’s pioneering use of practices taken for granted in war today, such as shock troop tactics. Had it done so, the world of 1916, when the German, Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian Empires were in no danger of collapsing, would have been the basis of a postwar future that would have looked very different indeed.
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