The Brusilov Offensive and the WWI Europe That Could Have Been

The Brusilov Offensive—launched amid the battles of Somme and Verdun—caused over 2.5 million casualties and may have been history’s deadliest battle. Historian Indy Neidell argues it was the best chance for an early World War I armistice, as Gen. Aleksei Brusilov’s innovative shock-troop tactics nearly forced Germany and Austria-Hungary to negotiate. Had Russia succeeded, the intact German, Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian empires of 1916 might have shaped a radically different postwar world.