Over the Top: Alternative Histories of the First World War by Spencer Jones; Peter Tsouras (ed.)

Author:Spencer Jones; Peter Tsouras (ed.) [Tsouras, Spencer Jones; Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bic Code 1: HBWN, Bisac Code 1: HIS027090, HISTORY / Military / World War I
ISBN: 9781473841628
Publisher: Frontline Books
Published: 2014-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

7

The Brusilov Offensive, 1916

Russia’s Glory

Peter G. Tsouras

Kiev Opera House, 14 September 1911

The sparkling overture to Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tale of Tsar Saltan had just concentrated every eye in the Opera House away from Tsar Nicholas II and his two eldest daughters, the Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana. In the stalls was Pyotr Stolypin, forty-nine, the former prime minister. Stolypin had resigned only a few months before, but the tsar wanted to show there was no bad feeling and had made the opera a command performance for his former minister.

Using his badge as a member of the Okrana, the Russian secret police, an armed Dmitri Bogrov was able to approach Stolypin, who had refused to wear his armoured vest even though the police had warned him of an assassination plot. Bogrov shot him twice in the arm and once in the chest. As the assassin was dragged away, Stolypin opened his coat to reveal a blood-soaked shirt. Looking up at the stunned Nicholas in his box, he made the sign of the cross and announced in a firm voice that he was happy to die for the tsar. He was rushed to the hospital, where the doctors were only barely able to save his life. A very long recovery was diagnosed. The tsar came to Stolypin’s hospital bed and humbled himself as he begged, ‘Forgive me.’1

Verdun, 21 February 1916

At first light 1,201 German guns erupted to hurl a continuous crushing fire on the three French divisions defending an eight-mile sector protecting the French fortress complex at Verdun. Two-thirds of the guns were heavy or mediums, the former stripped from the rest of the German armies on the Western Front. Thirty-three ammunition trains a day would be needed to feed the guns as the reinforced 5th Army attacked. It was an offensive designed by the Chief of the German General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, to burn out the French Army. Winston Churchill would write of it:

It was not to be an attempt to ‘break through.’ The assailants were not to be drawn into pockets from which they would be fired upon from all sides. They were to fire at the French and assault them continually in positions which French pride would make it impossible to yield. The nineteen German divisions and the massed artillery assigned to the task were to wear out and ‘bleed white’ the French Army. Verdun was to become the anvil upon which French military manhood was to be hammered to death by German cannon. The French were to be fastened to fixed positions by sentiment, and battered to pieces by artillery.2

French pride, however, did not preclude them from strenuously asking the Russians for help as more and more of their own divisions were committed to the slaughterhouse of Verdun. The French were desperate for the Russians to launch offensives that would force the Germans to reinforce their eastern front from forces fighting it out in the great battle in the west. The Russians promised to help, but they had

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