Before the outbreak of the First World War, influenced by the Russo-Japanese War, armies of all nations generally adopted flanking maneuvers. Even in the two Balkan Wars, the Bulgarian Army had mostly relied on outflanking tactics.
But after the world war erupted, everyone suddenly discovered that both sides' defensive lines stretched for hundreds of kilometers at a time. The Eastern Front now even ran for over a thousand kilometers, making flanking maneuvers exceedingly difficult to carry out. So they began once more to employ tactics of forcing a frontal breakthrough.
Yet with the advent of aircraft, the movements of large armies were no longer easily hidden from enemy eyes. Everyone could judge the enemy's main direction of attack from troop deployments, so forcing a frontal breakthrough was not so easy either!
This problem plagued commanders across the world. This time, the Russians had organized the largest offensive since the outbreak of the world war, and naturally they had to face the same problem.
Three army groups, more than 4.8 million troops, launching attacks simultaneously—this made for a front over a thousand kilometers long. Flanking maneuvers were certainly impossible. As for finding a weak point and breaking through head-on? Alliance reconnaissance planes were still flying overhead!
To solve this problem, Brusilov, commander of Russia's Southwestern Front, convened a meeting of the commanders of his subordinate armies on February 18. In the end, they decided that each army would choose its own breakthrough sector.
In the end, across the Southwestern Front's 440-kilometer offensive line, they selected more than thirty breakthrough points.
Brusilov admitted that this would disperse their forces, but it would also make it impossible for the enemy to determine the main direction of attack. Naturally, they would then be unable to effectively employ their mobile forces, and their entire line