In June the Austro-Hungarian General Staff conducted an offensive against Italy in the Trentino with more success than the Germans had anticipated. But the Austrians had not calculated upon Russia. In July General Brusiloff attacked the Austrian forces in the neighbourhood of Lusk, succeeded in persuading or bribing a Bohemian army corps to desert and started through the Austrian positions like a flood over sloping land. Brusiloff not only took several hundred thousand prisoners. He not only broke clear through the Austrian lines but he thoroughly demoralised and destroyed the Austrian army as a unit in the world war. Von Hindenburg, who had been made Chief of the German General Staff, was compelled to send thousands of troops to the Wohlynian battlefields to stop the Russian invasion. But von Hindenburg did not look with any degree of satisfaction upon the possibility of such a thing happening again and informed the Kaiser that he would continue as Chief of the General Staff only upon condition that he be made chief of all armies allied to Germany. At a Conference at Great Headquarters at Pless, in Silicia, where offices were moved from France as soon as the Field Marshal took charge, Hindenburg was made the leader of all the armed forces in Central Europe. Thus by one stroke, really by the aid of Russia, Germany succeeded in conquering Austria-Hungary and in taking away from her command all of the forces, naval and military, which she had. At the same time the Bulgarian and Turkish armies were placed at the disposal of von Hindenburg. So far so good for the Prussians. But there were still some independent forces left within the Central Powers. Hungary was not content to do the bidding of Prussia. Hungarians were not ready to live under orders from Berlin. Even as late as a few months ago when the German Minister of the Interior called a conference in Berlin to mobilise all the food within the Central Powers, the Hungarians refused to join a scheme which would rob them of food they had jealously guarded and saved since the beginning of the war.