Imperial Twilight in the Great War
Imperial Twilight in the Great War
A review of Geoffrey Wawro's "A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire."
“Plans made without allowance for the intentions of the enemy are liable to miscarry.”
― John Keegan, The First World War
For much of history, a common form of governance was an imperial system built on a single (or two) ethnicity ruling adjacent peoples. Even as late as the 16th century CE, this was not an atypical polity. Yet, beginning around the 1500s, Europe experienced a political sea change from multi-ethnic empires to nation-states. Though by the 20th century, most of the European states had transitioned into nationalist entities with global colonies, two key countries, Austria-Hungary and Russia, still ruled more traditional empires. The resentment borne out of this system led, in 1914, to the assassination of the heir to the Habsburg Empire. Archduke Franz Ferdinand was killed by a Slav protesting Austria's presence in Bosnia.
The critical difference was that while Russian people comprised 44% of the Tsarist Empire, German speakers were only 24% of the Habsburg state. One of the reasons that Austria was Austria-Hungary was because the dominant German rulers could only achieve a near majority by allying with the Magyars. Regardless, by the end of World War I, neither the Romanovs of Russia nor the Habsburgs of Austria-Hungary were ruling their once vast domains.
Many books and movies have been made about World War I's Western Front and conflicts with Turkey. Geoffrey Wawro's A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire brings light to a previously neglected part of the Great War, a story of Austria's campaigns in the East. This tale involves at least ten countries, several million troops, and varied geography, such as mountain ranges, rivers, and plains. In a departure from the static trench warfare in the West, the Eastern front still contained a degree of mobility after the initial months of the war.
Wawro opens his book with the Habsburg Empire's central part in igniting World War I: "Austria Hungary anxieties and pretensions as a fading great power were a chief cause of the war, and these same qualities were also the source of its defeat." The author does not have much good to say about the Habsburg's preparations for the conflict, stating that they "deployed an army that was feeble in every important area: transport, artillery, shells, machine guns, rifles, and tactics."
Austria began the war saddled with an 84-year-old Emperor who refused to abdicate even in his dotage. However, for Wawro, the piece's villain is Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, of whom the author states, "The Great War in the East was so unrelievedly ungreat because of Conrad.”
Even by loosened 1914 standards, his leadership and decisions were appalling, wrecking the Austro-Hungarian army in a matter of weeks." The author later refers to him as the "Chateau General Par Excellence" for his tendency to stay in the rear of action and inability to know where his armies were located on any given day.
Wawro's most compelling statement, which certainly rings true, is that the defeat of Austria by the Russians led to the Central Powers losing the war. "Whatever hope Germany had of winning the Great War ended with the humiliating defeats of Austria in 1914."
Much of this started with Austrian overconfidence about their abilities and belief that Russians would take months to mobilize. In reality, the Romanov forces fielded over 2.7 million troops within a month of mobilization and, staggeringly, another 2.3 million reservists by the end of 1914. Against this, the Austrians could barely deploy 2 million. To make matters worse, they were fighting on two fronts. The first was a campaign against Serbia as an act of reprisal for enabling the murder of Franz Ferdinand, the event that started the entire conflagration. The second, and presumably main effort, was in Galicia, once a part of Poland before Austria annexed it in 1772.
The overall Russian advantage in numbers was borne out by a straightforward fact: population. At the start of the war, Austria-Hungary's population was 46 million. Their ally Germany, who could only concentrate some of their armies in the East, was 67 million. Russia's was 159 million.
And given these numbers, defense would seem the prudent course. Yet not only was an offensive launched to conquer Serbia, but Conrad's overconfidence and prodding on the part of the Germans compelled the Austrians to attack the Russians as well. Costly battles at Kraśnik and Komarów seemed initially to be Austrian victories, but in reality, heavy casualties and poor generalship proved these events to be hollow successes.
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It took several weeks, but in the end, Russia's numbers began to tell. In the next series of battles, including Lemberg and Rawa Ruska, or generally the Battle of Galicia, the core of Wawro's story takes place. As Russian counterattacks destroyed entire Austrian divisions, Conrad was "heedlessly yammering about attacks when all was so obviously lost in the strategic sense." The Russians "flooded the Austrian center and flanks," adds Wawro.
Many times in history, a smaller force can best a larger one. Caesar's conquest in Gaul and Genghis Khan's victories in China and central Asia were against bigger forces. But whether legions or tümens, those armies were supremely trained, disciplined, well-equipped, and superbly led. None of that was true of the Austrians. "By now, the Austro-Hungarian troops recognized the stupidity of their commanders who persisted in sending them into the teeth of Russian trenches," states Wawro.
By the middle of September 1914, barely six weeks after the breakout of war, the Russians had taken 90 square miles of Habsburg territory, the Eastern capital of Lemburg, and most disastrously, inflicted 440,000 Austrian causalities to 230,000 Russians. The latter could be replaced.
The only thing staving off an even worse defeat was a massive German victory over Russia at Tannenberg. And that set the pattern for the war in the East. Austria was propped up by Germany, who had to continuously bail out their ally and thus could only partially concentrate in the West. That changed in 1917 when the Bolshevik Revolution took Russia out of the war, but it was too late. The addition of the United States offset Russia's departure.
In the first six weeks of the war, the cream of the Austrian army was destroyed. Where the nationalist armies, especially that of France and Germany, fought for the nation’s pride, the Magyars, Czechs, Serbs, Romanians, Bosnians, and Poles, without that impetus, saw little reason to fight. By 1917, a massive 1.7 million Austrians had surrendered to the Russians, ten times the number from German armies. The end of the Habsburgs seems inevitable from our perspective, but it was the war that put the final end to the Empire.
Wawro does a masterful job setting up the Habsburg Empire's complexity and the conflict's beginnings. In descriptions of the battles, his details harken to John Keegan's best works. But there were two issues with the book. Conrad's incompetence seems less pronounced than the author would admit. Given the difficulty of supply, the make-up of the Austrians, and the size of the Russian armies, not even a brilliant commander with a track record of melding disparate units would be assured of success. Conrad was not a great general, but I would not place the ignominy for the defeat so heavily at his feet. The second issue with the book is it sometimes lacks the Russian perspective. As they were the chief antagonists in the work, I would have liked more of their commentary.
Though the core of the book focuses on the Galician front, in those early weeks of World War I, the Serbians inflicted 30,000 casualties on the Austrians. The stout defense of the Serbs in the face of the much larger Austrian Empire brings to mind another Slavic nation fighting for its life against a traditional foe. Like the Ukrainians, the Serbs initially had battlefield success, but eventually, Serbia was conquered. This past year, a much anticipated Ukrainian counter-offensive stalled, and as of this writing, the Russians have the upper hand. The reality of this current war is that eventually, Russian numbers could tell. But at what price?
"Of the many reckless errors and miscalculations in this uniquely catastrophic war, Austro-Hungarian decision-making in 1914 was arguably the most senseless and reprehensible," concludes Wawro. "Austria's Great War was built on the reckless gamble that the monarchy's internal problems could be fixed by war. They couldn't." Sadly, a certain figure in the Kremlin today has not arrived at this conclusion.
AD Tippet is the founder and Publisher of the Conservative Historian. He has conducted extensive research in Political, Religious, Social, and Educational history across all eras and geographies. He has been writing and podcasting for over 12 years. In 2020, he published his first book, The Conservative Historian. He has degrees in history, education, and an MBA. @BelAves
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