Each of the warring nations on both sides entered the war for different reasons and with different
objectives, but so far none of them had come close to their goals. This week however, for
the first and only time for nearly the next four years, one of those nations, surprisingly
enough the least militarily competent of them all, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, could say,
“Mission accomplished”.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
When we left off the western front had frozen, the Russians were close to Cracow, the Austrians
were stopped by the Serbs, and the British Indian army under General Barrett had taken
Basra and was moving in to Mesopotamia. Here’s what happened next.
On the Eastern Front the Russians were close to Cracow, the capital of Austrian Poland,
but were still opposed by a pretty large force of both Austrian and German forces. Further
south, however, this was not the case. The main mountain passes were poorly defended,
having been stripped for men to use at Cracow, and by the 29th General Boroevic was facing
the very real threat of a Russian offensive through the mountains toward Budapest.
There was big disagreement in the Russian high command, though. After the enormous battle
of Lodz had stopped the Russians from driving into Germany and they’d been stopped again
at Cracow, General Ruzski wanted to pull the Russian forces back to Warsaw, but General
Ivanov believed that the Austrians were now too weak to stop them again and Russia should
go on the offensive.
Whatever they did, though, they had other issues to consider. The White Sea was closed
by ice, the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea by enemy navies, so Russia was having serious
import export troubles. Over the past two months she had recruited just under one and
a half MILLION new soldiers, but for the most part these lacked training, weapons, and winter
gear. There was also a terrible shortage of other munitions- Russian artillery was down
to ten rounds per gun per day.
Conrad von Hotzendorf, Chief of Staff of the Austro-Hungarian Imperial army and one of
the architects of the war, struck right at this time, on December 3rd with his best available
troops and German support between Limanowa and Lapanow.
Thanks to a huge element of surprise, he managed to push the Russians back 60 kilometers in
just four days until Russian reinforcements could arrive and halt the retreat. As an enormous
bonus, Conrad’s drive had allowed Boroevic to also go on the offensive in the mountains
and gain new and stronger positions. The net result of this was that it foiled Ivanov’s
plans to thrust past Cracow and into Germany and destroyed any offensive toward Budapest.
This was a real double victory for the Austrians, but it was also the end of something: never
again would the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Army make a decisive operation under its own
initiative, or have a victory that an Austrian leader could entirely claim as his own. After
this, any Austrian victories- against Russia or later Italy- would come under German supervision.
You know, if you look at Austria’s army compared with the enemy, you really see that
Austria had no idea what to do in the long run, [s]because there was never supposed to
be any “long run”.
Compare the Austrian and Russian armies in July 1914 and December 1914:
At the beginning of the war, Russia had 3.5 million men mobilized, down now to two million-ish.
Austria had had 3.3 million men mobilized at the outbreak of the war, also down now
to around two million, BUT Russia had 10 million men she had yet to conscript, Austria had
fewer than 2 million left. And she was at war with Russia.
Austria did have a very powerful ally in Germany though, and on December 1st the German High
Command- the Kaiser, Chief of Staff Falkenhayn, and Generals von Hindenburg and Ludendorff
had a war conference at Posen. The Generals demanded large reinforcements to help Austria
and knock Russia out of the war, but Falkenhayn was convinced the war could only be won in
the west and then by a political settlement, so he would send no more troops from west
to east other than the three divisions he’d already sent.
But what of the Austrian troops further south on the Balkan front?
Last week the Serbs had managed to stop the Austrian advance, but that only lasted a couple
of days, and by the 29th, the Serbian high command, defending on an over-extended front
decided to evacuate Belgrade. On December 1st, 1914 the Austro-Hungarian army occupied
Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. In July when Austria had declared war on Serbia, the occupation
of Belgrade was the only war-making objective, so on December 1st, the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
for the final time in over 600 years of Habsburg leadership, could say, “mission accomplished”.
There were celebrations in Vienna and congratulations from Berlin, and it seemed a given that the
war in Serbia would soon be over, and then... and then it all began to fall apart. On December
3rd there was an Austrian parade in the streets of Belgrade, but that same day the Serbs were
beating the Austrians at Arandjelovac. France had given Serbia much needed ammunition supplies
and in the wake of that surprise victory, the Serbs advanced to find the now over-extended
Austrian lines crumbling before them, and by the 4th, General Oskar Potiorek’s imperial
army was in retreat.
The Austrians had severely underestimated their southern neighbor and were paying the
price, but it was sadly the case that many of the monarchs running the show really didn’t
have a clue about what was going on.
The Archduke Karl, who succeeded Franz Ferdinand as heir to the Imperial Austrian throne, believed
that the Russians were finished and the war was basically over. He also believed that
the western front didn’t really matter and what did matter was that Austria march on
Italy.
King George V of England didn’t seem to understand that some of his relatives were
the enemy. To him, his cousin Prince Albert of Schleswig-Holstein was not actually fighting
for the Germans, he was only running a POW camp. At least the Kaiser seemed to understand
the horrors that he had played a part in unleashing.
But the surprising ignorance of some of these leaders is at least in part attributable to
the press. I mean, most of the journalists writing about the war did not have a knowledge
of military matters and anyhow often wrote things that were pure fantasy. I read in Max
Hastings’ book “Catastrophe” that according to the French press, the German crown prince
was assassinated August 5th, wounded in France on the 15th, assassinated again the 24th,
committed suicide September 4th, apparently resurrected because he was again wounded October
18th, and then declared insane on November 3rd.
This was a bit extreme but since many governments refused to provide facts about the war or
let war correspondents visit the front, mostly to keep up public morale, when people did
discover what was really happening, a huge credibility problem was created and journalists
throughout Europe became increasingly skeptical about any official government pronouncements.
This would worsen as the war continued.
But the news was mostly pretty incredible anyhow. How do you imagine what half a million
people on a battlefield looks like, or sounds like when you read about it in the papers
anyhow? How do you comprehend tens of thousands of deaths in a single day?
Nothing like this had ever happened, certainly not all at once. Let’s look back at this
week: the Russian colossus was being pushed back by the Austrians and Germans in the East,
aided in large part by confusion and indecision in the Russian High Command. In the Balkans,
the Austrians had seemed triumphant, but only days later were on the retreat. The Western
Front was frozen into a stalemate but could explode anywhere at any time, more Russians
were regrouping in eastern Turkey after their defeat a couple weeks ago, British Indian
troops were marching from Basra further inland in Mesopotamia, and German ships were roaming
around off of South America. All of that was happening and it was only getting bigger.
Hey, here’s another thing that happened this week: on December 1st came the first
German aircraft that was equipped with radio.
But the big news this week was Austrian news. Austria had wanted this war; Austria had schemed
to get this war started; but the Austrian military had proven itself to be incompetent
and hundreds of thousands of men from all corners of the Empire had died in mere months
because of an obsolete and ridiculously complicated military bureaucracy that pretty much engaged
in fantasy warfare. Their reputation abroad was worsened by the fact that much of the
army command took pride in the wartime atrocities it committed in little Serbia. But for a few
days in early December, Austrians could rejoice, for they had pushed back the Russians and
more importantly, had taken the Serbian capital. They were the only warring nation that had
achieved its goal. This hurrah would be short lived, though, and it would be the Austrians
final real hurrah, and four the next four years the men of the empire would only die
and die and die.
The attrocities that the Austrians comitted in Serbia were part of our episode from August
28 in which we were also talking about the so called Rape of Belgium, a series of attrocities
committed by German troops in Belgium.
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See you next week.