Army of Francis Joseph

12: Austria-Hungary's Last War: 1914-1915

12 Austria-Hungary's Last War: 1914-1915 The outcome of the Balkan Wars shattered many assumptions of Austro-Hungarian military policy. It demonstrated that the potential Balkan enemies had considerable and effective military establishments, and that Russia, with the reorganization and reequipment of her army nearly completed, was willing to embark on an aggressive course. The defection of Rumania jeopardized the right flank of the army's deployment, and Austria-Hungary clearly depended more than ever on the support of her German ally. Above all, the course ofthe wars revealed that the Dual Monarchy no longer could control events in a vital strategic area. "The Balkan Wars," concluded an English historian, "marked the virtual end of the Habsburg Monarchy as a Great Power." And the reason for this was clear; the monarchy had fallen behind in armaments. In 1914 Austria-Hungary, "though ranking only after Russia and Germany in population . . . spent less than any Great Power-a quarter of Russian or German expenditure, a third of British or French, and even less than Italian."1 To be sure, there was an effort to catch up. Between 1906 and 1914 armament outlay had risen by 64 percent (actually 123 percent, if the extraordinary allocations made during 1912 and 1913 are taken into account), but even so this represented only 21 percent ofthe total budget.2 In any case, the spurt had come too late, and neither trained manpower nor modern equipment could be produced within a few months. Overall, in the words of a German observer more sympathetic than most to the efforts of the monarchy, "the military potential of the Danubian monarchy and its army was adequate for a campaign against Serbia, but she was inadequately prepared for a war against the major European powers."3 Few if any historians or military observers would quarrel with this assessment, though the question of who was responsible for the decline remains disputed. Conrad certainly recognized that the balance of power had tilted against the Habsburg Empire. In his "Summation of the Situation at the Beginning of the Year 1914," he conceded that the time for preventive war had passed.4 Once their forces were mobilized the potential enemies of the Triple Alliance, "a combination of France, Russia, Serbia, and Montenegro," would be clearly superior in manpower and resources. The German alliance, Conrad continued, remained a vital necessity, and, though he really could not have had any illusions about 172 Austria-Hungary's Last War 173 Italy's future course, he advised that attempts should be made to regain her as well as Rumania for the Triple Alliance. And to redress the balance further, he urged bringing other states into the alliance and suggested that Sweden should be approached. As in the case of so many of the speculations made by leading Habsburg soldiers , these were but castles in the air. By March 1914 Conrad had reverted to his usual self, and in a memorandum to Francis Joseph he called for "energetic action" against Rumania, "that faithless ally."5 No, Conrad was right about the need to strengthen the alliance with Germany, but neither he nor Moltke did anything concrete to implement joint planning. Given the strategic constellation, by far the best prospects for success were in exploiting the interior position held by the Austro-Hungarian and German armies in a tightly coordinated common operational plan.6 In 1914, however, relations between the two general staffs continued much as before and remained based on a set of assumptions not confirmed or worked out in any detail. Germany would seek a rapid victory in the west, while Austria-Hungary, whether engaged with Serbia or not, would undertake an offensive into Russian Poland supported in some fashion by German forces from East Prussia. These understandings were confirmed in May 1914 when Conrad and Moltke had their last conversations, but again no definite plan of joint action was prepared. 7 After hositilities actually had started, Lieutenant Colonel Count Kageneck, the German military attache in Vienna, sent a despairing telegram on August 1, 1914, to Moltke's chief of staff, Count Waldersee, pleading that "measures to coordinate operations against Russia should be worked out as soon as possible. Everyone had relied on the assumption that the two chiefs of staff had made these most intimate arrangements."8 But there were no such arrangements and in fact important changes in operational planning had taken place during the last few months of which the other partner was not...