A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire

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I became a fan of Greg Wawro after reading his military history, the Austro-Prussian War. Like that book, A Mad Catastrophe is meticulously researched and makes for fascinating reading for those of us, like myself, that love history and particularly military history. The sad fate of the Austro-Hungarian army in 1914 is explained in detail and includes, in Wawro's opinion, many sources. My criticism of the book is that it is not a balanced portrayal of Austria-Hungary vis a vis the other great powers of Europe, nor was the blundering and mistakes of its military commander unique. Conrad von Hotzendorf was in good company in 1914.The illusion that armies must attack at all costs, that the offensive was the crucial, essential ingredient to military success in 1914 was hardly confined to Conrad or Austria. The exact same philosophy and it disastrous consequences were embraced by France's Joffre, Italy's Cadorna and many other commanders The British headlong, mass attacks against entrenched infantry with machine guns and artillery in the Battle of the Somme which resulted in over 600,000 casualties took place in 1916. You would think an "advanced" power like Britain and its commander, Haig, would have learned by then not to do this. Austria was not unique at all in failing to initially recognize the futility of mass shock tactics by infantry in the industrial age by any measure, but you would never understand that by reading this book. Likewise, the shell and ammunition shortages that plagued the logistics of the Imperial army were also experienced by Britain, Russia and the other great powers and for the same reasons. Nobody expected a war to last more than a few months and had not prepared accordingly.Wawro is highly critical of the society and politics of the Empire, attributing the "rot" within to its defeats in the field. Again, the critique has merit, certainly, but compared to what? The tsarist regime in Russia? The Ottoman Empire in Turkey? The Italian monarchy? The thing that distinguished Austria from so many of the other great powers was its low investment in its military establishment and its near half century of peace since its defeat in 1866. It also had many aggressive enemies willing to attack it for the sole purpose of tearing off provinces and territory to satisfy their own ambition. Wawro glosses over the fact that the Serbian regime in 1914 was riddled with fanatical imperialists with the declared goal of annexing Austrian Bosnia, Croatia and Dalmatia to create a greater Serbian state, whether they liked it or not and by force if need be. Serbia provoked the war by committing a terrorist act that no sovereign country would ever allow to go unanswered. Austria was not goaded into war by Germany but viewed its situation in 1914 like any other nation would and felt it had to respond to a threat to survive. Christopher Clark's fairly new book, The Sleepwalkers, explores all this in detail and gives a far more balanced account of the causes and origins of the war that you will not get here.Austria-Hungary was a unique, cosmopolitan Empire unlike any in Europe in that no single national group made up anything close to a majority. The faults of the Emperor and the Empire were mainly that they were too lenient with the more fanatical leaders of some of the minorities, but with the accession of Franz Ferdinand, how things might have changed. In the meantime, Austrian and Hungarian society blossomed, producing some of the best artists, composers, medicine, economists, psychologists and philosophers in European history. What came after, when the Empire collapsed after the war makes the troubles and problems with which the kaiser and his cabinets grappled in the years before the war look tame by comparison.I commend the book from a military history point of view as the best I have ever read in explaining the military campaigns of the opening year of the war in the East. I will read any book by Greg Wawro who is unquestionably one of our best military historians today. I just wish that this book had a bit more perspective and balance.

The title says a great deal about the book--"A Mad Catastrophe." The book tells a tale of a once major power in the process of disintegrating internally. A dual Monarchy had been created--one featuring Austria, the other Hungary. This alone undermined unity of purpose. In addition, the Empire was a mélange of many different nationalities: Austrians, Magyars, Slavs, Croats, Czechs, Rumanians, Poles, and others. There was not necessarily loyalty to the Empire among all of these parties. The Habsburg dynasty was another issue. Emperor Franz Joseph I was near the end of his life, tired and worn out, in his eighties. The heir apparent was Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who had considerable power and who did not always see eye to eye with the Emperor.The book begins with a discussion of the crushing defeat of Austria against Prussia in 1866. The creation of the Dual Monarchy between Austria and Hungary is considered at some lengt5h--including how this made decision making and cohesiveness within the extent of the Empire extraordinarily difficult. The Great Power quarrels of the late 19th and early 20th century are chronicled, to indicate the tensions "in the air" in Europe.Major powers began drawing up plans of action in case war occurred, including upgrading of the military. Artillery technology was changing--but the Empire depended on its older, now obsolete artillery because the country could not afford an investment in the new technology. Not enough ammunition was being produced--whether for artillery, machine guns, or troops' rifles. Soldiers needed training, but rather little took place. Again, it was expensive to mobilize troops for such events and the Empire tended to ignore training. None of this bode well if war came about.After Europe dodged some close calls, the assassination of the Archduke in 1914 triggered World War I. Austria's response was bungled. Then, to the astonishment of its German allies, the Empire decided on a two front war--against both Serbia and Russia--when its armies were outnumbered by Russians many times over and no troops could be spared. The three efforts to conquer the Serbs were all bloody failures, destroying much of Austria-Hungary's military forces in the south. War against Russia featured two countries unprepared for war having at it. However, the Empire's forces had a number of major disadvantages. They were outgunned and outmanned; Austria-Hungary's ancient cannon were far inferior in range and performance to Russian artillery. The Empire's forces did not have a lot of ammunition, so bayonet charges often became the standard attack procedure. The Empire was also hamstrung by its commander against Russia--General Franz Conrad Hotzendorf. He had a reputation for ability, but surely did not live up to it against the Russian forces. He dithered, had troops march back and forth, to little end.The Germans became alarmed and had to divert forces from the West over time to maintain any stability against Russia. The Empire's forces were decimated by death, injury, and illness (actually, much more than decimated, since, from the term's Latin derivation, that would imply 10% overall casualty figures).Needless to say, the war went badly for the Empire, and the epilogue speaks a small amount of the aftermath. This section could profitably have been expanded considerably to provide a sense of what the consequences of the botched war effort were. The book is best about giving a sense of the quiet rot within the Empire, making a successful venture into war doubtful from the start. More could have been done exploring the outcome after the conflict ended.

Most books on WW1 deal in some detail with developments in the Balkan and with Austria-Hungary's role in them leading up to the start of the war, but then focus their attention on Germany's war in the East and West.This book takes a close look in how Austria-Hungary was almost duped into providing Germany with an excuse for starting a 'defensive' war. It also shows how the Austrian high command was suffering from delusions of grandeur, vastly overrating the capabilities of its own armies while neglecting the fact that Serbia had come out of recent regional conflicts well-armed and battle-hardened. In contrast, the German high command was well aware of these facts and urged the Austrians to forget about Serbia and to limit themselves to pinning down Russian troops on the southeastern front.The Austrian army did however march into Serbia - three times - only to suffer humiliating setbacks, and the Germans found themselves having to prop up and bail out their Allies in their designated theatres of war instead of having any use for them, other than occasionally as cannon fodder. The course of Austria's war as described in this book makes it very clear why the Austrians finally banished the Habsburgs and in one stroke of the pen abolished all noble titles as well.A great book that you will find hard to put down.

I am not impressed by this book. Geoffrey Wawro seems a fluent writer - until he isn't. His animus against the Hungarians borders on the obsessive, making his diagnosis of the manifold ills of the Habsburg Empire preposterously one-sided.That is not his only failing. He also has a repeatedly displayed penchant for generalisation, making statements which cannot be supported by evidence - and aren't. Although the book has a reasonable number of footnotes, Wawro's wilder claims remain significantly bereft of annotation.This is a shame, because he has plainly studied the material in depth and, when he isn't exaggerating, or on his anti-Magyar hobby-horse, his style is readable.All the same, I can't recommend this.

Mention the words Ypres, Verdun, the Somme or Mons and people with only passing knowledge of the First World War would acknowledge their significance. Replace those places with the likes of Lemberg, Krasnik, Rawa-Ruska or Przemysl and blank faces would stare back.But In A Mad Catastrophe historian Geoffrey Wawro has gone some way to restoring the status these little-known towns and cities of eastern Galicia and southern Poland as ones where battles were fought which dictated the course of the Great War.The books charts the Austro-Hungarian Empire's role in the descent to war in 1914. Some contemporaries argue statesmen of the time were sleepwalkers, watchful but unseeing of the catastrophe they were to unleash on Europe. But Wawro is not one of them. Instead he is scathing of the empire's role in the descent to a general European War. He lays blame squarely at the Habsburg's door for turning a Balkan war into a continental conflagration. Vienna, he argues, no less than Berlin was the heart of darkness.My only criticism of the book is the writing style. Early chapters were not easy to absorb in the way books by, for example, Ian Kershaw are, but that may be due to my limited prior understanding of the topic. Chapters dealing with the war itself, however, are a different story.Wawro's narrative is clear, colourful and not without insightful analysis. The Austrian Chief of the General Staff Conrad von Hötzendorf epitomised the incompetence which beset the empire in its twilight years. Unable to work effectively with his German allies or even his own subordinates, he shut himself off from the realities of the front. Other than broad strategic concepts, co-ordinated war plans with Berlin were none-existent. With such dislocated leadership the empire lumbered from one defeat to another. This wasn't just the case on the Eastern Front against the almost equally incompetent Tsarist armies. By December 1914 Austrian forces had invaded and been repulsed by the Serbs three times.The empire's survival into 1915 owes as much to Russia's military inefficiency and Belgrade's material shortcomings as it does to its own military capability. About 800,000 men, including its entire cadre of experienced officers, were casualties by early 1915.Add the lack of tactical imagination, modern artillery and division between Vienna and Budapest and it's easy to see why the empire was finished as a military force within six months of combat.This book is an important contribution to illustrating previously unknown aspects of the Great War. While early chapters can be hard going, I'm glad I persevered. It gets better and better and by the last 150 pages I couldn't put it down.

Interesting book but my understanding of technical military details differs.On page 173 the inference is that the Russian 11th army was available for the opening Galician battles although its first commander was not appointed until 21.10.14.Russian divisions are stated to be 60 to 70 percent stronger than Austrian ones. A fairer figure would be 30 percent as they had 16 battalions to a division to the 12 or 13 normally found in an Austrian division Both averaged 2 machine guns per battalion.It is also stated that the Russians had 3 times as much heavy artillery. This is unlikely as the Austrians overall had more mobile heavy guns than the Russians (280 to 240).I agree that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was not in the best shape - lack of military investment, poor political structure (Hungarians only subject to Emperor) and insufficiently industrialized

Very good on all the internal dificulties Austria faced in the aftermath of losing to Prussia in the 1860s, especially the ways in which Hungary foiled various attempts by Vienna to reform itself in that period 1866 to 1910 or so. Not really a book about Austria throughout WWI, as its title clearly indicates,. It's very good on Austria's failure to prepare for modern war and excellent in describing the opening months of the war, but it's a pity that Wawro didn't continue to the bitter end as it's a gripping read. I look forward to Volume II...