1Blythewood
I just finished Geoffrey Wawro's book on Austria-Hungary in the Great War entitled "A Mad Catastrophe" and what follows is my review. Who else has read this book and what are your thoughts?
Geoffrey Wawro offers a thorough analysis of the collapse of Austria-Hungary during the Great War.
The first part of the book seeks to describe the inner workings of the Hapsburg government and the forces pulling the government apart. The multinational problems of the Dual Monarchy give perspective to the challenges the Empire faced during a time of heightened nationalism, particularly the forces of pan-slavism. These problems were exacerbated by the aging Emperor Franz Joseph, who comes off as a less than competent leader for these difficult times facing Austria-Hungary.
The rest of the book, fully two-thirds, deals with the sheer disaster of the Great War and the complete inability of the Hapsburg army to effectively fight a modern war. Not only does Wawro demonstrate how poorly the Empire was prepared in terms of material and equipment (the shortage of shells and ammunition even led to calls to restrict shelling without approval), but he also shows how out-moded Austrian tactics were, even employing infantry bayonet charges in the face of machine gun fire. The situation was so deplorable that even the tiny Serbian army was able to best the Austrians through multiple invasions of Serbia during the war. Further, the equally ill-equipped Russians proved superior to the Austrians by virtue of the former's significantly greater number of troops.
One certainly gains great insight into the military causes of the implosion of the the Hapsburg government. However, Wawro does not demonstrate the effect these battlefield disasters had on the political front. The reader gains no insight into how the Hapsburg government tried to shore up its political institutions in the face of impending military defeat. Although, Wawro does try to demonstrate that those leading the war effort were being duplicitous with the political leaders of the Empire, one still feels that the political side of the Hapsburg collapse is being ignored in this book.
Geoffrey Wawro offers a thorough analysis of the collapse of Austria-Hungary during the Great War.
The first part of the book seeks to describe the inner workings of the Hapsburg government and the forces pulling the government apart. The multinational problems of the Dual Monarchy give perspective to the challenges the Empire faced during a time of heightened nationalism, particularly the forces of pan-slavism. These problems were exacerbated by the aging Emperor Franz Joseph, who comes off as a less than competent leader for these difficult times facing Austria-Hungary.
The rest of the book, fully two-thirds, deals with the sheer disaster of the Great War and the complete inability of the Hapsburg army to effectively fight a modern war. Not only does Wawro demonstrate how poorly the Empire was prepared in terms of material and equipment (the shortage of shells and ammunition even led to calls to restrict shelling without approval), but he also shows how out-moded Austrian tactics were, even employing infantry bayonet charges in the face of machine gun fire. The situation was so deplorable that even the tiny Serbian army was able to best the Austrians through multiple invasions of Serbia during the war. Further, the equally ill-equipped Russians proved superior to the Austrians by virtue of the former's significantly greater number of troops.
One certainly gains great insight into the military causes of the implosion of the the Hapsburg government. However, Wawro does not demonstrate the effect these battlefield disasters had on the political front. The reader gains no insight into how the Hapsburg government tried to shore up its political institutions in the face of impending military defeat. Although, Wawro does try to demonstrate that those leading the war effort were being duplicitous with the political leaders of the Empire, one still feels that the political side of the Hapsburg collapse is being ignored in this book.
2Karlstar
>1 Blythewood: I haven't read it but it sounds fascinating. I just read SLA Marshall's World War I and he gave an overview of what A-H did during the war on multiple fronts, but not in detail.
