Sad story

A depressing but honest account of the austrian march of folly into an through the initial convulsions of world war one

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Looking to the East.

A Mad Catastrophe by Geoffrey Wawro is a revisit to the role of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the causes and then fighting during the First World War. Most histories in the West tend to focus on the Western Front and there is a distinct lack of material which shows the ‘other side’. Thankfully this is changing, with this book and the excellent Ring of Steel by Alexander Watson.

The crux of Wawro’s argument is that the Habsburg Monarchy had no right to go to war in 1914, is hugely to blame for the conflict and the millions of deaths it caused and that it performed incredibly poorly throughout. I agree with this argument in some ways, but in others it is ridiculous.

It is widely accepted (see Ring of Steel or Christopher Clark’s Sleepwalkers as two examples) that there would have been widespread support if the Austrians had invaded Serbia immediately following the Sarajevo assassination. Sympathy was with Emperor Franz Joseph and against the regicidal and unstable Balkan state. The problem was that they waited (due to men being away at harvest amongst other issues) which lost the momentum in their cause. The ultimatum which followed was to coax the Serbians to reject (they accepted all but two points) and therefore invade anyway. The Austrians in the world at the time did have a right, how was executed was the problem. To Austria had no right provides an equal argument for the Entente powers Wawro loves, France, Russia and the United Kingdom. Austro-Hungry had a right to do something about the murders and other states at the time and in the present would have also had this right in the circumstances.

However, for me the argument that the Austrians performed extremely poorly during the war is strong. They were woeful boarding on the farcical. How and why Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf was chief of staff is beyond me. This emotionally complex and neurotic man, who believed he must gain success in order to impress his married lover or else she would leave; made decisions based on impulse. He believed the sheer will of fighting spirit would over come machine gun fire. With the use of cavalry and no support from artillery the result was a bloodbath. This was especially true in the early engagements in Galicia. Not only did the Austrians get annihilated unexpectedly by Serbian forces, they also performed badly against the Russians. The Russian army was going through reform at the time and so was badly managed and equipped, putting it on an equally incompetent footing as the Austrians. It truly amazes me the German Empire gave up their economy, unity and political stability for this weak and fractured state.

There is no doubt that the Habsburg Monarchy was central to the causes of the Great War, but they along with everyone else, did not envisage the disaster that followed. When war was declared most bureaucrats and politicians entered a solemn state, deflated but also relived the stress of the July Crisis was behind them. Wawro clearly detests the empire and the Habsburg’s themselves. Some of this for me was unnecessary and desperate.

The book overall was a good listen, I like to understand other points of views and arguments as only then does one get the full picture of the events described. Wawro doesn’t get bogged down in the intricate details of the causes of the war and focuses on solely the Austro-Hungarian’s involvement within it which I thought was good. He describes battles and military manoeuvres which takes me a long time to understand and luckily the maps provided are helpful. I will need to read sections again to gain a satisfactory understanding of the Eastern Front, so will leave this one in my collection for a revisit.

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Disappointing

Very unbalanced, clearly biased and partisan. No attempt at objectivity really. Somewhat shallow too, often lacking in wider historical context. Finally, terrible pronounciation of Central European names by an American. I couldn't force myself to finish this audiobook, which happens rarely.

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1 person found this helpful