The First World War

by Hew Strachan

  Many Viennese were uncertain of Germany, for fear that it would take over Austria-Hungary But in July 1914 enthusiastic middle-class crowds, often formed of young students, showed their support for the alliance with portraits of both empires’ monarchs Only a few streets away, the mood among the working-class was glum.

  The difficulty of redeploying troops from Serbia to Galicia was evident by 1909. But nothing was done to improve the situation as neither Austria nor Hungary would accept responsibility for the cost of new track. In 1912 — 13 the railway department of the general staff assured Conrad that he could replace a decision to mobilise against Serbia by one for mobilisation against Russia. What he could not do was to mobilise against both simultaneously.

  On 25 July Franz Josef ordered mobilisation against Serbia only, to begin on 28 July. On that day Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. The guns mounted in the fortress of Semlin fired across the Danube, and from the river itself monitors of the Austro-Hungarian navy lobbed shells into the Serb capital. The hospital was hit. ‘Windows were shattered to smithereens’, Dr Slavka Mihajlovi reported, ‘and broken glass covered many floors. Patients started screaming. Some got out of their beds, pale and bewildered. Then there was another explosion, and another one, and then silence again. So, it was true! The war had started.’12

  In Vienna the previous night, Josef Redlich, a professor of law and later a government minister, went out to a restaurant. ‘We heard the band, which played patriotic songs and marches without real spirit. There were not many on the streets and the mood was not really enthusiastic: on the other hand the loud sounds and tones of the national anthem carried through the warm summer night from the Ringstrasse and the city centre, where enormous crowds were demonstrating.“13 This was not the euphoria that many later remembered, but nor was it a rejection of war. What enthused the Viennese crowds was the promise of a quick victory over Serbia; what restrained them was the fear of a great European war. Their wishful thinking reflected Conrad’s: this was to be the Third Balkan War, not the First World War.

  Their hopes were misplaced. On 28 July the Tsar responded to this Balkan crisis as Russia had responded to earlier ones: with the mobilisation of the four military districts facing Galicia. But this was nonsensical both to the military, since the reorganisation of the army meant that each district drew on the resources of others, and to Sazonov, who remained convinced that Germany — not Austria-Hungary - was the real danger. Over the next two days it was to be his counsels which prevailed, not the exchange of cousinly telegrams between the Kaiser and the Tsar. On 30 July the Russian army was ordered to proceed to general mobilisation.

  Germany was now facing a general European war. However, right up until 28 July itself Bethmann Hollweg believed that the policy of limitation and localisation might work. On 26 July Sir Edward Grey, the fly-fishing British foreign secretary, tried to reactivate the Concert of Europe by proposing a conference. But, believing the Germans to be the key players, he made the suggestion to Berlin, not Vienna. By the time the Austro-Hungarians knew of it they had opened hostilities. In any case, the Germans were by then as unconvinced as the Austrians of the value of congresses. On 29 July Grey, ‘entirely calm, but very grave’, warned the German ambassador in London that, if the Austro-Serb war were not localised, ‘it would not be practicable’ for Britain ’to stand aside‘. ’If war breaks out‘, he concluded, ’it will be the greatest catastrophe that the world has ever seen.‘14 Both the Kaiser and Bethmann Hollweg were appalled, and at 2.55 a.m. on 30 July Bethmann Hollweg telegraphed Vienna to urge mediation on the basis of a halt in Belgrade. But the Austrians feared another diplomatic defeat and Conrad insisted on the need to settle with Serbia once and for all.

  In any case the messages from Berlin to Vienna were now mixed. Moltke had returned to his desk on 25 July, and the minister of war, Falkenhayn, did so on 27 July. The latter was alarmed by Moltke’s lack of resolution, and felt that by 29 July the point had been reached when military considerations should override political. Given the indications of mobilisation elsewhere in Europe, and aware of how crucial time would be because of the dangers to Germany of a two-front war, he wanted the preliminary stages of German mobilisation to be put in hand. Moltke was aware that for Germany, if not for the other powers, mobilisation would mean war. At first, therefore, he respected the chancellor’s wish to await Russia’s response. But by 30 July he was prepared to hold on no longer. Then the Germans heard of the Russian decision to mobilise.

  What now worried Moltke was that the Austro-Hungarian army would become so embroiled in Serbia as to be unable to play its part in tying down Russia in the east. So on 30 July, the very day when Bethmann Hollweg was telling the Austrians to halt in Belgrade, Moltke was urging Conrad to mobilise against Russia, not Serbia. Conrad refused to be deflected. However, he asked the Railway Department to find a way to continue the movement of the 2nd Army to Serbia while beginning the mobilisation of the three armies — the 1st, 3rd and 4th — facing Russia. It said it could do so only if the mobilisation against Russia was delayed until 4 August. On 31 July Conrad agreed, but under further pressure from Germany asked that the 2nd Army be redirected to Galicia. He was told it was too late. The movement of the 2nd Army to Serbia would have to be completed or chaos would ensue.

  Conrad later blamed the Railway Department for the delayed arrival of the 2nd Army in Galicia. In fact, he had already forfeited any advantages over the Russians in terms of speed by his decision consistently to focus on Serbia and to downplay the Russian front. Given the thrust of Austrian policy, a defensive on the Serbian front was not a political option. On 1 August, the day on which Germany declared war on Russia, he explained his position to Moltke: ‘We could, and must, hold fast to the offensive against Serbia, the more so since we had [sic] to bear in mind that Russia might merely intend to restrain us from action by a threat, without proceeding to war against us’.15 By postponing the commencement of mobilisation against Russia until 4 August, Conrad still ensured that the 2nd Army would arrive in Galicia within twenty-four days of mobilisation, on 28 August.

  THE THIRD BALKAN WAR

  Thus the Austro-Hungarian army was committed to a far larger war than it had bargained for, and found itself fighting over two fronts when it struggled to be strong enough on one. Moreover, the 2nd Army was so mishandled as to be valueless in both Serbia and Galicia. The military operations of the First World War began with defeats of Austria-Hungary so shattering that the empire would indeed have collapsed there and then but for the support of its ally.

  In 1909 Conrad had said he could deal with Serbia in three months. But that assumed he could deploy the entire Austro-Hungarian army. In 1914, with its greater bulk in Galicia, Conrad could hope to defeat Serbia only if he had the backing of a Bulgaria-led Balkan alliance. This was a chicken-and-egg problem: politically, Austria had first to defeat Serbia to woo Bulgaria. Politically, too, it could not now adopt the defensive against Serbia that its manpower and strength favoured.

  Conrad himself set up his headquarters at Przemysl, today in Poland but then the citadel guarding the north-eastern extremity of the Austro-Hungarian empire. He therefore accepted the fact that Galicia had become the major front. Oskar Potiorek, the governor of Bosnia, was given command of the Serb theatre. He had been in the car with Franz Ferdinand on 28 June, and some held him responsible for the lax security. He had his eye on Conrad’s job as chief of the general staff. When Conrad had told him on 30 June that he was ‘working with all conviction for a final action against Serbia’,16 Potiorek had assumed that he was to have the chance not only to revenge the assassinations but also to outshine his professional rival.

  The quickest route into Serbia was from the north, crossing the Danube and attacking Belgrade. It kept the lines of communication short and it could open two lines of advance into Serbia: the Morava valley to Niş and the Kolubara valley to Valjevo. An attack on Šabac across the River Sava could converge on Valjevo from a different direction.


  The danger was that the Serbs would trade space for time, abandoning Belgrade and falling back south. Moreover, they could attack to the west, into Bosnia, stoking insurrection there — a consideration which bore heavily on Potiorek. He therefore proposed to direct the 6th Army from Višegrad across the upper Drina river in the direction of Uzice. The area was mountainous and it lacked road or rail communications. The 5th Army was to support the 6th on its northern flank, by crossing the lower Drina and following the River Jadar in the direction of Valjevo. Envelopment was the key note here — both on the wider canvas of Serbia as a whole and in the more defined battlefield of the Drina. For the latter, Potiorek hoped that the Serbs would be drawn in to attack the 5th Army, so allowing the 6th to cut across their rear. For the larger manoeuvre to work the Serbs had to be pinned in the north. Therefore the thrust from the west still assumed an attack from the north by the 2nd army.

  Conrad von Hotzendorff (with black armband) eyes up the daughter of Archduke Friedrich, the nominal commander-in-chief of the Austro-Hungarian army August von Mackensen is to the left of the Archduke and his chief of staff, Hans von Seeckt, to Conrad’s left

  Then, on 6 August, Potiorek was told that he had the use of the 2nd Army only until 18 August, and that it was not to cross the Danube or the Sava. But the 6th Army would not be able to concentrate near Sarajevo until 13 August, so the pressure in the north would lift before that to the west could take effect. The Austrians were down to 290,000 men in the region, many of them garrison troops, while the Serbs mustered 350,000. For all their problems of recovery after the first two Balkan wars, the Serb army had recent combat experience, and they had French 75mm quick-firing field guns as well as better field howitzers. Radomir Putnik, Serbia’s hero in the first two Balkan wars and the chief of the general staff, was taking the waters at Gleichenberg when the war broke out. He had with him the keys to the safe in which the war plans were stored, and it had to be blown open. The Austrians chivalrously, if mis guidedly, allowed him to return to Serbia, where the ailing general deployed his three armies in a central position, ready to face west or north.

  The Austro-Hungarian 5th Army led the way across the Drina, an operation for which it lacked sufficient bridging equipment. On 15 August it ran into the Serb 2nd and 3rd Armies on the Cer plateau. The Austrians were not equipped for mountain warfare, and the temperature soared as they toiled uphill. Potiorek was desperate to use the 2nd Army to support the 5th. It was allowed to establish bridgeheads at Mitrovica and Šabac, but Conrad — still clinging to his 18 August deadline — would release only one corps to support the 5th Army on 19 August. Conrad then ordered it to break off its attack. The 2nd Army began its move to Galicia on 20 August. It had not acted decisively enough to help the 5th Army on the Drina, and its position at Šabac had been too far from Belgrade to force Putnik to disperse his forces. The job of the 6th Army — in action at Višegrad and Priboj by 20 and 21 August - was to support the 5th Army, not vice versa. But it fell back, and as it did so it allowed the Serbs to push into Bosnia.

  Potiorek had dreaded this possibility. He had predicted massive unrest in the province in the event of war with Serbia. But he had available a powerful tool, the war service law passed in 1912 at the time of the First Balkan War. In the event of a national emergency the rights of private citizens were forfeit to the army. Military government was established in Bosnia-Herzogovina and Dalmatia on 25 July, and was progressively extended throughout the empire. A War Surveillance Office to coordinate all the agencies responsible for the internal control of the state was created under the aegis of the army. Trial by jury was suspended. Over 2,000 Bosnians were deported or interned, some of them Muslims who had fled to Bosnia to escape the Orthodox Serbs. Bosnia remained quiet. But the Austro-Hungarian army clearly regarded the war as having had two immediate consequences: first, it had usurped all distinctions between civilian and soldier, and second, it had rendered the army accountable to no one but itself.

  Mobile operations at the start of the war meant that the pillage and destruction, wrought by all armies, were widespread Austro-Hungarian infantry, convinced that Serb civilians were as hostile as combatants, were particularly harsh in the Balkans

  Smiling for the camera because - rather than in spite - of the gallows was a common reaction on the Eastern Front in both world wars. In 1914 the Austro-Hungarian army was vested with the authority to reach its own conclusions with regard to treason

  It applied these principles to Serbia as well. Having seen Serbs within Bosnia as potential enemies, Potiorek had little difficulty in seeing all Serbs within Serbia as hostile — regardless of age or sex. An order to one corps of the Austro-Hungarian army declared that: ‘The war is taking us into a country inhabited by a population inspired with fanatical hatred towards us, into a country where murder, as the catastrophe of Sarajevo has proved, is recognised even by the upper classes, who glorify it as heroism. Towards such a population all humanity and all kindness of heart are out of place; they are even harmful, for any consideration, such as it is sometimes possible to show in war, would in this case endanger our own troops.’17

  The army took civilian hostages in Serbia from mid-August 1914, destroying the homes of those who lived in areas where it encountered resistance. A report by a Swiss doctor, commissioned by the Serbs in 1915, reckoned that up to 4,000 civilians were killed or disappeared in the opening invasion. He described it as systematic extermination. To the north, the same happened in Galicia. The army dealt with the enemy without according to criteria similar to those which it applied to the enemy within, as traitors deprived of the protection of the laws of war. Austria-Hungary had not ratified the Hague Convention of 1907 but it instructed its army to observe it. It therefore justified its actions as reprisals. There were sectors in which guerrillas were operating, but the victims included old women and small children. The collapse of the invading army’s supply arrangements fostered looting and that set it at odds with the civil population. ‘Our troops’, one soldier serving with the Honved reported, ‘have struck out terribly in all directions, like the Swedes in the Thirty Years War. Nothing, or almost nothing, is intact. In every house individuals are to be seen searching for things that are still useable.’18

  These frustrations were born of operational failure. In Serbia, Potiorek renewed the attack across the Drina in September, but he had difficulty in breaking out beyond his bridgeheads and he had too few men to support his thrusts from the west with attacks from the north. Although drained of munitions and increasingly short of regular officers, Potiorek refused to retreat. At the end of the month both sides established fixed positions. ‘The war’, wrote an officer with the Austrians at the beginning of November, ‘is adopting in its present course ever more the character of a stubborn wrestling match, in which in the end success will be awarded to the side — given similar personal and moral qualities — whose material resources endure longer.“19

  None the less Potiorek tried once more, setting Valjevo as his objective. The Austrians made slow progress towards the Kolubara valley. The river itself was in flood, and when the snow eased the sun turned the roads to mud. Potiorek finally bludgeoned his way to the south-west of Belgrade, which he was able to capture on 2 December. But then the weather hardened, aiding the observation of the Serb artillery and deepening the Austro-Hungarians’ supply problems. By now, the 6th Army was shattered and to save the 5th, which had occupied Belgrade, the Serb capital had to be abandoned on 13 December. Within days Potiorek’s military career was over.

  For his rival, Conrad, the priority had long since been Galicia. But the tug-of-war between the two commanders kept the Austrian forces in Serbia stronger than they needed to be for pure defence, while those in Galicia were inadequate for the task that they faced. Such realities could not curb Conrad’s ambition for long. All the news in August was depressing. Romania did not honour its alliance obligations, and so exposed Conrad’s southern flank; German efforts were concentrated in East
Prussia, so robbing him of security to the north. The decision to deploy further to the west therefore looked increasingly prudent. But, having deployed to defend, Conrad was lured back to the attack by the ambition of the Siedlitz manoeuvre. On 3 August Moltke told Conrad that the Germans would fight defensively in East Prussia. On 20 August Conrad responded that he would advance on Lublin and Cholm nevertheless. He did not get the first two of the 2nd Army’s corps from Serbia until 28 August, and the third not until 4 September; the fourth would never arrive. He would then have thirty-seven divisions against — he reckoned — about fifty Russian. Moreover, by advancing from deep he was inflicting on his troops those same punishing movements that he had planned to inflict on the Russians. Nor did he know where the Russians were. Reports that two armies were advancing on him from the east were discounted; he wanted to place them to the north, as that was the direction in which he proposed to direct his thrust.

  The Austro-Hungarian 3rd Army was deployed around Lemberg (or Lvov, as it is today) to face east, while the 4th and 1st Armies pushed north-east. The total Austrian front was 280 km, and it widened as the armies began their advance in divergent directions on 23 August. The Russians deployed four armies against Galicia, two from the north and two from the east. They had decided that the Austrians were concentrated around Lemberg, facing east. They therefore underestimated the strength of Conrad’s northern thrust, and confused fighting between 23 and 29 August left Conrad on the verge of success. But on 26 August the Austrian 3rd Army sallied forth from Lemberg to meet the Russian 3rd Army — one of the two advancing from the east. Conrad now paid the penalty of stretching his forces too thinly. His 3rd Army was routed and it abandoned Lemberg on 2 September without a fight.