The Imperial-and-Royal Army at War

Prof. Tunstall, author of Blood on the Snow: The Carpathian Winter War of 1915 and other works on Austro-Hungarian history, gives us a comprehensive look at the armed forces of the Dual Monarchy in the Great War. This is no easy task.

Tunstall opens with a rather good explanation of the extraordinary organizational complexities of the multi-ethnic monarchy’s military institutions, with a focus on the army.

The army – which was actually three somewhat distinct organizations, the Imperial-and-Royal Army, the Austrian Landwher (not a reserve force), and the Hungarian Honved, each of which had some oddities of its own, not to mention that the troops spoke more than a half dozen different languages. There were many other weaknesses, and few strengths. The empire was perhaps able to fight a one front war against Italy or Serbia, but hardly a multi-front one against several stronger powers.

Tunstall then gives us a look at the army’s leadership, dominated by the rather inept Conrad von Holtzendorf (who nevertheless had a great press postwar), and examines its prewar planning, which was wildly optimistic, and compromised by some serious intelligence breaches. He then follows with the army’s operations in the war, in considerable detail.

Tunstall makes a good case that the army never recovered from the reverses in 1914, at the hands of Russia and Serbia. Not only did it lose an enormous number of troops, but the loss of its pre-war officer corps could never be replaced; new officers usually didn’t have the linguistic skils necessary to command the army’s polyglot troops. Nevertheless, the army – or armies -- did fight well at times, notably on the Italian Front, and to hold together well until the death of Emperor Franz Joseph in 1916, after which it began to deteriorate.

The Austro-Hungarian Army and the First World War, a volume in the Cambridge series “Armies of the Great War”, which received a NYMAS Special Award, is a very useful book for anyone interested in the Great War.

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Note: The Austro-Hungarian Army and the First World War is also available in several e-editions.

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