"Although southern Poland and western Ukraine are not often thought of in terms of decisive battles in World War I, the impulses that precipitated the Battle for Galicia in August 1914 -- and the unprecedented carnage that resulted -- effectively doomed the Austro-Hungarian Empire just six weeks into the war. In Fall of the Double Eagle, John R. Schindler explains how Austria-Hungary, despite military weakness and the foreseeable ill consequences, consciously chose war in that fateful summer of 1914. Through close ...
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"Although southern Poland and western Ukraine are not often thought of in terms of decisive battles in World War I, the impulses that precipitated the Battle for Galicia in August 1914 -- and the unprecedented carnage that resulted -- effectively doomed the Austro-Hungarian Empire just six weeks into the war. In Fall of the Double Eagle, John R. Schindler explains how Austria-Hungary, despite military weakness and the foreseeable ill consequences, consciously chose war in that fateful summer of 1914. Through close examination of the Austro-Hungarian military, especially its elite general staff, Schindler shows how even a war that Vienna would likely lose appeared preferable to the 'foul peace' the senior generals loathed. After Serbia outgunned the polyglot empire in a humiliating defeat, and the offensive into Russian Poland ended in the massacre of more than four hundred thousand Austro-Hungarians in just three weeks, the empire never recovered. While Austria-Hungary's ultimate defeat and dissolution were postponed until the autumn of 1918, the late summer of 1914 on the plains and hills of Galicia sealed its fate"--
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It's a good solid read. Schindler is sympathetic, but unflinching in his primary focus on the Austro-Hungarian army, or better the unusually appropriate k.u.k. (kaiserlich und königlich/Imperial and Royal) army. He does a fine job outlining how poorly prepared the army was for war in 1914, in terms of training, funding, equipment, doctrine, and leadership. Like the French, they banked on elan to carry the day, which as all sides learned, had limitations against machine guns, and artillery. While he doesn't touch on Russian sources much, he credits the Russian army with having learned a lot during the Russo-Japanese War in coordination of artillery on infantry combat.
There's a unflattering portrait of General Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, Chief of the General Staff at the time, who bears a lot of the blame, especially for repeated attacks that only created more casualties. The operation against Serbia is portrayed as an even more depressing prelude, overseen with even less ability by Conrad's rival, General Potiorek.
The most interesting insight is that one of the k.u.k. army's few success was the creation of signals intelligence. They started to listen in to Russian wireless communications and develop a system to communicate that to those who needed to know. Once the Russians realized they had a problem and started coding transmissions, they managed to break the codes. Per Schindler, that helped avoid a complete collapse in 1914 and 1915. This is naturally a key interest for Schindler, who earlier served in the NSA.
Schindler concludes that the hyper-offensive campaign in Galicia permanently crippled the k.u.k. Army, depriving the Empire of a significant portion of their trained personnel, from which the Empire (unlike Britain, and France) never recovered. Granted Schindler also emphasizes that the training then was inadequate, but there you are.
