Category
Oral - Textual or Investigative
Description
Throughout much of the Great War (1914-1918), the Central Powers suffered from a severe lack of balance when it came to the battlefield performance of its nations’ armies. While the Imperial German Army effectively brought the Russians to heel in the east and firmly held the line against Entente forces in the west, their Habsburg counterpart, the Austro-Hungarian Landwehr, routinely suffered great defeats at the hands of seemingly lesser opponents. Military historians have since regarded Austria-Hungary’s contribution to the Central Powers in the Great War as negligible at best and greatly detrimental at worst. Still, the question persists; why did the army of one of Europe’s longstanding ‘great powers’ perform so poorly against the forces of a second-rate power such as Serbia? Possible answers lie in its level of preparedness (or lack thereof) at the outset of the war, its failure to modernize to the degree of both its allies and opponents, its relatively poor leadership, or the complications brought about by its vastly multilingual composition. In truth, Austria-Hungary was plagued by a multitude of maladies—including those listed above and more—that greatly restricted its military capabilities. To best discern the Austro-Hungarian situation and the factors that contributed to it, a dual examination of the leading secondary interpretations and primary source documents is necessary. This study offers a suitably multifaceted explanation for the military failings of the Habsburg Empire in the Great War, and as such the scope of this research will encompass both the military dimension of the topic as well as the societal dimension.
The Ponderous Tower: A Historiographical Examination of Austro-Hungarian Military Failings in the Great War
Oral - Textual or Investigative
Throughout much of the Great War (1914-1918), the Central Powers suffered from a severe lack of balance when it came to the battlefield performance of its nations’ armies. While the Imperial German Army effectively brought the Russians to heel in the east and firmly held the line against Entente forces in the west, their Habsburg counterpart, the Austro-Hungarian Landwehr, routinely suffered great defeats at the hands of seemingly lesser opponents. Military historians have since regarded Austria-Hungary’s contribution to the Central Powers in the Great War as negligible at best and greatly detrimental at worst. Still, the question persists; why did the army of one of Europe’s longstanding ‘great powers’ perform so poorly against the forces of a second-rate power such as Serbia? Possible answers lie in its level of preparedness (or lack thereof) at the outset of the war, its failure to modernize to the degree of both its allies and opponents, its relatively poor leadership, or the complications brought about by its vastly multilingual composition. In truth, Austria-Hungary was plagued by a multitude of maladies—including those listed above and more—that greatly restricted its military capabilities. To best discern the Austro-Hungarian situation and the factors that contributed to it, a dual examination of the leading secondary interpretations and primary source documents is necessary. This study offers a suitably multifaceted explanation for the military failings of the Habsburg Empire in the Great War, and as such the scope of this research will encompass both the military dimension of the topic as well as the societal dimension.
Comments
Graduate - 1st Place Award Winner