ARTICLES

BOOK REVIEWS
Source: http://ozebook.com
Austrian fieldworks in Galicia on the front lines
outmoded. It had no air force to speak of. Its single ally, Imperial Germany, had no confidence
in the Empire’s military abilities and designed its own war plans with scant regard for Vienna’s
military objectives. As if that were not enough, its senior officer, a middling strategist at best,
was enamoured with the charms of a married woman half his age and paid little attention to
his command responsibilities. This was a recipe for disaster.
It is therefore no surprise, as Wawro writes, that Vienna’s initial campaigns against Serbia and
in Galicia against Russia were doomed to failure. Demonstrating that one should never
reinforce failure, Vienna launched a series of unsuccessful offensive campaigns against the
smaller but better-equipped Serbian army, resulting in heavy casualties. Without the assistance
of the Germans in 1916, the author rightly asserts, Austria-Hungary would have been forced
to sue for peace, as by that time its armies were an undisciplined, leaderless rabble which was
surrendering to the enemy at every opportunity, dying from untreated wounds, or freezing to
death due to an antiquated and corrupt supply system. It was this military assistance which
diverted battle-hardened German troops from the Western Front, giving the western allies a
much-needed respite to reorganize and regroup, and which ultimately, through a series of
bloody campaigns against the Russians, attrited these German battalions and denied their
further use in 1918 against the West. It is said that Helmuth von Moltke (the Younger), Chief
of the German General Staff, once remarked that the war in the east would be won on the
Marne, not on the Bug. It is not an exaggeration to suggest, as Wawro implies, that the war in
the west was actually won in the east.
RECOMMENDED READING
Christopher Clark, Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (New York: Harper, 2014).
Sean McMeekin, July 1914: Countdown to War (New York: Basic Books, 2013).
WWW.ARMY.FORCES.GC.CA/CAJ 141