Why did Austria-Hungary fail to subdue Serbia in 1914?

WWI Italian postcard represents Serbia fighting with Austria and Germany, while Bulgaria tries to kill Serbia with a knife and Greece watches from the sideline

It's why the First World War started and where the first battles were fought, but the history of the Austro-Hungarian war with Serbia in 1914 tends to go uncovered in accounts of the war among western historians as fighting on the western front invariably takes centre stage. I began to wonder recently, however, why exactly it was that the empire of Austria-Hungary, while considered by historians as a dangerous anachronism, nevertheless a 'great power' was unable to defeat the small and newly formed Balkan Kingdom of Serbia. Indeed many Habsburg officers believed, like the legions of jingoistic politicians and journalists at the time, that the defeat of Serbia would prove no more than einen kleinen Herbstspaziergang `a brief autumn stroll’. So why did they fail miserably? We'll it looks like it's time for a spot of military history, an occasional indulgence of mine, for those of you who prefer something a little more socio-economic, I still recommend reading on -to some military history its the best laxative they have ever known.

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Habsburg throne, and his wife, Sophie, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 began the well-known sequence of events which led to the outbreak of the
First World War. On 25 July, after weeks of diplomatic manoeuvring, the chief of the general staff, Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf, issued the mobilization order for the Austro-Hungarian units required under Case B, the war plan against Serbia and Montenegro. War with Serbia was officially declared on 28 July, when Habsburg batteries at Semlin on the Sava River began hostilities by opening fire on Belgrade.
Yet the Austro-Hungarian army in summer 1914 was far from being the instrument required to fight the epic two-front struggle it was embarking on. Decades of cost-conscious funding, whose root cause was the hostility of Hungary’s ruling classes to greater outlays for the k.u.k. Armee, resulted in a force perennially short of money required for recruits, training and equipment. The ten years before war saw a marked degradation of the dual monarchy’s fighting power compared to its adversaries. The army in 1914 lacked the trained cadres, reservists, weapons and munitions it needed to fulfil the grandiose strategic plans dreamed up by the general staff, Conrad in particular. The army was notably weak in fire-power, a critical deficiency; its artillery park was not only inadequate in number, but also in the main obsolete: on average, the Austro-Hungarian infantry division’s artillery brigade possessed fewer guns than any other significant European power’s. Moreover, the army’s tactical training and doctrine placed scant emphasis on using the artillery it had effectively; infantry± artillery cooperation was almost nonexistent.

Let's not get too vicious about this, however, be it the 'slowly collapsing like a flan in a cupboard' instrument of a 'slowly collapsing like a flan in a cupboard' empire, the army, like the empire, had many strengths, especially the hardiness and basic loyalty of its mostly peasant infantry, regardless of
nationality, but there can be no doubt that when a multi-front war arrived, the Habsburg military was unequal to the task. The summation of a Prussian officer who knew the army well `The Danubian monarchy’s strength and armed forces were adequate for a campaign against Serbia, but inadequate for war against major European powers’ was sadly accurate. To make matters worse, the army’s mobilization and initial deployment were managed so as to create needless difficulties. The fundamental problem, namely that the Habsburg army of 1914 was incapable of fighting a two-front war, was fudged by self-deception at the highest level. Conrad was well aware of these perils, noting privately at the outset, `It will be a hopeless struggle, but nevertheless it must be because such an ancient monarchy and such an ancient army cannot perish ingloriously.’ Disregarding reports of Russian troop movements as early as 20 July, Conrad initially ordered the mobilization of about half the army, as he wanted to settle accounts with Serbia, although he was privately convinced that war with Russia was inevitable. The chief of staff dispatched the equivalent of some 19 infantry divisions against Serbia’s 11 first-line divisions, a barely appropriate force ratio for an invasion; however, this left only about 30 infantry divisions to go on the offensive out of Galicia against 50 Russian infantry divisions. The actual mobilization of reserves went according to well-laid plans, so that the army’s full, if inadequate, order of battle was quickly ready for action: 48 infantry, two militia (Landsturm), and 11 cavalry divisions, supported by 20 provisional Landsturm brigades, and numerous replacement (Marsch) brigades, a total of 1.421.250 soldiers in combat arms and combat support units.  The general staff’s large railway department in most instances had calculated accurately the rolling stock required to move troops to staging areas; however, pre-war planners stipulated numerous pauses in rail movements, to allow for feeding and resting. As a result, trains moved to war at the leisurely pace of 11 m.p.h. (as against 20 m.p.h. in Germany), less than the speed of a bicycle. Needless delays were the inevitable outcome, an important defect considering how much depended on the rapid dispatch of Serbia’s army and the immediate redeployment of the 2nd Army against Russia. In spite of these delays, mobilization proved totally and unexpectedly successful in one area at least. The ethnic factor, the generals’ bugbear, was nowhere to be found. The anticipated mutinies of recalled reservists failed to materialize. The response of soldiers and civilians alike to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the crises which followed was almost unfailingly patriotic; there were even violent anti-Serbian demonstrations in Sarajevo, Zagreb and Ragusa. The problems of the 1908-9 and 1912-13 Balkan preventative mobilizations, which saw disturbances in some Czech units, were not repeated. There were no disturbances or mutinies in 1914, even among Slav troops; the official history, which rarely missed an opportunity to find fault with Czech troops in particular, characterized the mobilization as `completely without friction’ and the Habsburg army marched off to a major war for the first time in 48 years.

Operations against Serbia, the war’s first campaign, were placed in the hands of Feldzeugmeister Oskar Potiorek, Governor-General of Bosnia- Herzegovina. By early August, after some train delays, Potiorek had at his disposal the 5th and 6th Armies, known as the Balkanstreitkrafte, supplemented by the 2nd Army until 18 August. Then the 2nd Army would have to depart for Galicia, leaving behind one of its corps to reinforce Potiorek. Yet the 2nd Army was the strongest army on the Serbian front, three corps with almost seven infantry and one cavalry divisions. The 5th and 6th Armies were considerably smaller. The former included the equivalent of five infantry divisions in two corps; the latter also totalled five divisions, four of them mountain divisions of the XV and XVI Corps garrisoned in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Dalmatia. Potiorek’s plan was adequate on paper. He intended to send the 5th Army across the upper Drina River, advancing southeast towards Valjevo (see Map 1), while the 2nd Army on the Danube would conduct supporting attacks. The 6th Army, initially defending eastern Bosnia- Herzegovina against Serbian and Montenegrin attacks, would invade Serbia five days after the 5th Army crossed the Drina, through the Uzice gap, advancing into the enemy’s rear. Once primary objectives were reached, the 5th and 6th Armies would commence mutually supporting offensives towards Kragujevac in central Serbia, where the main body of Serbia’s field forces would be annihilated. The plan was to be executed quickly, not merely to provide units for the Russian front but also to persuade Romania to stay neutral, and to destroy Serbia before Bosnian Serbs had any chance to stage an anti-Habsburg revolt.
Unfortunately for him, Potiorek’s scheme neglected several difficulties. The terrain chosen was rough, even mountainous, and lacked decent roads; logistical support would be difficult. Besides, the 5th and 6th Armies, separated by over 70 miles at the outset, were too far apart to support each other; the necessarily limited role given to the powerful 2nd Army only worsened the odds. Last, the Balkanstreitkrafte were given the task of confronting an enemy of approximately equal strength and considerable recent combat experience, well placed and motivated to defend its own soil. Thus Potiorek’s war plan contained the seeds of its failure, perhaps unavoidably given the forces at his disposal.

Serbian Mobilisation

By any standards, the Serbian army was an impressive, if comparatively small, force. On total mobilization it included three armies (each actually the size of a large army corps) and more than 270.000 field soldiers, supported by many irregulars. The army’s main element was made up of ten first-line infantry divisions, five of them recruited in the districts won in the recent Balkan Wars. Serbian first-line divisions were somewhat larger than their Habsburg counterparts, including four four-battalion infantry regiments, each with a machine gun detachment (16 pieces per division), a 36-gun artillery regiment, a cavalry regiment with three squadrons and four machine guns, and two engineer companies. There were also five second-line divisions, `shadow’ formations for the first-line units from Old Serbia; these had only three infantry regiments and machine gun detachments (nine battalions and twelve machine guns in all), one or two artillery battalions (12± 24 guns), and two cavalry squadrons and two engineer companies. Despite the firepower differential, ample recent combat experience meant that first- and second-line divisions were nearly equal in quality. The army’s third line included 15 supplementary infantry regiments, four battalions each. There were also a small cavalry division and three separate artillery regiments to support the field armies. Swarms of irregulars supported the Serbian army in the field as well. Known as komitadji, these bands of up to 200 guerrillas were frequently armed with modern rifles, grenades and other explosives. As many of the irregulars possessed ample combat experience, the komitadji presented a formidable obstacle to any invading army, particularly in vulnerable rear areas. Despite the Serbian army’s peasant origins, it was a well-equipped force, as the small kingdom had invested heavily in armaments from all over Europe.  Therefore the Serbian army was at least as well equipped as its Habsburg adversary, and in many cases notably better supplied with modern weaponry, especially artillery. The experience of years of irregular warfare against the Ottomans as well as several major campaigns in 1912-13 in the Balkans gave the Serbian army an advantage over the Habsburg military, un-bloodied for two generations.  The test of war for Serbia had produced a force which was tactically proficient, well organized, equipped and administered, led by battle-tried officers, and fiercely determined to defend its homeland. Its only significant deficiency was a logistical inability to sustain a prolonged war. The Serbian high command was led by the stalwart Vojvoda Radomir Putnik, `the undisputed patriarch of Serbian soldiery’, the army commander since 1912. An able tactician and strategist, Putnik had been the architect of Serbia’s victories in the 1912 and 1913 campaigns. Ironically, Austria-Hungary might easily have been spared great difficulties, for Putnik was visiting Bohemia when the war broke out, taking the cure at Gleichenberg. The old general was briefly interned at Budapest, but was released as a soldierly gesture by Emperor Franz Joseph, to return home to defeat the Habsburg army.

While Vienna had followed Balkan military developments closely, and was impressively informed about Serbian order of battle, equipage and general war planning, it nevertheless underestimated Serbian martial prowess. The army tended to attribute Serbian successes in the Balkan Wars to Turkish numerical inferiority and poor readiness, rather than to Serbian tenacity and skill. This led to corrosive overconfidence among Habsburg officers from Potiorek down.

The Serbian war plan was not merely defensive: because the invader’s initial advances were to be thrown back by counterattacks. By the time Potiorek was ready to begin his offensive, the Serbian 2nd Army’s four infantry divisions and the 3rd Army’s two infantry divisions were positioned first to absorb and then push back Habsburg spearheads across the Sava and upper Drina.
The Habsburg army chosen for the most vital task in Potiorek’s operation was General der Infanterie Liborius von Frank’s 5th. This army’s two corps were the heavily Czech VIII and the strongly Croatian XIII, Army command held a mountain brigade and a Croatian militia brigade in reserve. The Croatian corps, with two infantry divisions and a separate infantry brigade, was the stronger of the two. The choice of General der Kavallerie Arthur Giesl von Gieslingen’s VIII Corps for such an important role was perhaps an odd one, given the army’s suspicions about its Czech troops.  Czech units from Bohemia had been the source of headaches for the army during the 1908-9 and 1912-13 mobilizations. Troops from three infantry regiments, inspired by pan-Slav propaganda, refused to entrain during the Bosnian annexation reservist recall; in some cases had been badly alienated by the Austro-Hungarian compromise (Ausgleich) of 1867, which only worsened the long-standing
antagonisms between Czechs and Magyars. To Czech nationalists and Slavophiles, the Ausgleich condemned Hungary’s Slavs, and especially Slovaks, to Budapest’s misrule and Magyarization. The unalterable nature of the compromise and its inequities only angered the Czechs further. Nationalist campaigns grew increasingly shrill by the early 1900s, notably in Bohemia, where Czechs accounted for nearly two-thirds of the population. Still, Czechs had served the Habsburgs loyally for centuries; their prowess in the technical arms and services, especially the artillery, was widely acknowledged. Yet Czech nationalism presented a potentially serious problem by 1914. The use of German as the language of command and service annoyed many nationalist Czechs, who resented the superficially German character of the monarchy. That said, as a leading scholar noted of the Czech predicament, `On the eve of World War I the Czechs, though deeply frustrated in the Habsburg Empire, could not conceive of living outside of it’,and this was no less true of Czechs in uniform, the vast majority were prepared to do their duty when war came, as shown in the enthusiastic and patriotic response of almost all Czech fighting men in the summer of 1914.

Settled on the Sava, the division prepared for the coming offensive, making last-minute adjustments to organization, equipment and supplies. All units reached war strength by 11 August; the day before the war commenced in earnest. On 12 August the invasion of Serbia began, with the 5th Army’s VIII and XIII Corps crossing the Drina, heading towards Valjevo and the Jadar valley, supported by the fording of the Sava by the 2nd Army’s IV Corps. Potiorek, determined to win his first battle, not least to erase the embarrassment of having been commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina when the heir to the throne was murdered, noted confidently in his private diary, `Today my war has begun’. IV Corps quickly captured the border town of SÏabac, valued as a command and logistical centre. Yet the Drina crossing by XIII Corps proved easier than the more northerly movement of VIII Corps, which encountered stiff local resistance from Serbian border guards and irregulars. The 9th Division ran into two reinforced Serbian battalions supported by artillery, delaying the advance by a day. The 21st Division’s progress inland on 13 August was slowed by stiff resistance from Serbian irregulars. Although VIII Corps soon had reliable pontoon brigades over the Drina, the hilly terrain, combined with the lack of good roads or railheads near the front, led to delays and mounting supply problems, not least because service columns moved slowly across the Drina.  Worse, the Serbian high command at Kragujevac, having by now accurately surmised Potiorek’s intentions, shifted its field forces. The Serbian 1st Army now faced IV Corps, the 2nd confronted VIII Corps and the 3rd stood before the advancing XV Corps. On 14 August, the 21st Division continued its advance in a south-easterly direction. Three of its regiments, following the shortest route to Valjevo, entered the Cer mountain, a plateau twelve miles long and four wide, dominated by numerous hills and ridges between 1000 and 3000 ft. high. The strenuous uphill march proved trying for the heavily burdened infantrymen, most of them reservists. Supply problems mounted as the troops outpaced their logistical columns; the division was not equipped for mountain warfare, lacking mountain guns and pack animals. The provision of fresh food and water was poor, the latter being especially serious due to a daytime temperature frequently in excess of 95°F. Supplies were further delayed by komitadji attacks on vulnerable rear columns; infantry and cavalry patrols were required to protect logistical and artillery units.

By 15 August, Stepanovic , the former Serbian war minister and successful commander of the 2nd Army in the Balkan Wars, was ready to send his veteran troops of the Combined and Sumadija I Divisions, supported by the Cavalry Division, to confront Habsburg units advancing deeper into the Cerska planina. Sentries initially failed to react, as the Serbian infantry announced that they were Croatian Honved troops, and most soldiers were asleep when the enemy opened fire at very close range. The murderous crossfire cut down many infantrymen before they could resist. The attack produced chaos among the novice Bohemians, as officers tried desperately to rouse their men to form defensive positions, before being overwhelmed by Serbian infantry, moving forward through the standing corn under cover of darkness and rain.
The 28th Regiment’s forward positions were rapidly shattered, despite desperate attempts to coordinate a coherent defence.  Soon Przyborski was in action as well. Serbian assaults increased and Habsburg units counterattacked, causing confusion among commanders, and the divisional headquarters was in the middle of the fighting. Przyborski helped to rally his startled soldiers, forming them into viable units. As Serbian attacks came closer, the divisional commander, wielding a rifle, led the defence of the headquarters area. Przyborski at one point only had 20 men around him, many of them staff officers, but the position held, although the general was wounded. The confused melee, which raged for hours, was not so much an organized battle as a series of fire-fights at point-blank ranges, producing heavy losses for both sides By dawn both sides were exhausted, by mid-morning, positions had stabilized as exhaustion brought the battle to a close. Word had by now travelled up the Habsburg chain of command about the extent of the 21st Division’s losses. Serbian casualties included 47 officers and nearly 3000 men; their 6th Regiment lost all four battalion commanders and 13 of 16 company commanders. However, the 21st Division’s own losses had been severe, in some of its units crippling; it was certainly incapable of further advances. On Giesl’s orders, the 6th and 28th Regiments, which had borne the brunt of the battle, were the first to depart the field on 16 August. Their retreat was observed by Serbian King Peter, who watched the day’s events from a nearby hilltop. Throughout the day, komitadji inflicted casualties on rear units, including the artillery and the 7th Regiment, despite cavalry patrolling. The withdrawing 21st Division was pursued by Serbian cavalry and irregulars, resulting in several small yet bloody engagements on 17 August On 18 August Franz Joseph’s 84th birthday, and also the day the 2nd Army began to depart for Galicia ± divisional elements resisted more probes by Serbian infantry, cavalry and irregulars, and attempted to support the nearby 9th Division, which was under severe enemy pressure. Although the troops suffered from a lack of sleep and limited water and rations, the retreat was essentially orderly. The next day, the division left the Cer mountain, preparing to cross the Drina again. On 20 August, a relatively quiet day, Przyborski’s soldiers re-entered Bosnia, and by nightfall no units of the 21st Division remained on Serbian soil. The Serbian 2nd Army had delivered the Entente its first victory of the war.

After only a week in Serbia and one major battle lasting a few hours, the Austro-Hungarian invasion force had lost nearly a third of its riflemen. The exact number of dead was difficult to determine due to the confusion attending the retreat; many dead soldiers were thus listed as missing. In the worst case, the 28th Regiment lost 1700 men, over half its strength, but many of the two-thirds of the casualties listed as missing were dead on the Cerska planina. Although losses were heaviest among the infantry, service units had taken casualties too, and the artillery was substantially weakened: field batteries had lost half their pieces.

The division soon filled its depleted ranks with replacements from Bohemia and readied for further action. Although losses of men and materiel could be replaced, trained leadership cadres could not be. Worse, the damage to the division’s morale and cohesion caused by the Cer catastrophe would take considerable time to repair. The attitude of corps and higher commanders towards the division was hardly conducive to such restoration of battle-worthiness, and the situation soon worsened. The retreat of the 21st Division from the Cer mountain caused the immediate failure of the 5th Army’s offensive and precipitated a general Habsburg retreat. The withdrawal of VIII Corps from its untenable positions was soon followed by the move of XIII Corps back to Bosnia, thus ending the 5th Army’s 10-day offensive.  Therefore Potiorek reluctantly ordered a complete withdrawal by the Balkanstreitkrafte, and by sunset on August 24 no Habsburg units remained on Serbian soil.
The `brief autumn stroll’ had ended in disaster. The psychological impact of failure was shattering. While the losses of men and equipment could be made good, the ancient Habsburg army had failed ignominiously in the war’s first offensive. It had been humiliated, driven from the field by the forces of a small Balkan kingdom. At the cost of some 28 000 casualties, including 4500 prisoners in Serbian hands, the army had gained little but an appreciation for Serbian martial prowess. The Serbs had also suffered notable losses of 16 000 dead and wounded, an attrition of men and equipment it could not afford. However, Putnik’s victorious armies remained cohesive and ready to fight on. In Vienna and throughout the Habsburg army the search for a scapegoat commenced at once. Potiorek should have borne the commander’s traditional responsibility for failure, not least because his strategy had been poorly conceived and at best indifferently executed. Conrad complained often about Potiorek’s leadership, placing responsibility for defeat on his shoulders and those of his corps commanders. Nevertheless, Potiorek remained at his post, thanks to his excellent connections in the emperor’s military chancery.

As the Cer disaster was the immediate cause of the offensive’s failure, inevitably the 21st Division received a disproportionate share of the blame. Rather than find fault with army training and preparedness, much less Potiorek’s questionable planning, many Habsburg officers placed culpability on the 21st Division and its supposedly poor, even dishonourable, showing in combat. Accusations that the division `simply melted away’ and had `abandoned field guns and materiel’ began to spread, from Conrad down the chain of command. Worse, the division’s alleged failings were attributed not to military shortcomings but to ethnic disloyalty. Much of the officer corps, mistrusting Czech soldiers before the war, reverted to its deeply ingrained prejudices: to do so caused much less embarrassment and soul-searching than finding fault with the army and its leaders.

Potiorek quickly blamed the 21st Division for the failure of his offensive. He felt that the Bohemians had not done their duty, and the Czech infantry units doubtful reliability gave Potiorek the excuse immediately to impose emergency martial law on the division, now safely in Bosnia, to prevent further disintegration. The portrayal of the Cer battle which emerged and became widely accepted throughout the Habsburg army was one of battle® eld breakdown caused by poor leadership and cowardly, even treacherous, Czech behaviour. Blaming the failure of the 21st Division on Czech misconduct was convenient, but it contradicted what actually occurred. Many Czech units performed successfully in Serbia. Potiorek, among others, managed to ignore such awkward facts.


In truth, the fate of the 21st Division on the Cerska planina had little to do with Czech disloyalty. An untried, relatively poorly trained division, tired from long marches and inadequately supplied and nourished, was surprised at night by an equal number of battle-hardened, well-led enemy soldiers: the result could well be anticipated. Przyborski and his staff had neglected to provide proper reconnaissance of the mountain, in particular the Skakalite area, a grave defect with a decisive impact on the battle’s outcome; in this sense, the investigation’s harsh criticism of Przyborski was warranted. The division should not have been taken by surprise. Yet Przyborski and his officers somewhat redeemed themselves by fighting very bravely once battle was joined.

Thus the lesson learned by the Austro-Hungarian army from the first offensive against Serbia was not that its training and tactics were inadequate, especially when confronting an experienced foe, but rather that its soldiers -particularly Czechs needed closer supervision, vigorously enforced. In the aftermath of the Cer battle, army leaders badly alienated their Czech soldiers, and particularly the men of the 21st Landwehr Division. The survivors of the terrible night of 16 August, accused of cowardice and dereliction of duty, and compared unfavourably to their German comrades-in-arms, grew demoralized. Although Potiorek’s imposition of emergency martial law on the division was rescinded on Franz Joseph’s orders, there was little enthusiasm for the next phase of the war against Serbia, which was soon to come.

Putnik gave Potiorek’s forces little chance to rest. Although weakened by the Austro-Hungarian offensive, and lacking munitions and supplies for a protracted struggle, Serbian forces quickly carried the war to Habsburg soil. Units of the 2nd Army crossed the Sava into southeast Srijem, opposite Belgrade, on 6 September, taking the city of Semlin four days later. Serbian units only remained in Slavonia until 14 September, suffering a severe local defeat at Mitrovica, where one of their divisions was shattered by Habsburg forces; ominously, however, the invaders were greeted warmly by many Serbs in the Semlin area. More threatening was the Serbian-Montenegrin invasion of Bosnia. Some forty battalions, backed by numerous irregulars, crossed into eastern Bosnia, where fighting raged throughout September. Serbian units came within a dozen miles of Sarajevo before being beaten
back across the Drina.

The 21st Division had done its duty to the end, despite its egregiously insensitive and demeaning treatment at the hands of Potiorek and the high command. That said, the division’s appetite for battle had died with many of its soldiers on the Cer mountain, and it never regained the fervour and enthusiasm of the first days of the war. Indiscipline, while never significant, persisted throughout the Serbian campaign, as evidenced by self-inflicted wounds and desertion, the latter particularly in the last weeks of the campaign.  While Potiorek’s imposition of martial law may have prevented some 21st soldiers from deserting, it doubtless alienated many more. The much-maligned division fought on all the same; its Czech soldiers, most of whom stayed admirably loyal, if often unenthusiastic, in the fight against Serbia, were beaten by both the enemy and their own military bureaucracy.

The army’s undisguised lack of faith in its Czech troops continued unabated. A report by VIII Corps at the end of December, commenting on the `dubious manner of discipline’ in the last days of the Serbian campaign, advocated ever-stronger discipline, rather than the creation of inner motivation, as the solution to morale problems.  While the army doubtless needed stronger discipline in some cases, the option of treating Czech troops more equitably to cure low cohesion and motivation was apparently not considered. Instead, the army persisted in singling out Czech units for special treatment. The practice of relocating Czech Ersatz units to `safe’ areas actually increased, with predictable effects on morale and enthusiasm. The fate of the 21st Division on Cer mountain, and its alleged ethnic roots, haunted the division, and in a sense all Czechs in uniform. The division’s accomplishments in Serbia, as well as the excellent performance of other Czech units tended to be forgotten, or at least greatly undervalued, by the high command. Czech enthusiasm for war against fellow Slavs, never high, had been permanently blunted. Army insensitivity, combined with understandable pessimism stemming from defeats and horrible casualties, led to disaffection among Czech troops, especially in rear areas and depots. By the end of 1914 the summer’s bellicose and patriotic slogans had disappeared from the lips of Czech recruits: trains of Czech replacements headed for the Eastern front were seen leaving Prague painted with the slogans `cannon fodder’ and `shipment of Czech meat to Galicia’.

The Balkan Army of Austria Hungary was from now on never anything but a shell of its former self. Leadership cadres had been destroyed, with brigades commanded by colonels, regiments by lieutenant-colonels and majors, and battalions by captains. Of the ten officers leading infantry battalions on 8 December, seven were gone, killed or wounded, in less than a week. The critical officer shortage could not be remedied. Even fresh infantry was hard to come by. By the end of 1914, after two infusions of replacements from Bohemia, the 21st contained only 5575 riflemen; three of its four infantry regiments counted barely more than 1000 men each. The division had to be reduced temporarily to a single brigade of five battalions.


In time the 21st Division would regain its strength, but never again would it demonstrate the cohesion and motivation it enjoyed in the summer of 1914. It could replace men and equipment, but not fighting spirit. Like most in the Balkans, they were soon dispatched to the Eastern Front, to the frozen hell of the Carpathians, to combats and conditions worse than anything experienced on the Sava, Drina or Kolubara. The Serbian front, where so many Habsburg soldiers gave their lives in Potiorek’s grand but futile offensives, quietened down, falling into temporary obscurity. Indeed, for the 21st Division, a long war had really only just begun. The heavy losses of opening battles represented only a small fraction of its wartime casualties: the 6th Landwehr Regiment’s total of 556 killed in action in Serbia surpassed the losses of other 21st Division units; however, 4844 more soldiers of the 6th Regiment would lose their lives in battle before the division’s long, total war would come to an end, four years later.

The failure of the dual monarchy to subdue Serbia in a four-month campaign constituted a severe psychological as well as strategic setback.  It can now be attributed to a myriad of the tactical shortcomings of the Habsburg army in 1914 and the basic weaknesses of the Austro-Hungarian military, but also the poisonous nature of the `national question’ in Vienna’s forces, and the often counterproductive methods the army used to enforce discipline among allegedly unreliable ethnic groups. It was unfortunate for Vienna that the spearhead of the initial Habsburg invasion of Serbia in mid-August would be the heavily Czech VIII Army Corps , the most politically sensitive command in the army. Long suspected by the high command of harbouring Slavophile and even treasonous tendencies, the Czech troops of its inadequately trained 21st Division nevertheless were fated to bear the brunt of the doomed Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia. When the Habsburg effort proved abortive, the army blamed its allegedly disloyal Czechs for the misfortune, with momentous consequences for the Habsburg military and war effort. Czech disaffection was the result of the army’s ill-fated nationalities’ policies, not the cause, and, significantly, was nowhere in evidence upon mobilization in late July, the last fleeting moment when the Habsburg army would appear as a self-confident and united force.

Monument to fallen heroes of the Battle of Cer

Further Reading:

Book Review: Revolution and the People in Russia and China: A Comparative History

By S. A. Smith

In an attempt to keep the more useful side of my brain active in the last month since handing in my MA dissertation, I have been attempting to stimulate it gently by reading this book. Here between the pages of this solidly-assembled paperback, Smith brings together his unique expertise in both Russian and Chinese labour history to compare the development of working-class social identities in St Petersburg and Shanghai and how this affected the revolutions in each country. St Petersburg and Shanghai seem naturally comparable, because the two industrial capitals experienced a rush of new labouring migrants from the countryside who had just begun to see themselves as workers when the revolution took hold of their respective countries. This book is much more than a study of workers in two cities, though. Smith goes beyond social histories of labour and uses his case studies to argue that viewing the formation of the working class from processes beyond capitalist production provides a better understanding of workers’ consciousness and politics.

Price: £18:99
Publication Date: 2008
ISBN: 978-0521713962

Buy this Book

In five, really rather lucid chapters, Smith analyses the four axes of new workers’ social identity – native place, individuality, gender, and identification with the nation-state – and their fate under the revolutionary Communist state. The author accounts for the importance of new migrants’ ties to native place as they transitioned from peasants to workers. While Shanghai’s migrants held a stronger tie to native place than their counterparts in St Petersburg, native place still shaped where new migrants worked, lived and moved as a communal body in both places. Part of the shift from villager to worker was the transformation in the sense of the self as migrants came into contact with education, modernist morals, and consumerism, a shift stronger in St Petersburg than Shanghai. Smith argues that this heightened awareness of devaluation by others engendered class consciousness, thereby modifying the classic argument that consciousness was solely a collective response to capitalist exploitation. The transition to urban life altered gender identities as well, although not as much as one might imagine. For women in both cities, urban living offered more economic and personal liberation than the village (although, again, women in China came from a more oppressive village culture and gained less freedom than their Russian counterparts). The shift was part of a larger crisis in gender identity fostered by modernity and the rejection of rural patriarchal family structures, which led both to calls for women’s liberation and lamentations on the immorality of ‘modern’ women. The result helped to destabilize culture, but not to liberate women. The crisis in gender relations raises several possibilities for new interpretations of the revolutions. I wonder how wartime mobilization (World War I in Russia and the long war and civil war in China) affected these gender roles in the factories and homes. Finally, in what is the book’s most complex and enriching chapter, Smith examines workers’ identification with the nation by questioning the axiom that Russia’s Communist revolution led to a victory of class over nation and China’s nation over class. Contrasting the slow development of national identity in Russia with the potent anti-imperialist national struggle among China’s workers, Smith still shows that class and national identities reinforced each other in both countries.

Smith concludes by exploring how workers’ identities affected the revolutions and were later shaped by Communist regimes, rather than the well-worn debate of whether or not workers supported the revolutions. He shows how the two Communist regimes reshaped the four axes of workers’ social identity by attacking ‘backwardness’ and reinforcing national identity, but not going as far on gender equality, for example. The Communist regimes, then, were a form of modernist state which continued to shape class identity. In this way, Smith supports a global view of modernity and gives evidence for what several recent scholars have suggested – that there are several forms of modernity beyond the Western capitalist model.

Smith’s work is the most insightful comparative history of revolution since Florencia Mallon’s groundbreaking Peasant and Nation (Berkeley, 1995). Where Mallon compared the relationships between peasants and the nation in Mexico and Peru to give us a new understanding of national identity formation and peasant agency in revolution, Smith builds on his comparison of Russia and China to give us a new view of working-class formation and modernity. This stimulating and provocative, with its attractive spine and smooth matte finish on the cover (which makes it a joy to carry under your arm) this book should have a place on every historian’s bookshelf.

The After Empire Series: Issue 7, Conclusions.

The Course of Empire

Nowadays it is polite to call a state an empire only when it is safely dead and beyond resurrection. To the twenty-first-century mind empire seems to sin against both democracy and modernity: it is both wicked and redundant. As applied to the most recent experience of empire, Soviet Union, this verdict makes much sense. The Soviet Union was an empire. It was based on authoritarian, anti-democratic principles and it repressed and exploited its subjects, non-Russian and Russian alike. Under Lenin and, even more, Stalin the level of repression was massive. Moreover, whatever the strengths of this modernised empire when confronted by Hitler, by the 1980s it was redundant. Its repression of individual creativity and its attempts to seal the Soviet peoples off from the outside world were important sources of weakness. When radical reform came under Gorbachev the heritage of empire and the bitterness it had aroused were prime reasons why the Soviet Union did not evolve towards a multi-ethnic federation based on consent and mutual compromise among its peoples.

Empire seems to have too many sins to its name, though some of them in my view are in part wrongly addressed. If, for example, one were to choose the British Empire and concentrate on its worst aspects, the slave trade and the Opium War with China would come near the top of the list. In a sense these were aspects of empire: perhaps more significantly, however, they were also precursors of globalization. Europeans looted Africa for slaves and forced opium on the Chinese in order to create a global trading network from which they derived huge profits. They took no responsibility for ruling either Africa or China at that time. In comparison to the slave trade or the enforced commerce in opium, British rule in India or West Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century was both more unequivocally imperial and often possessed a genuine sense of responsibility and ethics.
The democratic nation, imbued with almost religious sanctity in 1789 and by later Romantic nationalists, does not even any longer necessarily seem more modern than empire. In the era of multi-culturalism, globalisation and the European Union, aspects of the Holy Roman Empire or of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1900 actually appear more appropriate than the Jacobean nation or the frenzied ethnic nationalism that devastated Europe in the first half of the twentieth century and could easily repeat its triumph in the huge, multi-ethnic politics of twenty-first-century Asia. The victory of nationalism over empire in the Habsburg and Ottoman lands had devastating consequences. So far in the former Soviet Union we have, by historical standards, been very lucky. But in the great wild and wondering flood of modern history, these are still early days.

In the past empires drew their power from a number of sources. Michael Mann divides these into military, political, economic and ideological elements of power. Throughout the comparisons and musings of the After Empire Series we have seen plentiful evidence of all four. Most empires base their strength on a mix of these factors, though the balance between them differs from empire to empire and indeed over time within a single empire. The Mongol Empire was the embodiment of military power. In the Chinese tradition of empire it is probably the strength of Confucianism and of Chinese high culture that is most remarkable. The decline of the Soviet Union probably owed more to the failure of its ideology -in which for example its economic system was rooted- than to any other factor. The economic and financial power of the British Empire stands out in comparison to the great military and dynastic land empires of history. In the maintenance of the Habsburg Empire it is perhaps politics and diplomacy that were most significant, though one would need to distinguish between the empire of the seventeenth century, armed with the ideological force of the Counter-Reformation, and the nineteenth-century empire on the defensive against rival great powers and domestic nationalism. The study of the rise and fall of empires convinces me, however, that to Michael Mann's four sources of power we must add demography and geography. The Ottoman Empire had too few Muslims and, even more, too few Turks to extend and consolidate its control on the Balkans. The immense population sustained by the rice culture of southern China was an enormously important factor in the re-conquest of northern China (and Manchuria) from nomadic invaders, and the consolidation of Chinese civilisation throughout most of East Asia. The colonisation of new worlds by Britain's surplus population was obviously a crucial element in the domination of the globe by the English language, culture and political values at the end of the second millennium. As sources of power demography and geography are often linked: China's population depend fundamentally on the possibility of rice farming. But geography is also a vastly important independent factor in the rise and fall of empires. This was evident in the would-be universal empire's survival in East Asia and disappearance in Western Europe. It was evident in the expansion of Europe's peripheral powers from the sixteenth century. It was vital too, in the Americans' ability to create a state of continental size by the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and then to use this continental base as a springboard for global power. Confined at the centre of Europe, Germany's bid for world power and empire faced far greater obstacles. If the word 'geography' can be extended to include ecology, then a combination of geographical and demographic factors at present seems the likeliest development to shatter today's American-led global order and to bring a return to an era of devastating conflict.

The relative importance of the main sources of power had changed over time. In comparison to the millennium before 1500, for example, military power appears somewhat less important in AD 2000 and economic power rather more so. Traditionally, the nomadic warrior of the steppe was the terror and the conqueror of great sedentary societies. In the twentieth century, however, military power appears to a considerable extent to depend on economic strength. The high-technology weapons that devastated Iraq with minimal loss to Western forces seemed to confirm the lesson. For the moment it seems unlikely that power will shift fundamentally back towards armed force, even if we come to face urban nomads armed with pocket weapons of mass destruction in the anonymous mega-cities of the twenty-first century.

Where other sources of power are concerned the situation is less clear-cut. Since it is less easy to coerce people to obey, persuading them by the power of ideology and its propagandists may be more important than in the past. As Fukuyama notes, the hegemony of democracy as a political idea and (less securely) of liberal and free-trading principles in economics are very important factors in American power. They are scarcely more important, however, than the hold of Confucianism or of the imperial system of examinations on elites under most Chinese imperial dynasties. Politics, in other words mobilising and targeting resources in the cause of power, is more difficult in contemporary democracies than often used to be the case, but certainly not less important. Modern communications have made geography less crucial in some respects but it does still appear to be true that global power requires a state to be continental in scale.
Demography also remains significant. If for example, the Russian population continues to shrink, that will have major implications for Russia's hold on its Far Eastern possessions and perhaps for its policy towards the Russian diaspora.

In general, I would not argue for a moment that comparative history can ever replace the work of specialists. It can, however, shed light from unexpected angles  and ask strange questions. No one sensible person is likely to regard this series of comparative investigations as the last word on the British or Ottoman empires, but if it encouraged you to read around even the smallest aspect of the topic further -then my work here is done. I have steered well clear of providing too rigorous and 'scientific' a definition of empire, such a definition -to reduce the whole history of empire to a series of formulas, would prove unusable. Here at the 'Candlestick Park' of the After-Empire-Series I shall simply confine myself to saying, the experience of writing this series was rather lovely, I hope those of you who have read it found something to tickle your fancy and excite the little grey cells. Who knows, if I can find a fresh-enough angle to approach it again, maybe it will be back some day.

If like me your missing the Sock Merchants After-Empire-Series already, why not give After Tamerlane a try, it's an astonishingly comprehensive, arrestingly fresh and vivid history of the forces that underlie the world we live in today. It concentrates on all the empires discussed in the series here at HASM and a few more: Ottoman, Mughal, Safavid, China, Japan, France, Britain, USA and Russia - with a swift mention of other European powers such as the Dutch, Germans and the Belgians. 

Book Review: Germany Since 1945

By Pol O'Dochartaigh

Germany since 1945 is a concise and readable overview of German post-war history. Beginning with defeat and division in the immediate post-war period, East and West Germany are presented side-by-side. This decision to examine in parallel developments in the capitalist and state-socialist Germany works remarkably well: not only does it allow O’Dochartaigh to incorporate developments in Deutschlandpolitik into a broader narrative of political, economic and social change, it also throws similarities and contrasts between the two states into sharper relief.

Price: £ 19.99
ISBN: 0333964721
Publication Date: 2003
Buy this Book

The period 1949–61 is described as ‘economic success while cementing division’; the 1960s see the GDR and FRG take ‘separate paths’; the early-to-mid 1970s promise ‘new beginnings’ in the shape of Ostpolitik and Honecker’s reforms; and for the period from 1977–89, the emergence of ‘two nations’ is mooted. For O’Dochartaigh, post-war German history is a story of interdependence. ‘The GDR’, he writes, ‘tried to be a whole country and failed’. West Germany, for all its laudable attempts to overcome the legacy of Nazism’s ‘murderous narcissism’, could also only ever be ‘half a country’.
O’Dochartaigh provides a comprehensive introduction to the subject, and the user-friendly layout, clear style and useful maps are particularly welcome. Any student looking for a guide to the political machinations of the 1980s, or a concise summary of attitudes towards reunification will greet this book with pleasure. The concluding chapter, on united Germany since 1990, is a particular strength, bringing the reader past the 2002 elections as far as the build-up to war in Iraq in 2003. The appendices are an invaluable resource, covering federal election results from 1949–2002, holders of high political office in East and West, neo-Nazi electoral successes, recent state election results, and a comparison of eastern and western voting behaviour since 1990.

Inevitably, in such a concise book not all areas can be given equal weighting. In this case, it is social and cultural history that comes up a little short, unsurprisingly given the amount of political ground covered. The uneasy social stabilization and (relative) prosperity of the GDR in the 1960s get little mention. In the case of West Germany, both the socio-economic roots of 1968, and its long-term social effects are neglected in favour of more purely political factors. Of course, all surveys have their imbalances: here, football gets four mentions in the index, feminism none. However, a great strength of this book is its willingness to go beyond the familiar tropes of economic prosperity and the legacy of Nazism: O’Dochartaigh is excellent on environmental politics, and a section on foreigners in post-1989 Germany covers the issues of asylum, ethnic Germans and citizenship law.

Given that this book is aimed at undergraduates, it is a real pity that historiography does not receive more attention. Suggestions for further reading are limited to a fairly brief bibliography at the end of the book and references in the text are often to other English language syntheses. To give just one example: in view of this book’s comparative approach, it seems a shame not to draw the reader’s attention to Uta Poiger’s and Elisabeth Heinemann’s groundbreaking cross-border studies on popular music and single mothers in East and West. Surveys such as this one are a jumping-off point for the student, not an end in themselves, and would be greatly improved by the inclusion of suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter. However, responsibility for this should perhaps be laid at the feet of the editors of the series, ‘Studies in Contemporary History’, to which this book belongs.
A stronger historiographical element might also have enabled a broader comparative perspective. The confines of the book’s format mean that events in Germany tend to be treated in isolation. A discussion of the extent to which trends such as consumerism, environmentalism, or hostility towards asylum seekers should be seen as specifically German, or as reflective of European developments, could have profitably been included. Nevertheless, this book is a fine introduction to post-war Germany and will surely find many appreciative readers, both as an introductory text and as a
reference tool.

Historic Ghost Towns Frozen in Time

A ghost town is basically a completely abandoned town or city often left preserved exactly in the moment in time it was abandoned. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it has failed, or due to natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, war, or nuclear disasters.
Some ghost towns have now become very popular tourist attractions and this is especially true of those that preserve period-specific architecture and artefacts.

Oradour-sur-Glane: Near Limoges, France

You can easily believe in ghosts in Oradour-sur-Glane. This crumbling 'martyr' village was left as a haunting memorial of the June 1944 Nazi massacre of 642 men, women and children. In a seemingly unprovoked attack, men were taken to barns and burned alive; the SS took women and children to the church, then gassed and shot them, before setting the church on fire. The charred shell of the building remains, along with burnt-out old Citroens and the ruins of the barns; in the cemetery, rows of graves poignantly read 'Died 10 June 1944'. A new village was built after the war on a nearby site and the original has been maintained as a memorial.
Oradour-sur-Glane was not the only collective punishment reprisal action committed by the Waffen SS: other well-documented examples include the French towns of Tulle, Ascq, Maillé, Robert-Espagne, and Clermont-en-Argonne.

Bodie, California

Tumbleweed rolls among the rotting carts and weather-beaten wooden cabins in Bodie, America's best preserved gold rush town. High in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, Bodie was home to 10,000 people and 65 saloons during its late 1870s boom. By 1920, Bodie's population was recorded by the US Federal Census at a total of 120 people. Despite the decline, Bodie had permanent residents through most of the 20th century, even after a fire ravaged much of the downtown business district in 1932. A post office operated at Bodie from 1877 to 1942.
Avoiding a gun-slinging, yeehaw, wild west Disney fication, Bodie has been maintained in a state of 'arrested decay': gritty Chinatown and the rough bars might be long-gone but a small part of the once notorious town has survived harsh winters to give a glimpse of bygone days. Interiors are as they were when the old-timers finally left: in Boone General Stores, original Edison light bulbs, castor oil, coffee and household goods line the shelves, and time stands still among the peeling wallpaper and dusty mirrors of the once-grand saloons.

Kolmanskop, Namibia

Sand pushed by screeching wind from the dunes of the Namib Desert has gone some way towards reclaiming the southern diamond mining town of Kolmanskop. Hundreds of German families and local workers lived here during the early 1900s diamond boom, when Kolmanskop had its own lemonade plant, skittle alley, theatre and hospital, which boasted the first x-ray machine in the southern hemisphere. After World War One, diamond sales dropped and by the 1950s the town was abandoned; now the grand mansions are being devoured by the desert. Visitors need a permit from Lüderitz Safari & Tours to enter the restricted mining area.
Humberstone, Chile
Slowly rusting in the arid Atacama Desert of northern Chile are the skeletons of the Unesco-protected Humberstone and Santa Laura saltpeter works. Saltpeter (nitrate) was used in explosives before World War One, and in the early 1900s Humberstone was home to a booming workforce of Chilean, Peruvian and Bolivian men. Workers were paid in coupons that could only be used on site and - although the works have been abandoned for more than 50 years - original beer and coke bottles are still stacked in the bodega, splintered desks line old classrooms and the town swimming pool, constructed from a ship's hull, gently flakes in the desert sun.

Pripyat, Ukraine

Anyone wondering what a city of 50,000 residents would look like after a nuclear disaster should head inside Chernobyl's 'dead zone' to Pripyat, in the Ukraine, only a few kilometres from the remains of Chernobyl power plant's reactor number four. Residents were evacuated the day after the disaster on 26 April 1986, being told they would be gone only a few days. Greenery now shrouds the city, which was built in the 1970s to house workers and their families, but among the trees are government buildings stuffed with tattered propaganda leaflets, dusty kindergartens littered with toys and gas-masks, stained glass windows glinting in the cafe quarter and a Ferris wheel with rusting yellow buckets suspended mid-flight in the fairground that was due to open on 1 May 1986.
A natural concern is whether it is safe to visit Pripyat and the surroundings. The Zone of Alienation is considered relatively safe to visit, and several Ukrainian companies offer guided tours around the area. The radiation levels have dropped considerably, compared to the fatal levels of April 1986, due to the decay of the short-lived isotopes released during the accident. In most places within the city, the level of radiation does not exceed an equivalent dose of 1 µSv (one microsievert) per hour.
The city and the Zone of Alienation are now bordered with guards and police, but obtaining the necessary documents to enter the zone is not considered particularly difficult. In 2005, a New York-based entrepreneur David C. Haines founded a company to provide guided tours of the city. A guide accompanies visitors to ensure nothing is vandalised or taken from the zone. The doors of most of the buildings are held open to reduce the risk to visitors, and almost all of them can be visited when accompanied by a guide. The city of Chernobyl, a few kilometers south from Pripyat, has some accommodation including a hotel, many apartment buildings, and a local lodge, which are maintained as a permanent residence for watch-standing crew and tourists.

Craco, Italy

Dead cities ('citta morta') pepper Italy's countryside, robbed of their inhabitants in most cases by natural disasters. Medieval Craco, perched 400 metres above the Cavone Valley in southern Italy, was a Norman stronghold that had been settled for centuries, but a series of earthquakes and landslides forced residents out of the pretty hilltop town in the 1960s. The boxy villas, crumbling palazzos and castle ruins have made it a favourite location for shooting movies: it featured in the Quantum of Solace Bond film and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, in particular Craco is the town that can be seen in the scene of the hanging of Judas.