Offensive Spending: Tactics and Procurement in the Habsburg Military, 1866-1918
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OFFENSIVE SPENDING: TACTICS AND PROCUREMENT IN THE HABSBURG MILITARY, 1866-1918 by JOHN ANTHONY DREDGER B.A., St. Mary’s College, 1993 M.A., University of Kansas, 1996 AN ABSTRACT OF A DISSERTATION submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of History College of Arts and Sciences KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY Manhattan, Kansas 2013 Abstract This manuscript reveals the primary causes of Habsburg defeat both in 1866 and in 1914- 1918. The choice of offensive strategy and tactics against an enemy possessing superior weaponry in the Austro-Prussian War and opponents with superior numbers and weapons in the First World War resulted in catastrophe. The inferiority of the Habsburg forces in both wars stemmed from imprudent spending decisions during peacetime rather than conservatism or parliamentary stinginess. The desire to restore the sunken prestige of Austria-Hungary and prove Habsburg great power status drove the military to waste money on an expensive fleet and choose offensive tactics to win great victories. This study shows the civil-military interaction in regard to funding and procurement decisions as well as the deep intellectual debates within the army, which refute the idea that the Habsburg military remained opposed to technology or progress. OFFENSIVE SPENDING: TACTICS AND PROCUREMENT IN THE HABSBURG MILITARY, 1866-1918 by JOHN ANTHONY DREDGER B.A., St. Mary’s College, 1993 M.A., University of Kansas, 1996 A DISSERTATION submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of History College of Arts and Sciences KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY Manhattan, Kansas 2013 Approved by: Major Professor David Stone Abstract This manuscript reveals the primary causes of Habsburg defeat both in 1866 and in 1914- 1918. The choice of offensive strategy and tactics against an enemy possessing superior weaponry in the Austro-Prussian War and opponents with superior numbers and weapons in the First World War resulted in catastrophe. The inferiority of the Habsburg forces in both wars stemmed from imprudent spending decisions during peacetime rather than conservatism or parliamentary stinginess. The desire to restore the sunken prestige of Austria-Hungary and prove Habsburg great power status drove the military to waste money on an expensive fleet and choose offensive tactics to win great victories. This study shows the civil-military interaction in regard to funding and procurement decisions as well as the deep intellectual debates within the army, which refute the idea that the Habsburg military remained opposed to technology or progress. Copyright JOHN A. DREDGER 2013 Table of Contents Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………vii Dedication………………………………………………………………………………………...ix Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………….x Chapter 1 - The Problems of 1866: Tactics, Weapons, and Money….…………………………...1 Chapter 2 - 1866-1876: First Steps Towards Progress…………………………………………..39 Chapter 3 - Success in Bosnia-Hercegovina……………………………………………………..97 Chapter 4 - From Progress to Reversion………………………………………………………..133 Chapter 5 - Financial Shock: Conradian Tactics and Wasteful Spending……………………...181 Chapter 6 - The Catastrophe of the Offensive………………………………………………….240 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………...289 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………297 vi Acknowledgements Many individuals deserve my gratitude for the various ways in which they have made this manuscript possible. I must first thank Mr. Mark Chapman for funding not only the present work but also my four years as a full-time student at Kansas State University. Without his generosity through the Chapman Fellowship, the completion of my writing may never have taken place. I must also thank the Kansas State University History Department for awarding me the Colonel Peter Cullen Military History Fellowship, which supported my research trip to Vienna. I am grateful as well to my father, Oliver Dredger, who generously helped me financially with my Viennese sojourn. The members of my committee have been of inestimable value during my writing. All have shown themselves always willing to provide answers covering the spectrum of academic queries. Professor Brent Maner has constantly offered helpful criticism while trying to keep me on track as I wandered off into the details. Similarly, Professor David Stone has repeatedly guided me to see the forest when I was lost in the trees. Professor Marsha Frey’s continually positive and amazingly quick feedback encouraged me during the arduous writing and revising process. Professor Derek Hillard inspired me to improve my German skills, a most useful and necessary ability as I learned in Vienna while poring over the cryptic scribblings of Austro- Hungarian officers. While in Vienna, the staff at the Kriegsarchiv performed the impossible by supplying me with inaccessible boxes during the remodeling of the archive holdings. I must especially thank Dr. Jerko who offered his help when I was lost and led me to sources which I had no idea existed. In addition, I wish to thank Miha Simac for befriending me and alleviating the tedium vii of leafing through seemingly endless documents. My thanks must also go to my brother, William Dredger, and my friend Patrick Maguire as well as my niece, Pauline Dredger, for always expressing interest in my writing while reading, discussing, and commenting on my dissertation chapters. My gratitude would not be complete without an immense thank-you to my wife Vanessa and our children Margaret, Kathleen, Patricia, Cecilia, Anthony, Elizabeth, and Raymond. Vanessa endured the long hours of loneliness and boredom that the writer’s spouse must tolerate in addition to achieving the task of keeping the household in a state of relative quiet for me to work. Supporting me with words of encouragement while putting up with my fits of frustration, she continued to supply me with the consolation of not only her presence but also her mouth- watering brownies. Our children suffered through days, weeks, and months of Daddy being too busy to spend much time with them as they heard too often such words as, “Not right now,” and, “Just wait until I’m done with this chapter.” Finally, I must thank those no longer here, especially Brother Sidonius Lepsi, OCSC, for the inspiration of his immense historical knowledge, Mr. Eugene Dinet, for his friendship and linguistic skills, and in particular my mother, Elizabeth Dredger, who helped me more than anyone could know. viii Dedication To my wife Vanessa ix Introduction In 1866 a Habsburg staff officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Eduard Bartels, in his book Österreich und sein Heer, commented on the dismal results suffered by the Austrian military whenever it confronted a major power: “The history of the Austrian army is a history of defeats. Every time it fights alone against another European great power, it loses. This permanent misfortune must have its reasons.”1 This comment came in the wake of the disastrous defeat of the Habsburg army against the Prussians at Königgrätz in the Austro-Prussian War, also called the Seven Weeks’ War, denoting how quickly the Austrian army collapsed in the face of an aggressive enemy. In 1914, the Austro-Hungarian army embarked on its final failure, World War I. Though this time the Habsburg forces held out for over four years, the result resembled previous losses except for the finality of 1918 for the monarchy and the dismemberment of the empire. As in 1866, poorly trained troops led by incompetent commanders, who refused to adapt to the effects of new technology on the battlefield, met disaster. Surely a state so large and populated as the Austro-Hungarian Empire should have better provided the means of military victory than history relates. The causes for these failures stemmed primarily from flawed offensive strategy and tactics as well as imprudent spending decisions that resulted from the desire maintain great power status and restore the prestige of the Habsburg Empire. Both during the Austro-Prussian War and the First World War Habsburg troops charged headlong into enemies bearing superior 1 Eduard Bartels. Österreich und sein Heer (Leipzig: Otto Wigand, 1866), 1, 28-29. x weaponry: the Dreyse breechloading needle gun in 1866 and the modern Russian and Serbian artillery in 1914. Though not suffering from numerical inferiority in the Bohemian campaign of 1866, Austro-Hungarian forces attacked the far larger Russian army in Galicia in 1914 while simultaneously assaulting equal numbers of Serbian troops in the Balkans. During the forty- eight years between the Austro-Prussian War and the Great War the Habsburg high command had seemingly learned nothing. Repeating the same mistakes, using the same offensive tactics, Austro-Hungarian armies garnered the same debilitating results. Scholars have voiced various reasons for Habsburg defeat. American historian Gunther E. Rothenberg in The Army of Francis Joseph discusses backwardness and conservate rejection of technology as well as nationalistic problems within the empire that led to parliamentary delegates refusing to fund military budget requests adequately. Rothenberg also points to the linguistic difficulties of an army that recruited speakers of ten major languages into its ranks as an essential reason for poor performance on the battlefield.2 British historian C.A. Macartney speaks of parliamentary stinginess as a primary cause of Austro-Hungarian defeats in The Habsburg Empire 1790-1918.3 The Austrian historians