Austria-Hungary in the First World War
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126 Schindler Chapter 5 Austria-Hungary in the First World War John R. Schindler Austria-Hungary’s last war was a rollercoaster affair. Materially unprepared for total war, the Habsburg Army was often outgunned on the battlefield. Although Austro-Hungarian forces managed to stay in the field to the bitter end, the war left ninety percent of Habsburg soldiers as casualties of some sort, including 1.2 million dead, the highest overall loss rate of any belligerent. Artillery was unquestionably a weak point at the beginning. Habsburg gun- ners were inadequately equipped, and, while the situation improved over the next four years in both equipment and doctrine, including much hard-won knowledge of proper combined arms tactics, the Habsburg war economy unrav- elled in 1918. With it the war machine gradual collapsed, the modernized and reorganized artillery included. Final defeat soon followed. The March to Disaster Before the Great War, Austro-Hungarian ground forces, officially the Imperial- and-Royal Army (k.u.k. Armee), constituted the most complex military in Europe, as well as the most potentially fragile of the continent’s major armies. A bureau- cratically cumbersome organization possessing a long history, as well as breathtaking ethnic diversity, the Habsburg Army resembled the society it served, a melange of a dozen different nationalities, some mutually hostile. Thanks to the introduction of conscription after Prussia’s 1866 victory, the k.u.k. Armee reflected the full ethno-religious mosaic of the Dual Monarchy. The six- teen corps districts recruited regionally, and the rank and file resembled the local population. The active forces included thirty-three infantry divisions (four, deployed in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Dalmatia, were organized and equipped as mountain divisions) and eight cavalry divisions. Additionally there were the ‘national’ armies of the Austrian and Hungarian halves of the Dual Monarchy, the k.k. Landwehr and the k.u. Honvéd, respectively, which were established as a second- line element in 1867, yet had become de facto first-line formations by the early 20th century. They were deployed interchangeably with the ‘common’ army in 1914, with the Landwehr adding eight infantry divisions and the Honvéd supply- ing eight infantry and two cavalry divisions on mobilization. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004307285_006 Austria-Hungary in the First World War 127 On the eve of war, each infantry division had a field gun regiment; each corps a field howitzer regiment and heavy howitzer battalion.1 Cavalry divisions had a horse artillery battalion. Given the army’s expertise in Alpine warfare, the order of battle included an impressive 10 mountain artillery regiments and one independent battalion. There were also six regiments and eight independent battalions of fortress artillery, many not fixed permanently in fortresses but pro- viding heavy artillery to the field army. Field gun regiments had five batteries (some formed a sixth on mobilization), while field howitzer regiments had four batteries. Horse artillery battalions had three batteries, while heavy howitzer battalions had only two batteries. Mountain artillery regiments had six batteries: four gun and two howitzer. Fortress artillery was organized differently, with two or three battalions each of several batteries. Generally field gun batteries had six guns each while all other batteries had four guns each.2 While the k.u.k. Armee provided most of its artillery support for the Austrian Landwehr, a major political concession to Budapest in 1907 allowed the Hungarian Honvéd to form its own artillery units. By 1914 these amounted to eight field gun regiments and one horse artillery battalion. In response the k.k. Landwehr added eight field gun battalions and eight field howitzer battalions beginning in 1913; these were still forming when war arrived.3 Due to regional recruitment, artillery units generally reflected the ethnic makeup of their home districts. There was only a slight bias towards sending German and Czech recruits – generally the best educated nationalities in the Dual Monarchy – into the artillery, which required literate and mechanically- inclined conscripts. As in the entire k.u.k. Armee, language posed complications. All recruits were taught about eighty words of parade-ground German, known as the “language of command” (Kommandosprache), while in the artillery most recruits had to master German as the “language of service” (Dienstsprache), which provided the necessary vocabulary to handle the guns. In all regiments and independent battalions of the k.u.k. Armee, any language spoken by at least twenty percent of the rank and file was afforded status as a “regimental lan- guage” (Regimentssprache) and had to be learned by the officers, so as to be able 1 Order of battle information is from M. Ehnl, “Die öst.-ung. Landmacht nach Aufbau, Gliederung, Friedensgarnison, Einteilung und nationaler Zusammensetzung im Sommer 1914,” Ergänzungsheft 9 zum Werke Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg (Vienna: Verlag der mili- tär wissenschaftlichen Mitteilungen, 1934). 2 M.C. Ortner, The Austro-Hungarian Artillery from 1867 to 1918: Technology, Organization and Tactics (Vienna: Verlag Militaria, 2007), pp. 300–305. 3 Z. Barcy, Királyért és hazáért: A m. kir. Honvédség szervezete, egyenruhái és fegyverzete 1868–1918 (Budapest: Corvina, 1990), pp. 91–101. For greater detail see A. Hellenbronth, A Magyar tüzér: a magyar tüzérség története (Budapest: Rf é Lászlóö K nyvkiadó, 1938), pp. 108–114..