A Mad Catastrophe (the Outbreak Of World War I And The Collapse Of The Habsburg Empire)

By (author) Wawro Geoffrey
Short description/annotation
"Powerful . . . Wawro offers a picture of an Austro-Hungarian leadership that was reckless in the extreme.''"-Wall Street Journal
Description
The Austro-Hungarian army that marched east and south to confront the Russians and Serbs in the opening campaigns of World War I had a glorious past but a pitiful present. Speaking a mystifying array of languages and lugging outdated weapons, the Austrian troops were hopelessly unprepared for the industrialized warfare that would shortly consume Europe.As prizewinning historian Geoffrey Wawro explains in A Mad Catastrophe , the doomed Austrian conscripts were an unfortunate microcosm of the Austro-Hungarian Empire itself,both equally ripe for destruction. After the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914, Germany goaded the Empire into a war with Russia and Serbia. With the Germans massing their forces in the west to engage the French and the British, everything,the course of the war and the fate of empires and alliances from Constantinople to London,hinged on the Habsburgs'' ability to crush Serbia and keep the Russians at bay. However, Austria-Hungary had been rotting from within for years, hollowed out by repression, cynicism, and corruption at the highest levels. Commanded by a dying emperor, Franz Joseph I, and a querulous celebrity general, Conrad von Hötzendorf, the Austro-Hungarians managed to bungle everything: their ultimatum to the Serbs, their declarations of war, their mobilization, and the pivotal battles in Galicia and Serbia. By the end of 1914, the Habsburg army lay in ruins and the outcome of the war seemed all but decided. Drawing on deep archival research, Wawro charts the decline of the Empire before the war and reconstructs the great battles in the east and the Balkans in thrilling and tragic detail. A Mad Catastrophe is a riveting account of a neglected face of World War I, revealing how a once-mighty empire collapsed in the trenches of Serbia and the Eastern Front, changing the course of European history.
Table of contents
Introduction 1. The Sick Man of Europe 2. Between Blunder and Stupidity 3. The Balkan Wars 4. Murder in Sarajevo 5. The Steamroller 6. Misfits 7. Krasnik 8. Komarow 9. Lemberg and Rawa-Ruska 10. Death on the Drina 11. Warsaw 12. The Thin Gray Line 13. Serbian Jubilee 14. Snowmen Epilogue
Review quote
Financial Times Best History Books of 2014 "In a year glutted with first world war books, this study stands out for its devastating portrayal of the reckless diplomacy, internal political disarray and incompetent battlefield leadership that dragged Austro-Hungary towards the abyss in 1914. Wawro ... offers a remarkably fresh and unsentimental analysis of an empire on its last legs." Wall Street Journal "Exceptionally accessible to the general reader, Wawro offers a picture of an Austro-Hungarian leadership that was reckless in the extreme ... with a fatalistic sense of ''now or never.''" San Francisco Book Review "A Mad Catastrophe finally brings some clarity to how the death of one Archduke, while admittedly tragic, could lead to the deaths of millions... Wawro''s excellently written book, in chilling detail, explains all the frustrating and infuriating blundering. The war was completely senseless, the insane war-lust of a failing state; this book gives Austria-Hungary its rightful, starring role as cause of the conflict." Macleans (CAN) "Wawro writes about the Austro-Hungarian Empire''s role in the start and unfolding of the Great War with verve, inescapable black humour and a certain note of there-but-for-the-grace-of-God." Brendan Simms, author of Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy from 1453 to the Present "A Mad Catastrophe is an absorbing and shocking look at a now neglected aspect of the origins of the First World War. The author--a master military historian, whose works are standard accounts