Conrad von Hotzendorf: Chief of Staff in the Austro-Hungarian Army
Norman Stone introduces Von Hötzendorf, the last in a long line of Austrian commanders, and not the least able, who had the misfortune to believe that the First World War would save the Empire from disintegration.
Of the three European empires that Collapsed in the course of the First World War, the Austro-Hungarian was alone in failing to survive the War under another form. Hohenzollern Germany and Tsarist Russia were reborn with Hitler and Stalin; but the Hapsburg tradition in Central Europe lived on only in the Lilliputian Fascism of Croatia, Slovakia, and of Dollfuss’s Austria. The collapse of the Hapsburg Monarchy was final; and, in consequence, the efforts of its rulers, from Metternich to the last Emperor, Charles, have an historical air of futility.
History is not kind to failures, especially when they might have known that they would fail; and the failures of Austria-Hungary have received scant favour from historians. Churchill wrote of one Hapsburg commander that his strategy was that of “a man about to seize a prize behind a dyke about to burst.” The comment is a tempting epitaph upon the house of Hapsburg.
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