Why didn't Austria-Hungary back down to the british ultimatum in 1914?

[Kyriakos]

(Re-)Reading the diaries of Franz Kafka, and by now i am after November 1918 (end of WW1).
It seems that in the beginning of WW1 there were daily military parades in AH (and "twice on Sunday"), so it seems it started with fanfare. That said, around the same time was the british ultimatum to AH to de-escalate (and stop) its part in the war (it came after an analogous british ultimatum to Germany, which wasn't accepted).
Given that AH wasn't exactly as strong as Germany, and it had already backed down to british ultimatums in the past (eg in the build up to a war between AH and Switzerland) i wanted to ask if their refusal this time was more of an autonomous action or was the analogous compliance that Megara retained leaving its stronger ally (Thebes) to dictate diplomacy with the enemy powers.


Anyway, that Austria-Hungary was the weakest of the main powers became obvious very soon, given it managed to (in the first half of WW1) lose to Serbia and be pushed back, and then was ruined in Galicia by Russia (Kafka mentions several times the organisation of refugees from lost Galicia, eg in 1916).

[+Marius+]

Well, it wasn't obvious at the time(duh ).

Not to mention that Italy was still game at the time.

I believe a lot of historiography and basically everyone else completely ignores the colossal importance of Italy switching sides in that war.

Even if Italy remained merely neutral during the entire war, the Central Powers would possibly/probably have won.

[bigdaddy1204]

Why should Austria-Hungary, a massive land-based Empire, back down to the demands of the British, an upstart nation of shopkeepers with a land army of a mere 100,000 men? The Austro-Hungarian Empire had 3.35 million men in July 1914. There was no reason to believe the British were in any position to interfere in Serbia, nor did they believe that the other European powers were willing to risk a major war over a dispute in eastern Europe.

[Kyriakos]

Why should Austria-Hungary, a massive land-based Empire, back down to the demands of the British, an upstart nation of shopkeepers with a land army of a mere 100,000 men? The Austro-Hungarian Empire had 3.35 million men in July 1914. There was no reason to believe the British were in any position to interfere in Serbia, nor did they believe that the other European powers were willing to risk a major war over a dispute in eastern Europe.

Not sure what you mean, but AH already had backed down to similar british ultimatums in the past, which is why i referred to this in my OP.
And AH already was at war with Russia at the time of the british ultimatum. Maybe even with France (?).

[Abdülmecid I]

Anyway, that Austria-Hungary was the weakest of the main powers became obvious very soon, given it managed to (in the first half of WW1) lose to Serbia and be pushed back, and then was ruined in Galicia by Russia (Kafka mentions several times the organisation of refugees from lost Galicia, eg in 1916).

Italy was far weaker, as it continuously failed to march to Slovenia despite the fact that their opponents had to fight in two other fronts against Russia and Serbia/Romania. Anyway, the balance between Germany and Austria-Hungary did eventually turn vastly in favour of the former, significantly undermining the autonomy of the latter, but that was a very gradual process, which began after the military failures of the Austrian-Hungarian empire and especially after the catastrophic Brusilov Offensive. Even then, however, it mostly concerned military matters with the subordination of Austrian-Hungarian army officers to their German colleagues. The Dual Monarchy was still, of course, free to pursue its diplomatic goals, carefully manoeuvring between different and often self-contradictory interests. The rejection of the British ultimatum is simply explained, in my opinion, by the fact that nobody could have predicted how that global conflict would evolve. Apparently, the Austrian-Hungarian leadership inaccurately estimated, exactly like the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria, when they later sided with the Central Powers, that the benefit of crushing Serbia was worth it, despite the British threats. After all, the moderate faction was not helped much by the fact that its biggest fan had just been assassinated by Serbian nationalists, which greatly encouraged the government and the emperor to be convinced by their opponents, led by the notorious Chief of the General Staff, Conrad von Hötzendorf.

Even if Italy remained merely neutral during the entire war, the Central Powers would possibly/probably have won.

Italy's first invasion was casually defeated by local conscripts, militia and border guards, so I doubt its contribution is particularly underestimated. With the obvious exception of Romania, whose opportunistic decision to join the war only managed to weaken the Russian Empire and provide the Central Powers with huge quantities of wheat and oil further prolonging the war, I believe that Italy's intervention was hardly helped the Allied cause in the European and Middle-Eastern theaters of the war. Her mediocre performance in the Alpes and Libya forced France and Britain to send their own soldiers, in order to successfully resit after the disaster at Caporetto and to quell the Senoussi revolt.

[+Marius+]

Italy's first invasion was casually defeated by local conscripts, militia and border guards, so I doubt its contribution is particularly underestimated. With the obvious exception of Romania, whose opportunistic decision to join the war only managed to weaken the Russian Empire and provide the Central Powers with huge quantities of wheat and oil further prolonging the war, I believe that Italy's intervention was hardly helped the Allied cause in the European and Middle-Eastern theaters of the war. Her mediocre performance in the Alpes and Libya forced France and Britain to send their own soldiers, in order to successfully resit after the disaster at Caporetto and to quell the Senoussi revolt.

Oh, I am not talking about Italy doing anything significant for the Central side...

...I am arguing about them not doing anything at all.


Regardless of everything stated, the Italian Front caused over 2 000 000 casualties for the Central Powers and an enormous amount of supplies and other costs.

Italy, by simply remaining neutral, would have been a major game change in retrospect.

One less front and 2 000 000 more men for A-U+Germany, in a war that Germany/A-U won in the East and almost won in the West even without this board change.


This all without even going into the scenario of Italy joining the Centrals on their side actively.

[bigdaddy1204]

Interesting.

Let's pursue that idea. Italy joining the centrals on their side actively... no 2 000 000 casualties for the Central Powers... maybe France is defeated? What then? Complete victory for the Central Powers, I suppose. But what about the naval blockade? The British naval blockade would still be a serious obstacle. On the other hand, with the Central Powers completely victorious and Russia out of the war, I can't see much point for Britain to continue the war. What next? Peace? And on what terms, I wonder?

[KEA]

Regardless of everything stated, the Italian Front caused over 2 000 000 casualties for the Central Powers and an enormous amount of supplies and other costs.

over 2,000,000?!? Now, that's a number given that Italy suffered ca. 1,500,000 casualties (dead and wounded!) and lost most major battles.

[+Marius+]

What then? Complete victory for the Central Powers, I suppose.

Yes, Britain soon sues for at least a white peace or a ceasefire.

A German dominated Authoritarian twin of the EU is formed in the 1920's and the Planet Earth enters an alternative age of utter prosperity, without Communism or Fascism ruining everything.

over 2,000,000?!? Now, that's a number given that Italy suffered ca. 1,500,000 casualties (dead and wounded!) and lost most major battles.

Yes, to my knowledge the numbers for the Italian front are about 500 000 dead and over 1.5 million wounded for the A-U alone, the German figures are murky though.

Most of the wounded men are no longer exactly battle worthy and can be counted as total casualties, not to mention counting the additional the strain on civic society that hundreds of thousands of wounded men cause.

[KEA]

the German figures are murky though.

There had been not that many German forces in Italy. Even the Alpenkorps, that was raised with 20,000 men for this front, fought a lot on the Balkans and on the West Front instead. The only serious German engagement was during the 12th Battle of the Insonzo (October 1917) when Germany had deployed seven divisions in Italy. These forces were moved back to France after the battle. Overall casualties for the Centers in said battle was some 5,000 dead.

The Alpine Front pretty much was an Austrian show with little to no consequences for other theaters - unless you wish to include the possibility of moving hundreds of thousands of Austrian soldiers to the West Front, which was, given the sorry state of the late K.u.K. Army, most likely not desirable for German high command.

[hellheaven1987]

What I don't understand is why German Empire did not try to use Britain to pressure France declaring its neutrality, since Britain was anxiously wanted France to remain neutral and asked German Empire not involved France in this mess. In fact it is kindly weird London asked Berlin not to attack France but failed to pressure France declaring its own neutrality.

[Cyclops]

Yes, to my knowledge the numbers for the Italian front are about 500 000 dead and over 1.5 million wounded for the A-U alone, the German figures are murky though.

Yikes, so it was more like Verdun, its not too different to the Italian losses 9 have a vague recollection they lost 600K/1.2m or so). The great mass of Austrian losses of course came in the east where they were clashing with the Tsar's armies.

It is interesting to contemplate the point at which the armies begin to collapse. Keegan in The Face of Battle offers and interesting aside that most armies experienced mutinies about 30 months after they committed themselves to mass warfare, with the exception of the German armies. The losses taken before partial or complete collapse is another matter, complicated by the fact many combatants were large Empires and their core armies were drawn from the home nation and select colonies.

Most of the wounded men are no longer exactly battle worthy and can be counted as total casualties, not to mention counting the additional the strain on civic society that hundreds of thousands of wounded men cause.

I've heard some interesting discussions by Australian historians (but I have no sources for this) about the problems of British battle casualty statistics. Some chaps talking part in a battle would be wounded, moved out of the battle zone, recover, return to the battle and be killed and get counted once for each event. I also guess each army had its own criteria and data collection methods (the Australians were part of the Empire forces, essentially British Army units with a cool Australasian corps designation so we used their methods).

I suppose that seeing the K un K ist kaput then the data is fuzzier than for the winning side.

[Owlparrot3]

When you have a good if not excellent army,a personal vendetta to be settled and most importantly an ally like Germany whose land army was the best in the world .Why fear .Said AH.

[Kyriakos]

^AH doesn't seem to have had a "good if not excellent" army. It lost to Serbia and was maimed by Russia in the first part of WW1.

[Cyclops]

Sorry, regarding OP I have some thoughts.

Austria was locked into a Gotterdammerung mindset. In the early to mid 19th century the society had been frozen in aspic in many ways by the deliberate policies of several chancellors going back to Metternich. The inevitably of nationalist disintegration was assumed, and the dynasty and its adherents focussed on prolonging the death agony extremely successfully. The K und K (IIRC from "Good Soldier Schweick" and some 19th century political history I studied) had the largest system of spies and informers in the world (per capita and absolute) for most of the 19th century: yes more than the Tsars or even the Bourbons.

They had savage censorship for periods of decades on end and earned a reputation of being the European Tibet, so cut off from outside reality were the subjects. The nationalist urges of the Czechs were repressed only with great effort (sometimes military) and Hungary (which was detaching itself by stages from Austria to the point that it was in personal union only under the rule of the Kaiser und Koenig) with even less success: much of Italy was lost and even the loyal Croats looked at the selfish example of Budapest and thought long and hard.

Metternich and Bach's attempts to insulate the Kaiserlich und Koeniglich realm from the evils of modern political development of course failed, but every step forward and every new development was begrudging and retarded by effete and barely operable official disapproval. Industrialisation came late and patchy, railroads made a difference, but slowly. When Austria's Germans awoke to a national understanding it was to see Prussia seize German leadership from the only family to have held Imperial authority for four centuries. The future arrived before Austria-Hungary could even awake to the present.

Vienna from the 1870s onwards (when the stock market crashed and the last dreams of Reich or even some sort of stable future died) saw a flourishing of arts, literature, music, painting, new sciences and the most bizarre political theories (including the embryonic mystical German nationalism that spawned Nazism). This was a harvest of glory, but the theme was unreason and decay. Freud explored the internal logic of madness, Klimt painted society women as naked as whores and then censored their nakedness in Babylonian excess of gold and rainbows. Schoenberg made music Lovecraft would have recognised, Kokoschka painted as bizarrely as amn cubist or futurist. Above all Franz Kafka intimates the agony of life in a state if not to big to fail then at least seemingly to old to die. "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect", the most compelling image of any Austro-Hungarian artist, is one of fevered and surreal foreboding.

The Russian bogeyman, the irritating Balkan rebel states (Damn those Serbs!), the contemptuous and begrudging friendship of Berlin, the vile treason of the plotting Italians, the ancient enmity of the French and the refusal of the Ottomans to die so their provinces fell to the K un K while others gobble them up saw a ring of enemies or at best frenemies on all sides. The AH's only allies were Germany and Italy: both had pillaged the Kaiser's lands within the last 60 years (that is to say within the period of rule of the current Emperor) of provinces and glory. Italy and the new Second Reich was built on the defeated ghost of the First Reich, all the Hapsburgs had lost. Such were their friends: and among their enemies was Britain, an ancient ally who now chose France (France!) over Austria. Five times against the Corsican ogre they had stood in defiance. Now it meant nothing, although at least the British were polite about it.

The Hapsburg dynasty was as least as humiliated and desperate as the Romanovs, also plagued by nationalism, inchoate modernisation and a tradition of absolutist family rule a century out of date. They did not face the prospect of war with the same bold hope as the Tsars, but they faced it with cold despair: perhaps they felt like a mad cynical shadow of Konstantine XI, fighting not for home, family, church or even hope, but for a memory not even fully recalled.

The Hungarians did not fear war: in a crisis there was opportunity for more concessions, more to gain. The other nationalities saw perhaps a similar glimpse that too: in the aftermath of victory or defeat another revision of the teetering stack of national and racial ranks. Ethnic Germans in particular smarted that Hungarian rights were recognised while Prussian upstarts ruled the greater part of the "German nation".

Only the Emperor himself and his immediate circle of traditionalists sought to preserve...what? The remnants of a compromise of a revision of a leftover of what was once the most noble state of Europe, more than first among equals, the Reich. Now, Germany gone, Italy gone, Hungary all but gone, Poles clamouring, Slovenes dreaming, Czechs despairing, even Croats doubting, the hint that one ethnic group or other might carve a little more for themselves from the moribund corpse of state might see the whole lot collapse.

The challenge of the Serbs, or their terrorist minions, was not one that could be refused. War or peace both meant probable destruction of the Empire. The Kaiser und Koenig chose war.

[KEA]

^AH doesn't seem to have had a "good if not excellent" army.

No, definitely not. The Schlieffenplan was developed with the idea of a strong Austrian army capable of keeping the Russians busy on its own. The revisions to that plan by Moltke also were forced upon because on closer inspection German high-command considered the K.u.K. army as "not operational" by German standards.

[conon394]

It is interesting to contemplate the point at which the armies begin to collapse. Keegan in The Face of Battle offers and interesting aside that most armies experienced mutinies about 30 months after they committed themselves to mass warfare, with the exception of the German armies.

Would not also have to include the Union and the CSA in that. If take say 1862 as the point when both were defiantly in for mass long term total war - I am unaware of any significant mutinies in 1864-1865.

-------------

@KEA

No, definitely not. The Schlieffenplan was developed with the idea of a strong Austrian army capable of keeping the Russians busy on its own. The revisions to that plan by Moltke also were forced upon because on closer inspection German high-command considered the K.u.K. army as "not operational" by German standards.

Which is why I think you can't underestimate the potential of Italian neutrality. The AH army and state was fragile, and it army poor. Sure there was no profound amount of great units or such to moved anywhere else. But just the reduced pressure and the ability to focus on Russia would have been significant. I don't suggust any movement of AH troops to the West or such, but Austria might have been a draw on Germany and could potentially have handled itself in Russia better.

[Cyclops]

No, definitely not. The Schlieffenplan was developed with the idea of a strong Austrian army capable of keeping the Russians busy on its own. The revisions to that plan by Moltke also were forced upon because on closer inspection German high-command considered the K.u.K. army as "not operational" by German standards.

The German attitude to AH as a whole is summed up by a joke I believe was current in 1916 which goes like this: "In Berlin things are serious but not desperate: in Vienna things are desperate but not serious."

Would not also have to include the Union and the CSA in that. If take say 1862 as the point when both were defiantly in for mass long term total war - I am unaware of any significant mutinies in 1864-1865.

I think its not entirely applicable even to WWI, with it peculiar circumstances. Serbia (literally the first force committed along with AH) is another exception, the army survived the complete destruction of the state on the ground and continued fighting from Thessalonika with Entente assistance.

I think the War of the Rebellion its its own internecine circumstances, but its true the CSA lost the will to live before its last army did.

[KEA]

Which is why I think you can't underestimate the potential of Italian neutrality. The AH army and state was fragile, and it army poor. Sure there was no profound amount of great units or such to moved anywhere else. But just the reduced pressure and the ability to focus on Russia would have been significant. I don't suggust any movement of AH troops to the West or such, but Austria might have been a draw on Germany and could potentially have handled itself in Russia better.

I seriously doubt that the Austrian army was in a condition to launch successful major operation against the Russian army. And that was the conclusion of the German High Command too - when they still expected Italy to be an ally. The major contribution of Russia to WWI was to force Germany to deploy so many forces in the East in 1914 that the campaign in France failed. The Brusilov Offensive only confirmed the conclusions of the German General Staff. I doubt that having an additional 24 Austrian divisions, instead of the 24 German divisions, had done anything better.

[Kyriakos]

The German attitude to AH as a whole is summed up by a joke I believe was current in 1916 which goes like this: "In Berlin things are serious but not desperate: in Vienna things are desperate but not serious."



I think its not entirely applicable even to WWI, with it peculiar circumstances. Serbia (literally the first force committed along with AH) is another exception, the army survived the complete destruction of the state on the ground and continued fighting from Thessalonika with Entente assistance.

I think the War of the Rebellion its its own internecine circumstances, but its true the CSA lost the will to live before its last army did.

Given i can't rep you already again for your new posts here, nice joke-saying

Also, while Kafka probably isn't very easy to link to Austria itself (other than obviously being in Prague and working for a government agency, workers security institute) Meyrink, Kubin, Shiele (spelling?) and many other concurrents exactly depict a weird and mystical literature and art. Kafka was born a little bit after it seems to have been easy for austrian citizens to travel to other countries, and did travel there in his middle years (1910-1914 mostly).