Let's Build a Properly Funded AH Army!

  • Thread starter Deleted member 1487
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BlondieBC

Banned
Actually it would also mean a large training apparatus to accomodate the larger intake of men each year, so the replacements once the war starts will have more training, or at least more men can be trained at once, so that there will be less of a need to thrust under/untrained levees into combat as IOTL.

We are talking 78K men, so it is major, but does not look backbreaking to me. It is about two Ft Bennings, but the USA uses a lot more equipment, and I would wager does a lot more elaborate training. When I look back at what I did, there are easily weeks worth of material that can be cutout. Chemical Warfare, Anti-tank weapons, radio procedures, machine guns (USA has one for every 4th man). So my guess is it goes closer to one Ft. Benning. We can basically go from 4 to 6-8 training cycles per training unit. But lets us 60K additional since A-H is smaller than Germany.

Now to costs. Each Battalion had about 1000 privates. Each company had 15 people, for about 75 total. Round up to 100 for share of base staff and BN staff. With say 6 cycles per year, you get 100 men training 6000 men, or a 60 to one ratio. So this means a 1000 additional trainers. And if I am wrong round it up to 2000 or even 3000.

If you are worried about lowering costs, you can select these roundout troops to have 6 months or even one months enlistment. You can even do the training cycles in the winter to avoid problems with agriculture, but you do have to use more men, and don't have full time trainers. Now does this man who gets 3 months training one winter and 3 months with Class C reserve regiment training perform as well as the 2 year German soldier? No, but it does fix a lot of the ramp up to war issues of throwing men into a meat grinder.

The pattern i see each time I look at A-H military is the same. The solutions are trivially easy once you fix the Hungarian parliament issue. It all boils down to the Hungarians holding the military hostage for various political goals. IMO, once you fix this problem, the A-H military is twice as powerful. Not twice as large, but within a few years, it will be able to handle twice as many Russian divisions on any given day. While not taught this way in American or UK history books, WW1 was lost by the Hungarians and won by the Russians. We can get into the issues on Hungary, but this is really beyond the scope of what you are asking.
 

Deleted member 1487

you could have regiments be linguistic based like in canada, only generals and officers assigned to them or in support branches would be require to speak german & hungarian.

That's how it was practiced IOTL.
 

Deleted member 1487

The pattern i see each time I look at A-H military is the same. The solutions are trivially easy once you fix the Hungarian parliament issue. It all boils down to the Hungarians holding the military hostage for various political goals. IMO, once you fix this problem, the A-H military is twice as powerful. Not twice as large, but within a few years, it will be able to handle twice as many Russian divisions on any given day. While not taught this way in American or UK history books, WW1 was lost by the Hungarians and won by the Russians. We can get into the issues on Hungary, but this is really beyond the scope of what you are asking.

This is very true. The artillery modernization/expansion and better economic planning even with the horrible political system the AH's had would have gone a long way to fixing the wartime issues of the Empire. Of course with the internal political issues solved, there would be less of an issue of looking to external violence to solve internal problems, so there might not even be a war with this scenario.

It'd be interesting to see what the situation would have looked like without Galicia being wrecked early in the war, depriving AH of 1/3 of its grain production and 1/2 of its horses, not to mention Hungary exporting its reduced surpluses to Germany throughout the war, despite requiring Austria to release soldiers from the army every harvest to help bring in that grain!
 

Deleted member 1487

so why was it an issue ?

Because the vast majority of reserve officers were German speaking only throughout the war, so when the linguistically proficient pre-war officers were killed they were replaced with reserve officers without language skills. Also there were just too few officers pre-war too and reserve officers were not well trained.
Also due to losses replacements were thrown into whatever unit needed them without care for whether replacements spoke the regimental language. This was really a problem of 1914-15, when the majority of AH loses were suffered in 18 months very quickly, pretty much requiring the entire military to be replaced with undertrained conscripts in that period, meaning the entire system broke down to manage the language issue. Lower loss/more trained men/better/more firepower prewar would all mitigate the language issue tremendously in the war, as the prewar system wouldn't break down, officers and NCOs would be lost at such brutal rates, and more care could be taken to avoid ad hoc solutions without the threat of the Hungarian plain being invaded in 1914-15 as in OTL.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
This is very true. The artillery modernization/expansion and better economic planning even with the horrible political system the AH's had would have gone a long way to fixing the wartime issues of the Empire. Of course with the internal political issues solved, there would be less of an issue of looking to external violence to solve internal problems, so there might not even be a war with this scenario.

It'd be interesting to see what the situation would have looked like without Galicia being wrecked early in the war, depriving AH of 1/3 of its grain production and 1/2 of its horses, not to mention Hungary exporting its reduced surpluses to Germany throughout the war, despite requiring Austria to release soldiers from the army every harvest to help bring in that grain!

I have toyed with trying to do this POD, but handing the butterflies is more than I want to deal with. The best POD is for A-H to crush the Hungarians in 1905, and then use the remaining 9 years to modify the army. But then we can't get WW1 to start on time. Another good POD is to allow the reforms to finish and start the war about 1919, but then everyone army is much different. With a close to the war POD, Conrad Turns East is probably the easiest one. None of these are appealing to write. I then looked on some type of interdiction of the Russia railroad - Armor cars, airplane, Zeppelin, one way cavalry raids, etc. The technology can be made to work and just blowing 10-15 RR bridges probably messes up the Russian mobilization schedule by weeks or months. And the low tech seems to work the best. You can preposition commandos as a part of the 48-120 hour lead up to war plan. It is not really that hard to burn down a RR bridge with a lot of wood. Or to just use explosives. Or just use cavalry raids since these units can move over 65 miles per day, and I bet a small unit pushing its horse can get close to 200. Now you have to accept it can be a one way trip, but the gain is just so big for what can be lost. Or you can just use airplanes. I found an example of 1916 where a two seated fighter was used to fly in a guy one day. He took at the bridge at night, and was picked up the next day. Evidently organized by the pilot and gunner without support from above. So it clearly can be done, but was not tried as far as I can tell at the start of the war. I concluded it was just too radical a thought process for high level planners. Do you have any idea why it was never seriously consider? After all, the improving Russian mobilization schedule was a concern for the Germans, and it is pretty standard to look for ways to counter new capabilities. So from a perspective of 100 years later, it would make a lot of sense to task a ambitious mid level officer of the General staff to come up with a plan and give him a battalion worth of forces to work on the plan.

Now to how I see the TL flowing in broad terms if we have a much better and somewhat larger A-H army. Or if we just have a 6 week delay in the Russian mobilization plans. I think they would have broadly similar results.

1) The second army would get at least a month, maybe two to break the Serbs. I would expect major gains, with an outside chance of knocking the Serbs out of the war. I think in either case, the Bulgarians jump in once they see Serbia collapsing, so by 1/1/1915, Serbia is effectively finished.

2) If we give a better A-H army, we get a series of battles where the Russians are beating themselves against a A-H army in quality positions. If we do the delay of mobilization, we get the A-H digging in for 6 weeks and adding new men to units (companies get a lot larger). Then the Russians bloody themselves against the the improved A-H army. Much the same result.

3) Come 1915, the A-H army is mostly deployed against the Russians with stable lines. Italy will not enter the war. This is the largest impact, and gives the CP a win. IMO, a neutral Italy means the blockade is looser by at least 100K tons per month of shipping. A-H has at least 12 more divisions available by mid 1915 to use against the Russians, and by 1917 it is probably up to 1 million extra men available.

4) Now Germany can go a lot of different ways, but it fair to say they do somewhat better than OTL in France. Falkenhayn will want to do France first, but taking Poland makes so much sense, even if A-H is doing well to shorten the lines. Germany will send extra troops east, but less than OTL, to secure the Congress of Poland. After this battle, the lines in the East largely stabilize. There will be offensive and counter offensives, but the overall line will not move that much.

5) Gallipoli does not happen, since the German reinforcements (mines, siege artillery, etc) arrive before the UK can land. It is a back door Ottoman buff.

6) By mid 1915, the Congress of Poland is stabilized. A-H is largely garrisoning Poland and will call the shots. It will work better than OTL. Germany will have a lot fewer units in the east, and these will be used in France. The Gallipoli force are also likely in France, and will fair poorly when fighting the Germans. It turns into a long, bloody series of attacks by both sides, where the Germans eventually break the will of the French to fight. Germany may have higher losses than OTL, and France will have much higher. By 1917, I think France is collapsing and a peace deal will be made by the end of the year. Only the USA arriving in the war will have a chance at saving France, and I can see arguments both ways. I could write a TL where the USA gets enough forces to France to save it, and France never attacks again after 1917, and the war drags into 1919. I don't think this is the most likely TL.

7) And with the extra food from Romania and Galicia, A-H survives the war. The 1 million tons of cereal for Romania could well be enough, and I am sure if we add the food from Galicia, it is enough.
 
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