Okay.
Right amount of force it is.
Kicked for a week for Trolling. (see post 34, warning in post 36, and the reply quoted above)
Whats wrong with Kuk army?
Right amount of force it is.
Kicked for a week for Trolling. (see post 34, warning in post 36, and the reply quoted above)
Ok. I personally thought the N word comment was way too much.
Thanks for letting us know on the reverse.
Okay, i start here and as for today, i probably end it too, maybe tomorrow... errr, today later i continue.
FJ was at least medicore, but public opinion about him.. well, Ferdinand was believed more intelligent. Much more.
The Przemysl fiasco was a clear sign of the utter retardation of the higher command - not so long ago i was fortunate to run into a quite good piece about the sieges, and man... faceplam time.
However, language: not a big problem. At all.
The austrian side of the army trained in and teached german (hungarian side ofc hungarian and... german). The men spoke some horrible military-german (like my great-grandfather) or even almost regular german - long story short, the officers and the men understood each other, just cannot enter into a conversation about astrophisics. Or they can, since the officer corps - reserve included - spoke languages, local languages and the units raised regionally, again, including the reserve officers.
Of course, personnel could and indeed have made some erratic decisions, hungarian officer speaking french, german and some slovak commanding bosniak jaegers, but... he could commanded in german, and after a few months, he ruled the language enough for small talks and so.
Was it perfect? Nope. But it worked out, even after the enormous losses in officers.
Saphroneth
Banned
I think the reason for the stereotype is two-fold - first, that it reduced flexibility (because a random officer can't necessarily give orders to a given platoon, he has to go through a language-trained officer for the local unit, and complex orders were hard to communicate through the language divide/s) and second that it was a well reported problem in the wars of the 1850s and 1860s, and people just assumed it was still there.
There's another part of the language problem - once the trained pre-war soldiers suffer attrition during battle they're replaced by untrained civilians who do not have the language skills necessary to form a cohesive fighting force.
Redbeard
Banned
A military unit can keep it cohesiveness with a surprisingly small number of veterans. Many studies have been made and at the moment I don't recall the exact results but from memory just a quarter of the personnel being veterans would form a good basis, but a good part of those 25% probably had to be NCOs or NCO capable. That is also why you often saw new units formed by letting each say company in a battalion form the nucleus in a new battalion. A unit suffering more than 25% of its men in a single encounter would however usually suffer badly in morale.
After the initial very big losses all armies in WWI had problems replacing them with capable units. Not at least where you also had to introduce conscription like in the British army.
Due to the regional recruitment system a new recruit in a standard KuK Regiment would not feel anymore alien than a recruit in any army – the men he would meet would speak the same language.
The problem was that the KuK army was deployed in over extended fronts in the east and against overwhelming enemy numbers. That resulted in massive losses but also inflicted even more massive losses on the Russian enemy. It was after the massive losses of the initially successful Brusilov offensive that the Russian Empire collapsed – the KuK went on for another 1,5 years.
the untrained civilians - reserve officers, mostly - came from the very same region/ethnic group so no language issues there.
Redistribution of career officers... that was a little bit more problematic.
(Bit, again, no biggie.)
Flexibility.. maybe. But, again, it was no biggie.
1850s language problems... well, interesting, becaose prior to that, it ws not a problem, past that, it was again no biggie.
Hm, why started the troops not to understand the ortders given in german after 48?
Saphroneth
Banned
It's an oft-cited problem in the wars with France and Prussia. Via robcraufurd:Hm, why started the troops not to understand the ortders given in german after 48?
Redbeard
Banned
I think we have to be very careful with any account on the KuK written after mid-19th Century.
Not that the accounts before are ideal, but they are more free of the later issues on the KuK. From mid-19th century the idea of the national state was super-hot and advocating it would not at least mean telling how hopeless its contrary – the KuK was. One way to do that would be by illuminating the bad KuK anecdotes and omitting the good ones – quite simple but effective – and you don’t necessarily have to tell any lies.
Some years ago I did some quite comprehensive studies (at least for an amateur) on the Austrian part in 1813 autumn campaign and the battle of Leipzig. I wondered about how the most quoted accounts on the campaign usually completely ignored the Austrians or even were quite derogatory when the actual events clearly told that their role had to have been much more prominent. I then found out that most of what was available in English was based mainly on Prussian accounts from 2nd half of 19th Century, when Prussia and Austria were rivals in the struggle over the soul of Germany. Next step of course was to find other sources and thank God the Garrison Library and the Royal Library here in Copenhagen had a lot written in first half of 19th Century on the campaign and the Battle of Leipzig and involving a lot of first-hand accounts.
Here you got a VERY different impression of the campaign and the battle and especially the Austrian part - you suddenly got all the details about the Austrian part and gone was the image of lackluster Austrians, they fought at least as tenaciously and competent as the others.
The late 19th century (Prussian) scholars however choose to largely omit these parts and instead focus on their “own boys”. Not unusual, but this approach was taken over by contemporary British writers again providing the basis for later English speaking writers. I guess also because the Prussians for most of 19th century was the closest you get to being the British “own boys” on the continent.
On top of that many inside the KuK sought for excuses for the defeats in 1859 and 1866 and the language issue apparently was obvious to utilize by all but when you study it difficult to keep up as that big a problem.
But BTW on available modern accounts in English involving the KuK I think Nafziger’s works on the Dresden and Leipzig campaigns are much more balanced in this regard. They are very detailed and can be quite tedious to read, but IMHO give a much better impression of what actually happened than most of what was written in the 130 years before.
I haven’t studied the KuK after 1815 as much as before but it is my impression that the discrepancies between “common saying” and realities are at least as big as they were about 1813.
Not that the accounts before are ideal, but they are more free of the later issues on the KuK. From mid-19th century the idea of the national state was super-hot and advocating it would not at least mean telling how hopeless its contrary – the KuK was. One way to do that would be by illuminating the bad KuK anecdotes and omitting the good ones – quite simple but effective – and you don’t necessarily have to tell any lies.
Some years ago I did some quite comprehensive studies (at least for an amateur) on the Austrian part in 1813 autumn campaign and the battle of Leipzig. I wondered about how the most quoted accounts on the campaign usually completely ignored the Austrians or even were quite derogatory when the actual events clearly told that their role had to have been much more prominent. I then found out that most of what was available in English was based mainly on Prussian accounts from 2nd half of 19th Century, when Prussia and Austria were rivals in the struggle over the soul of Germany. Next step of course was to find other sources and thank God the Garrison Library and the Royal Library here in Copenhagen had a lot written in first half of 19th Century on the campaign and the Battle of Leipzig and involving a lot of first-hand accounts.
Here you got a VERY different impression of the campaign and the battle and especially the Austrian part - you suddenly got all the details about the Austrian part and gone was the image of lackluster Austrians, they fought at least as tenaciously and competent as the others.
The late 19th century (Prussian) scholars however choose to largely omit these parts and instead focus on their “own boys”. Not unusual, but this approach was taken over by contemporary British writers again providing the basis for later English speaking writers. I guess also because the Prussians for most of 19th century was the closest you get to being the British “own boys” on the continent.
On top of that many inside the KuK sought for excuses for the defeats in 1859 and 1866 and the language issue apparently was obvious to utilize by all but when you study it difficult to keep up as that big a problem.
But BTW on available modern accounts in English involving the KuK I think Nafziger’s works on the Dresden and Leipzig campaigns are much more balanced in this regard. They are very detailed and can be quite tedious to read, but IMHO give a much better impression of what actually happened than most of what was written in the 130 years before.
I haven’t studied the KuK after 1815 as much as before but it is my impression that the discrepancies between “common saying” and realities are at least as big as they were about 1813.
Deleted member 1487
Isn't that most of history though? The people that write the history can frame it however they like. I even recently came across some evidence the Patton lied about his casualty inflicting stats of the 3rd Army during 1944-45 to make 'his' force look better. Montgomery claimed he won the Battle of the Bulge and the British media believed him, spreading his version of events around so much that Churchill was forced to make a speech in parliament correcting the record...had he not done so the British narrative would have been Monty's version of events.
Redbeard
Banned
Sure, which is why we allways should be careful when using an account upon just about anything. But understanding the context in which the account was made often make it much easier to "filter".