historia militar
DESCRIPTION
Especial Asalto a MonteccassinoTRANSCRIPT
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www.milita story.org
MILITARY
HIEVES UNITED
he First Balkan War,912-1913
WAR CAMEL
The hidden secret
of the desert
Arabs
BRAVEHEART
The realWilliam Wallace
Patrick Mercer analyses
the most gruellingstruggle of the SecondWorld War in Italy
CRAC NCAS
1944: THE FIGHT FOR ROME
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The First World War marked the start of the modern era. It was
destined to sweep away half the states in Europe. Antiquated
autocracies, broken by the strain of industrialised war, would
fall like skittles in 1917 and 1918.
Yet many of t hem entered the war precisely to avoid such a
fate. Despots from another age, who found themselves under
siege from socialists and nationalists at home, hoped that foreign
war would unite their countries.For a while it worked. The flags came out in July and August
1914, and millions went to war imbued with a chocolate-box
image of what it would be like. But after years of carnage
on the battlefields and hunger at home, Europe exploded
into revolution.
We begin our series on the five Great Powers that went to war
in 1914 with one of those that would not survive: the creaking
dynastic empire of the Austrian Habsburgs.
We also anticipate the centenary with the first of two articles
by Julian Spilsbury on the savage Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913,
and our Second World War feature this time is the first of ashort series by Patrick Mercer analysing the long struggle for
Cassino between late 1943 and the end of May 1944.
With a nod towards the Scottish independence referendum
later this year, Jeffrey James assesses the military career of
William Wallace. For our final feature, we take a t hematic
look at the role of the camel in war over some two millennia
and discover the technological secret of its long supremacy
in the desert.
www.milita story.org
MILITARY
THIEVES UNITEDThe First Balkan War,1912-1913
WARCAMEL
The hidden secretof the desert
Arabs
BRAVEHEARTThe real
William Wallace
Patrick Mercer analysesthe most gruellingstruggle of the SecondWorld War in Italy
CRACKINCASSINO
1944:THE FIGHT FOR ROME
ON THE COVER: The British 8th armywith an anti-aircraf gun amid the ruins oMonte Cassino.
Photo: akg-images
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WelcomeBy Dr Neil Faulkner
www.military-history.org 3MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY
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March 20144 MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY
Contents
FEATURED
Austria-HungaryPrison-house of nations
MHMEditor Neil Faulkner explores the inner
workings of the Habsburg Empire in the lead-upto the First World War.
William WallaceThe Great Patriot?
Jeffrey James assesses the career of anotherof Scotlands greatest leaders, William Wallace,in the context of his two greatest battles: Falkirkand Stirling Bridge.
Thieves UnitedThe First Balkan War
Continuing our Road to War series, Julian Spilsburytakes us deep into the labyrinth of early 20th-centuryBalkan politics.
War CamelSecrets of the desert
MHMlooks into the hidden weapon of the desertArabs, and its efficacy through the ages.
18
30
38
48
Cracking Cassino: Part 1The Battle for the Mignano Gap
Marking the 70th anniversary of the Battleof Monte Cassino, Patrick Mercer begins afour-part analysis of the pivotal struggle ofthe Italian Campaign.
10
ON
THE
COVER
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www.military-history.org
Military History Monthly
Issue 42, March 2014
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EVERY ISSUE
Recommended Read 66
Jules Stewart recommendsCitizenEmperor: Napoleon in power 1799-1815
by Philip Dwyer.
Books 68
Neil Faulkner leads with a review ofMapping the First World Warby Peter
Chasseaud. Plus Chris Bambery onClaudio PavonesA Civil Warand JamesMcCall on John MosiersVerdun.
Film 73
George Clode onThe Railway Man.
War on Film 26
Taylor Downing continues his explorationof denitive war lms with a second
Kubrick classic: Dr Strangelove.Thinkers at War 36
Iain King takes a hard look at how the FirstWorld War turned Hitler into a Fascist.
Your Military History 76
Alan Jamieson tells the story of gliderpilot Mike Hall, a veteran of OperationMarket Garden.
Conict Scientists 82
Kicking off a new series on great
military boffins, Patrick Boniface prolesThe Father of the British Atom Bomb,William Penney.
MilitaryHistory Monthlyhasbeencommendedby theMedia PioneerAwards. Formoreinformationvisit:
March 2014
Reviews
Regulars
PromotionsOn Manoeuvres
Welcome 3
Behind the Image 6
WMD 8
Dispatches
62
Listings 58
Military History Monthlys summary ofthe best events this March.
Museum 60
Tom Farrell explores the rst museumdevoted to the 1979-1989 Soviet clashwith Afghanistan.
War Zone 62
Julie Dunn pays a visit to Cyprus tounearth the history of the Green Linethrough Europes last divided capital.
Charities 47
We explore the work of BlindVeterans UK and the vital supportthey provide.
MHMQuiz 80
This month we have4 copies ofThe LawnRoad Flatsto giveaway. Enter theMHMQuiz for your chanceto win.
Whats onMHMEvents Guide 54
Your guide to the best tours, events,
and lectures coming up in 2014.
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RACE TO THE SEAThe 16th (The Queens) Lancers (3rd Cavalry Brigade)
advancing from the Marne to the Aisne September 1914At rst this seems a quiet, almost static photograph, dominated by
the horizontals o earth and sky. But our eyes are drawn rom lef
to right as a series o diagonals converge at a clump o trees at the
pictures right edge.
Bank, shadow, verge, track, line o horsemen, hedge all head
towards those trees. The scale o the lancers thus rapidly diminishes,
suggesting both large numbers o men and distances to be travelled.
The lances o the cavalrymen provide a minor diagonal counterpoint
to the strong lines o road, hedge, and bank, orming a series o light
v shapes arrowing towards the vanishing point, underlining the sense
o movement to the right.
Yet there seems no urgency in this movement o men. A mixed
detachment o French mounted troops wait while the Lancers pass
unhurriedly by. Perhaps the French soldiers have pulled on to the
verge to let the Lancers through, or perhaps they are taking a break.
A group o French villagers watch rom the bank to the right.
One or two o the lancers appear to look at their French allies,
maybe passing a riendly comment or two. The hindmost o the
lancers, though, has denitely seen the photographer and manages
a nice cheery grin or the camera.
However, the vertical o the young, recently planted tree creates a
note o unease. Placed roughly a third in rom the r ight, a traditionally
BEHIND THE IMAGE
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important compositional placement, it partially obscures one o the
French riders and his horse. The vertical also intereres with that
general sense o lef-to-right movement: a note o disharmony in
a picture o otherwise gentle movement.
This photograph o the Lancers and mounted French troops tells
the story o the rst couple o months o the Great War, when the
conict on the Western Front was still a war o movement.
The 16th were the British Armys second ever light-cavalry regiment,
raised in southern Englandin 1759 by the cavalry officer John Burgoyne,
whoserved as its commander or 16years.
The regiment deployed to France under the command o Hubert
Gough later to become commander o the British 5th Army as part
o 3rd Cavalry Brigade in August 1914. On 16 September, the Cavalry
Brigade became part o the newly created 2nd Cavalry Division.
This was just afer the First Battle o the Marne, 5-12 September
1914, ofen reerred to as the Miracle o the Marne. This Allied victory
effectively ended the month-long campaign that opened the war, with
the German Imperial Army having reached the outskirts o Paris.
The counter-attack o six French and one British army along the
Marne River orced the Germans to abandon their push on Paris
and retreat north-east. The Battle o the Marne was an immense
strategic victory or the Allies, wrecking Germanys bid or a swif
victory over France.
In the photograph, we see the 16th Lancers making their way to
the Front at Aisne, where the German Army had dug in along the
commanding heights north o the river. The war o movement o
the early weeks o World War I would now give way to our years o
static, attritional trench warare.
The uncomortable eeling caused by the placement o the sapling
would be born out or the Lancers during much o the rest o the war.
Indeed, the 16th Lancers would spend much o the remainder o the
conict ghting in the trenches as inantry.
By the end o the war, the traditional roles o the cavalry would be
superseded by new technologies: the cavalrys speed and their use in
scouting and reconnaissance roles were usurped by the tank, motor
transport, and the aeroplane.
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March 20148 MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY
The Imperial Japanese
Navy (IJN) first became
interested in heavy
torpedoes shortly after the
end of the Russo-Japanese
War in 1905, when an experimental
61cm (24-inch) weapon was ordered
from the W hitehead torpedo factory
at Fiume. The IJ Ns first operationalheavy torpedo, the 61cm (24-inch)
Type 8 No.1, entered service in 1920
aboard destroyers and light cruisers.
While this was larger than any
contemporary torpedo except for the
British 62.2cm (24.5-inch) Mark I, it
was not considered powerful enough
to counter the US and British superiority
in capital ships.
Rear Admiral Kaneji Kishimotos
design team at Kure began work on
a weapon that would be sufficiently
powerful in 1928, and by 1933 hadproduced 61cm (24-inch) Type 93
torpedo prototypes for f leet trials. The
weapon was extremely temperamental
and potentially dangerous to its users,
largely due to the use of compressed
oxygen instead of compressed air in its
propulsion system. The oxygen was highly
explosive unless the torpedoes were
carefully handled and well maintained,
but gave the Type 93 performance well in
excess of its US and British counterparts.
During the 1930s t he IJN developed
highly sophisticated night-fighting tacticsto exploit the torpedos capabilities, which
proved extremely effective in many actions
during the first 18 months of the war
in the Pacific. Japanese destroyers and
cruisers were frequently able to launch
torpedoes from about 20km (12 miles) at
unsuspecting Allied warships attempting
to close to gun range.
Given the limited range of their own
torpedoes, Allied navies could not believe
that the IJN had the capability to launch
torpedo attacks beyond 10km (6.2 miles).
They attributed the great number of
torpedo hits suffered by Allied warships
in these actions to undetected Japanese
submarines operating in support of their
surface forces.
JAPANESE TYPE 93
LONG LANCE TORPEDO
David Portergives the lowdown on a deadly marine weapon.
y(DD-387) on 22 August 1942 by
IJN destroyerKawakaze
Aircraft carrier USSHornet(CV-8)
on 26 October 1942 by IJN destroyers
AkigumoandMakigumo
Cruiser USSAtlanta(CL-51) on
13 November 1942 by IJN destroyer
Akatsuki
Destroyer USSBarton(DD-599) on
13 November 1942 by IJN destroyers
Destroyer USSLaffey(DD-459) on
13 November 1942 by IJN destroyers
Destroyer USSWalke(DD-416) on
14 November 1942 by IJN destroyers
Destroyer USSBenham(DD-397) on
14 November 1942 by IJN destroyers;
later scuttled by USSGwin(DD-433)
Cruiser USSNorthampton(CA-26) on
30 November 1942 by IJN destroyer
Oyashio
Destroyer USSStrong(DD-467)
on 5 July 1943 by IJN destroyer
Cruiser USSHelena(CL-50) on
5 July 1943 by IJN destroyers
SuzukazeandTanikaze
Destroyer USSGwin(DD-433)on 12 July 1943 by IJN destroyer
Destroyer USSChevalier(DD-451)
on 6 October 1943 by IJN destroyer
Yugumo
Destroyer USSCooper(DD-695) on
3 December 1944, probably by IJN
destroyerTake.
The true capabilities of the Type 93
(dubbed Long Lance by the Allies)
were largely unrecognised unti l intact
examples were captured in 1943.
The list of Long Lance successes
was impressive, with 23 Allied
warships sunk following Type 93
hits: 11 cruisers, 11 destroyers, and
a fleet aircraft carrier. Of this total,13 succumbed solely to Type 93
hits, with the rest being sunk by
a combination of bombs, gunfire,
and torpedoes.
Battle of the Java Sea,27 February-1 March 1942 Dutch cruiser HNLMSJavaby
IJN cruisersHaguroandNachi
Dutch cruiser HNLMSDeRuyter
byHaguroandNachi
Dutch destroyer HNLMS Kortenaer
by IJN cruiserHaguro British cruiser HMSExeterby
IJN destroyerIkazuchi
Australian cruiser HMAS Perth(D29)
by IJN cruisersMogamiandMikuma
American cruiser USS Houston(CA-30)
by IJN cruisers Mogamiand Mikuma
Battle of Savo Island,9 August 1942 US cruisers USSQuincy(CA-39), USS
Vincennes(CA-44), and USSAstoria
(CA-34) by IJN cruisersChokai,Aoba,
Kako,Kinugasa, andFurutaka.
Battles of the Solomons/Tassafaronga/Guadalcanal/Kolombangara/Ormac Bay/Santa Cruz Islands/Vella Lavella Dutch destroyer HNLMS Piet Hein
on 19 February 1942 by IJNAsashio
WMD
Length: 8.99m (29f 6in)
Weight: 2,766kg (6,107lb)
Engine: Type 93 petrol/liquid oxygen
Maximum speed:91kmh (49kt, 56mph)
Warhead weight:498kg (1,100lb)
Range: 40,000m (43,744 yards)
@ 67kmh (36kt, 41mph)
32,000m (34,995 yards)
@ 74kmh (40kt, 46mph)
22,000m (24,059 yards)
@ 89kmh (48kt, 55mph)
SPECIFICATIONS (Type 93 Long Lance Torpedo)
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March 201410 MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY
which seemed to be entirely due to him!
Despite being highly intelligent, to his
dying day he clung to the theory that his
muddy, mountain war had been decisive
in the defeat of Hitler. If only it had been.
The hard underbellyThe decision to invade mainland
Italy was a mi xture of Churchills
imperial interest in North Africa, the
Mediterranean, and the Balkans;
Americas interest in draw ing off
German forces from their future main
point of effort in France; the airmens
wish to seiz e a irf ields closer to t he
Reich; the generals wish to wrest Rome
from the Axis and garner the glory of
liberating the Eternal City; and theWestern powers grand strategic aim
of doing something in late 1943 t hat
would demonstrate their met tle to
Stalin and the Soviets.
Military icons you
cannot get away from
them. There were
hundreds of D-Days
during WWII, but
now there is only one: the start of the
Normandy invasion. So widespread,
indeed, did the perception become
that this was thegreat battle that
British troops in Italy, with typically
wry humour, referred to themselvesas D-Day Dodgers.
Yet they had thei r ow n icon: the vast,
louring monastery of Monte Cassino,
which dominated the approa ches to
the Liri Valley and thus to Rome. So
Cassino became synonymous with the
whole, grindi ng campaign, while t he
slaughter at Salerno and Anzio, let
alone the butchery on the Gothic Linein the autumn of 1944, have largely
been eclipsed.
In three articles I am going to
attempt to explain not just the
fighting immediately before the
assault on the fulcrum of the
Gustav Line Cassino but also the
much-neglected battles above and
below the great monastery. Then,
in a fourth and final article, I will
concentrate on operations around
Anzio, which, t hough almo st 70 miles
from Cassino, were an integral part ofthe Allies assault on the Gustav L ine.
Now, I must come clean. I grew up
with my fathers memories of the Italian
campaign, the successful conclusion of
Cracking CassinoPART 1:THE BATTLE FOR THE MIGNANO GAPPatrick Mercerbegins
a four-part study of the
pivotal struggle of the
WWII Italian campaign.
Allimages:
WIPL,unlessotherwisestated
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the German generals differed on how
the ground should be defended. Field-
Marshal Albert Kesselring, latterly a
Luftwaffe off icer, believed that every
inch of ground should be contested as
far south as possible, while Rommel
was convinced that any defence much
below Florence and the Apennines
would preclude effective concentration
of force and be vulnerable to
amphibious outf lanking operations.
www.military-history.org 11MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY
My father argued that it was nothing
so trivia l, but I fear he wa s wrong. Here
is the judgement of General von Senger
und Etterlin, the commander of X IV
Panzer Korps in the early phases of
the Italian campaign:
The classic teachings of war stipulate
that the enemy should be attacked at
his weakest points, not his strongest.
Our softest spots were Sardinia and
Corsica. These were unsinkable aircraft
carriers which the Allies could have
used as bases for fighter cover for an
operation between Pisa and Elba.
Even the enemy seem to have
agreed that the whole campaign
was misconceived.
After their defeat in North A fric a
and Sicily, and once it was clear that an
assault on mainland Italy wa s intended,
LeftMapoftheItali
ancampaign,
showingthe
majordefensiveline
sconstructedbytheGermans.
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MONTE CASSINO
12 MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY March 2014
faced in November and December 1943:
incessant, sheeting rain, sleet, and low
cloud. As well as making life miserable
for the troops on the ground, it made
it very difficult for the Al lies to exploit
their air superiority.
Even in winter, though, the
massifs around the Mignano area
are magnificent. This little town lies
astride Route 6 at the narrowest part of
a flat-bottomed valley which, once the
rivers Rapido, Garigliano, and Gari
have been crossed, turns into the Liri
Valley and provides excellent going for
vehicles on the route to Rome.
Mignano, though, is overlooked by
the towering Monte Sammucro in the
north, and the solid block of Monte
Camino in the south; they stand there
like two sentries. Tantalisingly, to thenorth-west, the Monastery of Cassino
can be seen. But running along
the base of the valley like an angry
hedgehog is the spine of Monte
Rotondo and Monte Lungo, lower
than the surrounding ground but
providing a natural barrier. Indeed,
the whole place is a defenders dream,
a playground for gunners, mortar-men,
and their observers, and a hell-hole for
tanks and infantry.
When von Senger took over XIV
Panzer Korps in October just as theAllies closed with the eastern f lank
of the Winter Line, he adjusted the
deployment of his troops. In the
south, 94th Infantry Division held
the shore around the mouth of the
Garigliano and the lower defensive
positions where the Winter and
Gustav lines merged into one.
To their north was 15th Panzer
Grenadier, whose sector stretched
up to the slopes of Monte Camino,
where they fl anked 3rd Pa nzer
Grenadier, about whom von Sengerhad doubts. He correctly predicted
that the Allies would attack the centre
of his position, held by 3rd Panzer
Grenadiers, but the division contained
a large proportion of mainly Polish
Volksdeutschenwho were serving on
probation, could not be promoted,
and had performed badly at Salerno.
The more reliable 305th Infantry
Division held the northern sector.
Razorback
On 3 November, the fighting around
Pozzili prompted von Senger to say this:
I noticed the enemy was swift in the
attack and did not shun close-in
immensely strong, while others were
hasty constructions.
After Saler no (September 1943)
and the opposed crossing of the
Volturno, the Allies strategic a ims
became very clear to the Germans.
While Montgomerys smaller British
8th Army would push along theAdriatic Coast, Mark Clarks stronger
Anglo-American 5th Army would stick
to the opposite coast, with Rome as the
All ies ulti mate goal and Clark better
placed to secure it.
To stop them, Kesselring made
reinforcement of the Gustav Line,
which was anchored on Monte Cassino,
his main effort. To buy more time,
he established a delaying line to the
south-east, which the Germans called
the Bernhardt, and the Allies the
Winter Line.
The Winter Line
The Winter Line was so-named because
of the dreadful weather that all sides
Though Kesselring considered Hitler
obsequious towards Rommel, on this
occasion the f ield-marshals views
prevailed and, as Commander-in-Chief
South, he was handed the opportunity
to test his judgement.
One of many misconceptions about
the campaign is that the Germans
constructed and fought from only a
handful of deep defensive lines. In
fact, over 40 separate lines were built,
the skill of Wehrmacht engineers
being combined with the work of
forced labour battalions supplied by
the Todt organisation in a massive,
rolling operation. Some lines were
AboveItaly was supposed to be the sof
underbelly o Axis Europe. It was the opposite:
its narrow width and rugged terrain provided the
outnumbered but superbly proessional German
Wehrmacht with a series o strong deensive
lines rom which to contest the Anglo-American
advance up the peninsula. Here, British troops o
the 5th Army move orwards at Monte Camino.
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www.military-history.org 13MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY
if I had not found a live .303 round with
headstamp 1943, I would have doubted
my map reading.But, on 6 November, 201st Guards
Brigade launched their attack, with
3rd Battalion The Coldstream Guards
assaulting and seizing the village of
Calabritto before 6th Battalion The
Grenadier Guards passed through and
began the first of many climbs up those
dreadful slopes. The Guards dubbed the
rocky landscape Razorback, Barearse,
Twin Tits, and other picturesque names,
before struggling up the steep slopes
fighting. Evidently, the Americans
were no longer affected by the novelty
of battle in Sicily they had hardlylearnt how to adapt themselves to the
conditions and their attacks still
lacked spirit. Here they showed no
such shortcomings.
So, with his troops facing rapid advances,
he reinforced with 26th Panzer and the
famous 29th Panzer Grenadiers under
Fries, while the 15th Panzer Grenadiers
were realigned to defend the whole of
Monte Camino.
The weather worsened, but the
Allies key battle-winner, Enigma andY Force (the special signa ls unit that
had cracked the Germans VHF codes),
gave them the intelligence edge. They
decided to launch 56th (London)
Division against the Camino position,
with 36th Texas Division poised to
assault across the Mignano Gap and
up towards the village of San Pietro.
Veterans of Salerno and the Volturno,
the Londoners were destined to become
one of the hardest fighting divisions in
the whole campaign. Camino cemented
their reputation.I have stood at the south-eastern
approaches to Monte Camino and find
it hard to believe that in fantry could
attack up such rocky precipices. Indeed,
MIGNANO TODAY
Mignano and the surrounding villages are a busy community, but do not look here for beautiful Medieval
buildings or atmospheric Baroque churches Allied and German high explosive destroyed them all in the
Second World War. There are, however, monuments aplenty.
There is a balcony below the little museum in San Pietro dedicated to the 36th Texas Division, while
hidden deep in the bush above Guards Wood in the lee of Monastery Hill is one of the most remarkable
monuments I have ever seen. A simple concrete plaque remembers the British who fell here, erected by
the troops who followed on behind 56th Division and who buried their dead. Yet it is in French, as it was
erected by the Moroccan Division.
I had never heard of ordinary French troops commemorating ordinary British troops anywhere, but
they did it here, in honour of a sacrice obviously so heavy.
The winter war in the mountains. Men
of the Green Howards advance through
snow-covered hills in winter 1943/1944.
RightGerman heavy artillery in the Italian campaign.
Secure in rock-cut bunkers and emplacements,
Kesselrings outnumberedmen were ableto exact a
heavy price in Allied casualties for eachpositiongained.
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MONTE CASSINO
14 MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY March 2014
history stating that, Four hundred and
eighty-three Grenadiers had gone up
Camino and only 263 returned.
Just as the British had found Camino
almost impregnable, so too had US
forces been battered in the centre
and on the other shoulder of the gap.
Where the western slopes of C amino
run into the cli ffs of Monte La Difensa,
the US 7th Regiment had tried both
to outflank Camino and to conform to
the attacks on Monte Rotondo by otherunits operating in the valley bottom.
But they had failed. Clark had swallowed
the bait as the German s had hoped:
having thrown his men against their
rock-like defences and found them
unbreakable, he relapsed for the
time-being into passivity.
With little aircraft activity because of
the weather and only sporadic shelling
to harass the Germans, for about two
weeks 5th Army caught its breath while
XIV Panzer Korps dug like demons.
The Cassino position was extensively
improved, while the little v illage of
San Pietro on the southern slopes of
Sammucro was turned into a bastion
and eventually garrisoned by the
Guards, says it all. He and Guardsman
Hollis had been firing a 2-in mortar with
surprisingly ineffective results when a Scots
Guardsman asked if they could spare some
HE rounds. Beale leapt up from his sangar
yelling, Those things are no fucking use.
Im going to get the bastards w ith this.
He then lunged towards the nearest enemy
brandishing his entrenching tool. But two
mortar rounds landed either side of him
as he forged up hill and no trace of his
body was ever found.
Bloody CaminoThe 7th Ox and Bucks Light Infantry and
machine-gunners from the 6th Cheshires
were thrown into the maelstrom. It was
no good. By last light on 12 November
the Guards had been withdrawn, and
a day later 56th Division was ordered
to break off the attack.
They did so with remarkable skill,
the Germans still believing the British
held the position up until 14 November,
when Panzer Grenadiers bega n to
advance tentatively and discovered
that the bird had flown.
So ended the f irst, brave, bloody
attempt on Camino, 6th Grenadiers
towards the tiny chapel at the highest
point on Monastery Hill.
Between dawn on the 7 and on the
11 November, an epic as grand and awful
as anything that has ever happened in the
Guards history took place. Grenadiers
were reinforced by the Scots and followedby the Coldstreams as 201st Guards
Brigade first threw itself against the
German high-points, and then stubbornly
refused to give an inch of ground as the
Panzer Grenadiers counter-attacked.
Just as Sandbag Battery at Inkermann
became synonymous w ith Guardsmens
grit, so a scrubby patch between and below
the heights won the soubriquet Guards
Wood. Stand there today and you can
still see the rings of rock sangars that the
soldiers built, find scraps of barbed wire
and litters of spent cartridges, and almost
hear the bangs of grenades and the howls
of the wounded.
The charge of Guardsman Beale,
3 Company, 6th Battalion, Grenadier
AbovePlan of the Mignano campaign, Nov-Dec
1943. The Germans improvised defensive lines
so as to slow the Allied advance and provide
them with the time they needed to perfect the
Gustav Line anchored on Cassino.
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AboveBritish and Canadian soldiers in action
during the struggle to break through to the
Gustav Line in late 1943.
Calabritto on the far left of the Allies
assault, shielding 56th London Division,which, led by 169th Queens Brigade, was
to attack Camino again.
As the two flanking moves developed,
on 2 December it was planned that the
newly arrived 1st Special Service Force
would scale Monte La Difensa. They were
allowed three days for this before the
(untested) Italian 1st Motorised Brigade
was scheduled to attack Monte Lungo in
the centre of the gap.
One of the most glamorous units in
the Italian campaign, 1st Special Service
Force were a mixture of US and Canadian
men who, their recruiting pitch said,
should come from an outdoor, woodsman,
explorer, or hunting background, and
who were carefully trained for mountain
the Sangro positions on 20 November.
Clearly, a combined effort by both
Montys 8th and Clarks 5th Armies
should over-stretch the Germans. But
while hundreds of pencils were being
blunted in the preparation of complexorders, offensive operations all but
ceased. The combat troops and airmen
were only too pleased, but t hey had no
knowledge of the difficulties they were
storing up for themselves.
The Second Battle of Camino
Operation Raincoat was launched after
two days of clear weather in which the
Allied air-forces hammered all known
enemy positions and a feint was carried
out by VI Corps. On 1 December, the
36th Texas Division moved against Monte
Sammucro above San Pietro, which, if
heavily defended, would be attacked
in due course. Simultaneously, 46th
North Midland Division moved against
crack 2nd Battalion of the 15th Panzer
Grenadiers, reinforced with plenty of
artillery, sappers, and armour.
The village was destined to be fought
over three times, and has been left as
a monument to this day. Standingamong the ruins and thinking about
the number of lives lost in taking San
Pietro and cracking the much-improved
Gustav Line as a whole, one wonders
about Clarks inactivity.
In his autobiographyCalculated
Risk, Clark makes little of this lack
of momentum, but it must rank as
one of the worst mistakes of his time in
command, a fearful piece of brass-hats
disease. The dust-devil of maps and
air-photos, planning data, ammunition
and logistics calculations, meetings and
conferences can only be imagined.
Clark was soon under mounting
pressure to act, as Montgomery
announced his intention of attacking
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MONTE CASSINO
16 MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY March 2014
equivalent of British brigades) were the first
to attempt San Pietro. Recce patrols were
sent out on 8 December and over the
next few days, trying to assess the strength
of 2nd Battalion, 15th Panzer Grenadier
Regiment (the Germans likewise had
regiments equivalent to British brigades).
This was the 143rds old enemy from theSalerno battles.
On 8 December, 1st Battalion 143rd
made some progress on Monte Sammucro,
but 2nd and 3rd Battalions failed to
penetrate the wire and mines as t hey
approached from the south-east.
A second assault was tried the next day,
led by 2nd Battalion, and Corporal
Gallagher, who had been at Salerno and
would fight at Anzio, said it was the most
terrible concentration of f ire he had
ever seen: it was const ant, never ending.By 10 December, this attack had also
stalled. General Walker, the divisional
commander, was horrified by the 61%
casualties that his battalions had suffered.
Clark, though, when Walker went to see
him and explained the situation, had little
sympathy. He found Walker low in mind,
remarking, I dont see why, as his division
hadnt been in action long.
On 14/15 December, 36th Division
tried again. As the Italians were
launched once more against Monte
Lungo in the val ley and 1st Battalion143rd against the slopes of Sammucro,
16 tanks were sent at San Pietro from
the east. T he advance failed hopelessly,
as much from the unsuitability of the
ground as from enemy action, but this
did not stop the two battalions from
throwing themselves time and again
at the village.
It would be satisfying to report that the
143rd Regiment finally took San Pietro,
but when they entered it on 17 December
it was in fact because the enemy had
withdrawn rather than be outflankedfrom north and south.
A much-depleted division pushed on
to the next objective, San Vittore. But on
30 December the T-Patchers were relieved
in the line by 34th Division, the Red
Bulls. After one of their hardest fights
of the campaign, the Texans were down
to 33% of effective strength, the 143rd
needing 1,100 replacements.
But at last the way was open for
5th Army to close with Cassino and
the Gustav Line.
have been wholly impossible without
precise artillery support.
Too often, the guns and the Gunners
are taken for granted in accounts like this,
but the Allied terror crashes caused von
Senger to remark, what I saw astonished
and dismayed me. The Camino Massif
was under a bombardment of an intensityI had not witnessed since the big battles
of the First World War.
Finally, by dint of crawling and
dodging, by sharp dashes covered by
Bren and Vickers fire, with grenade
and bayonet but above all magnificent
leadership and guts, the Queens drove
the enemy out. By the night of 6/7
December, the whole of the Camino and
Difensa position was in Allied hands.
The Queens, though, had paid as heavy
a price as 1st Special Ser vice Force had:
2/5th Queens, for instance, lost 26 killed,
53 wounded, and 19 missing some of
whom were crushed to death when the
roof of the chapel was blown in on them
in the final dash.
Sam Huston and the TexansThe fortunes of the Texans, or T
Patchers, over the same few days areequally chilling. Not only do the ruins
still stand, but Sam Huston made the
eponymousBattle for San Pietrofilm while
the dead were still being cleared from the
village and sobering stuff it is.
Designed as propaganda, Major Huston,
as he then was, chose to take close-up film
not only of the smashed bodies of Germans,
but also of dead GIs being laced into blood-
stained, white body bags. The commentary
is remarkably restrained, and if some of
the more mawkish footage of smiling,
skipping Italian children is ignored, it givesa much clearer account of the fighting than
anything I can write. But I will try.
The three battalions of 36th Divisions
143rd Regiment (US regiments were the
and cold-weather operations. Consisting
of two battalions, their only combat
experience had been in the Aleutian
Islands, which they had taken with hardly
a shot fired before being sent to Italy and
then attached to 36th Division.
The story of the assault on La Difensa
is a book in itself, and it must rate as oneof the most daring and successful special
forces attacks of the whole war. All the
Forcemens training was put to use, as
ropes had to be rigged for many of the
ascents, while first-class scouting and
recce work kept the enemy at bay.
A forward patrol base was established
in a scrubby pine wood after the first days
climb, but as 1st Special Ser vice Force
approached the summit, German artillery
found them and the fighting soon became
general. La Difensa and the neighbouringpeak, Remanata, had to be taken if the
Queens Brigade assault on Camino was
not to be shot to pieces.
Eventually, after a stream of gallant
acts, both peaks were taken and on
8/9 December, 1st Special Service Force
was relieved. But at what a cost: they had
lost 511, almost 50% of their strength, with
73 dead, 9 missing, and 313 wounded or
injured, many with pneumonia and trench
foot. Their sacrifice had more than paid
off, however, for without their daring the
Camino Massif could not have been taken.
Squirrel NutkinSo it was that, during the second attack
on Camino proper, one of the most
gifted commanders of the campaign
emerged. Lieutenant-Colonel J Y Whitfield
had assumed command of 169th
Queens Brigade when its commander
was wounded, and in the succeeding
attack he lived up to his nickname of
Squirrel Nutkin, being everywhere at
once, building confidence and morale,
leading from the front, and burnishinga fast-growing reputation that was to
see him leading his division against
the Gothic Line.
Like the Difensa action, the Queens
Brigades daring is an odyssey in its own
right which can only be appreciated by
standing on the ground and gasping at
its boldness. Slightly higher than the little
chapel, the Germans had built a concrete
emplacement known as The Watchtower
that commanded all the approaches to the
peak. Its foundations are still there, as are
the machine-gun emplacements that wereblown out of the solid rock. The whole
complex is remarkably strong, and covers
ground that is desperately difficult for
infantry to assault something that would
Patrick Merceris a former soldier turned
military historian.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Two mortar roundslanded either sideof GuardsmanBeale as he forgedup hill and notrace of his bodywas ever found.
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Guided Battlefield ToursWe are an established company and specialisein tours to World War 1 and World War 2sites. We know that every tour memberhas a personal reason to travel with us.We limit the numbers on each tour; thisallows you to travel in comfort and allowsus to ensure that your reasons for travellingwith us are met.
www.guidedbattlefieldtours.co.uk
Telephone: 01633 258207
email:
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March 2014
AT POWERS
Franz Ferdinands death had erased the
stain of il legitimacy from the Habsburg
succession caused by his morganatic
marriage to Sophie Chotek, and in this
restoration of order his uncle detected
the hand of God: such, at first, was the
chief significance given by the ruler of
the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the
assassination at Sarajevo.
Franz Josef had come to the throne
as the 1848 revolutions were smashed bythe cannon and gallows of reactionary
Europe. He lived in and ruled Austria-
Hungary for the next 68 years, but he
remained always in the shadow of the
events of his accession, acutely and
eternally aware of the fragility of the state.
It was a relic of a distant age, a time
when states were mere amalgams of bits,
assembled by t he chances of dynastic
inheritance and intrigue. It had begun
in 1526, when Ferdinand Habsburg,
Archduke of Austr ia, had become
King of Bohemia and King of Hungary,though it was to be 300 years before
the German, Czech, and Magyar subjects
of the Habsburgs were to be united in
a single polity.
Perhaps it was for this reason the fact
that the empire he ruled was a creaking
anachronism in a n age of nation-states
that Franz Josef never evolved into
an archetypal tyrant. Instead, though
convinced of his divine right to r ule,
of the greatness of the dynasty, and
of his paternalistic duties as emperor,
he was less a dictator than a feudalbureaucrat a dim, unimaginative,
desk-bound official, devoted to his work.
Cocooned in palaces, official functions,
and court pomp, he looked out with
uncomprehending bitterness at the
threatening world beyond.
TheSerbian viper
Austria-Hungary, centrally placed in
Europe and a multinational empire
strapped together by nothing more
than a dynasty and an army, was beset
by enemies, both within and without.
It was a brightly coloured glass bauble
liable to shatter into fragments at a single
blow. It was this that made Franz Josef
an arch-conservative, Europes foremost
The Emperor closed his
eyes for several minutes
and was lost in thought,
before exclaiming,
Horrible! The Almighty
permits no challenge A Higher Power
has restored the order that I wa s
unhappily unable to maintain.
It was a bizarre response to the news
that his nephew, Franz Ferdinand,
heir to the Habsburg throne, had
been assassinated by a Bosnian Serb
nationalist student on 28 June 1914,
and one that reveals much about the
anachronistic character of the dynastic
regime of Franz Josef.
18 MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY
Austria-
HungaryPRISONHOUSEOF NATIONS
In anticipation of the
centenary of the First World
War, we begin a five-part
series on the Great Powers
of 1914, and the July crisis
that led to war. MHMEditorNeil Faulkner analyses the
internal workings of the
Habsburg Empire. Allimages:
WIPL,u
nlessotherwisestated
LeftFranz Josef, Emperor of Austria and
King of Hungary (1848-1916).
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COUNTDOWNTO
WARThe fact that the Magyars were a bare
majority in the Kingdom of Hungary
10 million as against 8 million others
had the further consequence of dividing
the peasantry on ethnic lines and
encouraging Magyar peasants to identify
with their own nobles and officials as
security against dispossession in a race
war. The Magyars were transformed
from potential rebels into the hussars
of Habsburg repression. The Ausgleich
locked up about 15 million Central
European peasants in a bureaucratic,
sectarian, semi-feudal state.
The Polish liteFrom 1867 onwards, two large iron
trusses, and a third of medium size,
propped up the rotting hulk of Habsburg
power. The first w as the German-
speaking ruling class of landowners,
bourgeois, and state functionaries in
the Austrian half of the Dual Monarchy.
The second was the Magyar nobility in
the Hungarian half. The third was the
Polish nobility of Galicia.
The mountains and marshy plainson the northern side of the Carpathians
were, like the Hungarian Plain to the
south, little developed: Galicia was
a landscape of estates, farms, and
tradition. The landowners and officials
were Polish, and the Aust rians ruled
here with a light touch.
Like the Magyars, the Poles faced
an enemy within, in this case some
3 million Little Russians; and the effect,
as in Hungar y, was to afford the Polish
nobility a mechanism for dividing the
peasantry on ethnic lines. Moreover,as they looked across the border at the
other two fragments of their long-since-
dismembered national state to the
German- and Russian-occupied parts of
the former Kingdom
of Poland the
(Ukrainians), 3.2 million Croats,
2.9 million Romanians, 2 million Slovaks,
2 million Serbs, 1.3 million Slovenes, and
0.7 million Italians. Their solution was
to incorporate the 10 million Magyars of
Hungary as a second ruling nation.
The Ausgleich (Compromise) of 1867
created a Dual Monarchy, in which Franz
Josef served as both Emperor of Austria
and King of Hungary, while each state
had its own government, assembly, and
courts. There were common ministers
of foreign affairs, war, and finance, but
other ministries were paralleled in thetwo states. Two prime ministers for
Austria and Hungary respectively, and
the three common ministers, together
formed the joint council of ministers
accountable to the emperor.
TheHungarian liteThe Ausgleich was a g ilded cage. Roughly
one in ten of the Magyars were nobles:
feudalists who paid no land-tax, sat in
county assemblies, and voted in national
elections to the Hungarian Diet. They
ranged from great magnates to decayedgentry with holdings smaller than the
better-off peasants. Only a third of
this class was viable able to live on
the income from private estates so
that incorporation into the Austro-
Hungarian state came as salvation
to the lesser Magyar gentry, many of
whom were now tra nsfor med into
government functionaries.
By the early 20th century, the
expanding bureaucratic apparatus had
found employment for a quarter of a
million of them. Local government, thepolice force, state railways, the post office,
education and health services, al l offered
a subsidy to Magyar feudalism, making
the descendants of those who had fought
for Hungarian independence in 1848 into
dependants of the Habsburg dynasty.
defender of the status quo, a ruler who
prized international peace and order
above all else. So at first he missed the
significance of his nephews assassination;
he thought it a private matter between the
family and their god.
His military chief-of-staff had other
ideas. We must crush this viper, Serbia,
announced Count Franz Conrad von
Htzendorf, who is recorded pressing
for war against Serbia in the councils
of the Austrian state no less than 25
times between his appointment as head
of the army in 1906 and the outbreakof war in 1914.
Conrad, like many of Europes political
and military elite, was a Social Darwinist,
who believed that history comprised an
elemental struggle for existence between
nations, and that recognition of this
was the only real and rational basis for
policy-making. For Conrad, there was no
idealism in international affairs, simply
force. National strength rested on military
power, nothing else, and the army
should be used to defend the monarchy,
the empire, and its ruling Austrianand Magyar lites against the threat of
insurgent nationalism.
Serbia was Slav nationalisms centre
of gravity, as well as Russias Trojan
Horse in the Balkans. A victory for
Teutonic blood and iron, followed by
dismemberment of Serbia, would cow
Slav nationalism in Central and South-
Eastern Europe for a generation. Or so
Conrad professed to believe.
TheDual Monarchy
The Emperor Franz Josef cautious,conservative, of limited vision, above all
deeply fearful had consistently resisted
Conrads calls to arms. For him, the
essence of statecraft was to avoid any
sudden move that might destabilise the
delicate framework of Habsburg power.
For 66 years, this policy had kept the
genie of 1848 bottled up.
Excluded from the rest of Germany
by their defeat in the six-week Austro-
Prussian War of 1866, Austr ias
12 million Teutons could not have hoped,
in an epoch of nationalism, to dominate
indefinitely the empires 39 million or so
others 10 million Magyars (Hungarians),
6.6 million Czechs, 5 million Poles,
4 million Little Russians/Ruthenians
www.military-history.org 19MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY
We must crush thisviper, Serbia.
Count Conrad von HtzendorfAustro-Hungarian Chief-of-Staff
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20 MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY March 2014
AT POWERS
of industry and proletarian power. With
2 million inhabitants, it was the fourth
largest city in Europe, and though, by
Austrian standards at least, ethnically
homogeneous about 80% of the
residents were German in other ways
Vienna was deeply divided.
Belle poqueViennaThe Ringstrasse defined official Vienna.
A wide, curving boulevard constructed
around the old town in 1857, it was lined
with grand neo-classical buildings, and
enclosed the palaces and churches of theMedieval core of the city. Here was the
Vienna of the Habsburgs, the imperial
aristocracy, and government bureaucracy.
Beyond the Ringstrasse were the
theatres, art-dealers, cake-shops, and
ample apartments of the minor nobility
and the bourgeoisie. This was a city of
burgeoning modernity and culture,
of trams and telephones, of opera and
cabaret, of Brahms, Mahler, and Strauss.
It was the Vienna that professed to
be scandalised when Isadora Duncan
danced barefoot, and Sigmund Freudexplained the sexual complexes of
children; yet also the Vienna that
sheltered and applauded them.
Beyond the bourgeois districts, in
narrow streets of terraces and tenements,
was yet a nother V ienna: that of t he
workers , t he poor, a nd t he decayed
petty-bourgeoisie. Among the residents
was a self- obsessed loner, drifter, a nd
failed artist, who, having dropped from
the lowest ledge of the middle-class into
a doss-house, was fast morphing into a
visceral racist: Adolf Hitler.Well before the outbreak of war, the
25-year-old Hitler had found his enemy:
Wherever I went, I began to see Jews,
and the more I saw, the more sharply they
became distinguished in my eyes from the
rest of humanity. In Hitlers mind the
mind of a little man driven mad by failure
the ubiquitous Jew was both a capitalist
profiteer and a labour agitator propagating
the Jewish doctrine of Marxism.
The red spectreIf embryonic Fascism was one symbol
of the empires decay, the spectre of
proletarian revolt was another. When the
Socialist Party announced that it would
march down the Prater on 1 May down
of it, hurling paving stones at dragoons
charging with drawn sabres, then
clambering over garden walls to escape.The drop-outs and radicals of the
Prague cafs were merely the most
flamboyant expression of a deep social
malaise. The coalminers and textile-
workers of northern Bohemia were a new
working-class. Torn from the traditional
life-ways of peasant villages and thrust
into the squalor of primitive capitalism,
the workers elemental protests found
voice in anarcho-syndicalist doctrines that
stressed direct action and spontaneous
struggle. Czech nationalism was energised
by social protest.
An industrial revolutionAustria-Hungarys industrialisation was
late-starting and uneven, but substantial
nonetheless. Between 1890 and 1914,
Austrian railway construction matched
that of G ermany, creating a network
one-third as dense as that of the industrial
colossus to the north. Austrias merchant
marine tonnage was doubling every ten
years, and her fleet had surpassed that
of Russia by 1914. The urban population
had grown during the 19th century from5% to 20% of the total, and in the first
decade of the new century the proportion
of the workforce employed in agriculture
dropped below 60%.
True, one in three of the industrial
workforce was employed in domestic
or sweated industries typically
women (and children) doing miserable
underpaid piece-work in cottages,
tenements, and backyards but there
were also the mines, the railways, the
textile-mills, the arms-works, and other
big factory complexes.
Vienna encapsulated the dynamic
mix of old and new. SparklingbellepoqueVienna was at once the ancientseat of the Habsburgs and a new centre
Poles observed forms of Prussian and
Tsarist oppression that contrasted
notably with the ramshackle andrelatively accommodating rule of the
Austrian Habsburgs.
So the Polish landlords of Galicia had
little taste for nationalist revolution. In its
final decades, therefore, the Habsburg
dynasty, with its traditional entourage of
Teuton notables, was able to confront the
challenges of modernity in alliance with
the relics of Magyar and Polish feudalism.
TheCzechcankerThe 6.6 million Czechs of Bohemia,
Moravia, and Silesia were another matter.Though trialism had been much mooted
the idea that the dualism enjoyed by
German and Magyar might be extended
to the Czechs the concept had been
still-born. The dynastys efforts at reform
had foundered on the rocks of German
and Magyar opposition to dilution of
national privilege.
For sure, watered-down autonomy
had won the endorsement of a layer of
conservative Czechs, who formed a loyalist
establishment in alliance with the leaders
of the 3 million German-speakers in thethree provinces. But the collaborationist
Old Czechs were firmly opposed by
a Young Czech movement agitating
for real independence and g aining
in strength by t he year.
Jaroslav Haek, the dis solute
bohemian anarchist who created
The Good Soldier vejk, was born inPrague in 1883. The repressive political
atmosphere of a c ity dominated by an
alliance of dynasty, church, bullying
German officials, and smug Czech
bourgeois radicalised the teenage
Haek. When clashes between Czechs
and Germans escalated, and Prague
was flooded with police and troops,
Haek and his gang were in the midst
Dictatorship andforce are justified.
Count Czernin
Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister
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COUNTDOWNTO
WARthat lacked direction and resolve. Because
of this, in the days following the news, thehardliners insistence that it was necessary
to act, and act decisively, gained ground.
Domestic weakness engendered a bullish
response to the Bosnian crisis.
Conrads vision was of a world remade
by war. The contradictions of the Austro-
Hungarian Empires existence were to
be resolved by the military destruction of
Serbia and the remodelling of the Balkans
under Habsburg hegemony. The Dual
Monarchy would be replaced by a Triple
Monarchy of Austria-Bohemia, Hungary,
and South Slavia.
Only an aggressive policy with
positive goals can save this state from
destruction, he announced. Others
agreed. If the moment passes w ithout
action, men told each other, Austria-
Hungarys weakness will doom her to
dismemberment by riva l states and
national revolts. Serbia must learn
to fear us again, wired the Austrian
representative in Belgrade. Otherwise,
our old border regions, and not just the
annexed provinces, will be in danger.
TheRussian BearBut what would Russia do? Austrians
and Russians had clashed before in the
Balkans, and the Tsar, posing as protector
of the Slavs, was patron to the Serbs. It
would be as damaging to Russian prestige
to do nothing if Serbia were attacked, as it
would be for the Austrians to refrain from
attacking. And Austria could not risk a
war against both Serbia and Russia.
The extension of the franchise an
attempt to suffocate popular resistancein a blanket of liberal constitutionalism
failed; instead, politicians divided on
class and ethnic lines into intractable
blocs that paralysed the assemblies.
In 1909, parliamentary government in
the Austro-Hungarian Empire broke
down completely.
The duty laid upon the ruler by God,
announced Count Czernin, the Foreign
Minister, is to lead his people, and if the
people as in our monarchy are not
ripe to behave with reason, then they
must be compelled. Dictatorship and
force are justified The monarchys
way to healt h l ies along the path of
Caesarian absolutism!
Government by decreeThe now-discredited Austrian Prime
Minister who had introduced universal
suffrage was sacked, and the empire
was henceforward ruled by emergency
decree. Five years later, in March
1914, with parliamentary debates as
rancorous and inconclusive as ever,the Austrian Reichstag was suspended.
But if the hardliners were in control
of the government, their authority was
challenged in the streets by a wave of
protests that summer. It was, therefore,
a weak, unpopular, embattled regime
that received the news on 28 June 1914
that the heir to the throne had been
assassinated in Sarajevo.
Pervading the upper ranks of the
imperial state was a sense of drift, of
being buffeted by events, of a government
a tree-lined boulevard where usually
only the carriages of the rich were to beseen there was panic in official Vienna.
Merchants put up iron shutters. Parents
locked children indoors. Not a carriage
appeared on the streets. The entire city
police force was deployed in the Prater,
and troops stood ready in reserve.
In the event, the workers came with
their families, the men and women
marching four abreast in closed ranks,
wear ing the red car nations of t heir
party and singing the Internationale,
while their children gambolled around
them in the green and open spaces of
downtown Vienna. No one was insulted
or threatened; no windows were smashed
or shops looted. And the workers and
their families soon marched back to their
districts. For now.
Leading members of the Habsburg lite
sensed the rising tension. The growth of
Austro-Hungarian capitalism had created
new class forces, new discontents, new
fracture-lines; and these modern conflicts
had reconfigured and recharged the old
antagonisms between the dominant andoppressed nationalities of the empire.
When Bohemian miners took on the
coal-bosses, they faced Habsburg police.
In back-street Vienna, socialist workers
confronted German nationalists. The
Czech radical Haek, for whom the spirit
of alien authority pervaded the local
police station, was both nationalist street-
fighter and labour agitator.
An unstable regimeThe Habsburg regime responded with
faltering reform, gradually extendingthe right to vote, finally introducing full
universal suffrage in 1907, and granting
enhanced powers of self-government
where, as in Polish Galicia, it seemed safe
to do so. But still the tension rose.
The 1905 Russian Revolution triggered
major clashes in Vienna and Prague that
year, a nd in 1912 rioting broke out i n
Budapest: all three major cities of the
empire were cauldrons of discontent.
Yet the space for further compromise
was shrinking, as Teuton and especially
Magyar chauvinism gained traction fromthe crisis, and as Habsburg hardliners
grew fearful that reform under pressure
would communicate weakness especially
when reform did not work.
A strangelight began tofall and growupon the map
of Europe.Winston ChurchillFirst Lord of the
Admiralty
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22 MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY
AT POWERS
The Austro-
HungarianEmpire in 1914
HEAD OF STATE
Emperor and KingFranz Joseph I
CHIEF OF THE
GENERAL STAFF
(de factoArmy C-in-C)Count Franz Conradvon Htzendorf
POPULATION
51,000,000
ETHNIC COMPOSITION
Austrians 24%
Hungarians 20%
Czechs 13%
Poles 10%
Ukrainians 8%
Croats 6%
Romanians 6%
Slovaks 4%
Serbs 4%
Slovenes 3%
Italians 1%
Bosnians 1%
WAR INDUSTRIES
SKODAWORKS Pilsen, Bohemia
the Empires major source o artillery
and ammunition.
STEYR MANNLICHERSteyr, Upper Austria
manuacturer o ries and pistols or the
Austro-Hungarian armed orces.
AUSTRODAIMLERWiener Neustadt, Lower Austria
a major manuacturer o military and civilian
motor vehicles.
GANZWORKS Budapest the largest engineering
consortium in Hungary, producing motor vehicles
and aircraf.
NATIONAL RAILWAYSWORKSHOPPilsen, Bohemia the largest rail-repair shop in the Empire.
STABILIMENTO TECNICO TRIESTINOTrieste, Istria
the Empires largest ship-building company, producing
naval and merchant vessels.
MILITARY
EFFECTIVENESSThe sheer number o nationalities within
the army posed considerable problems
basic commands were given in German,
but each regiment had at least one
officially recognised regimental language
or day-to-day use (some had as many
as three!). Friction between the various
nationalities was commonplace, and
did nothing or overall efficiency.
Soon afer the war began, it was
ound that units with a high proportion
o certain Slavnationalities (primarily
Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, Croats, andSlovenes) were prone to desert, or at
least readily surrender to the Russians,
withwhomthey sympathised as ellow
Slavs. However, almost all the peoples o
the Empire unitedto ght ercely against
Italian orcesollowing Italys declaration
o war in1915.
Economic problems bedevilled the
army throughout the decade beore
the war its limited budget restricted
the numbers o conscriptswho could
be ully trained. The lack o unding
also imposed serious delays on the
programme to modernise the Empiresartillery, which, apart rom the ormidable
305mm super-heavy howitzers, was
largely obsoleteby 1914.
By 1914 the Empires railwaynetwork had a total o
45,850km(over 90,600 miles)o track
March 2014
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FIELDARTILLERY
100mm Feldhaubitze M14
100mm Feldhaubitze M9980mm Feldkanone M05
HEAVY ARTILLERY
Skoda 305mm Mrser M11 Skoda 240mm Mrser M98
www.military-history.org 23MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY
COUNTDOWNTO
WAR
ARMY STRENGTH:
440,000 RISING TO
1,800,000ON MOBILISATION
ARMY ETHNIC MIXAustrians 29%
Hungarians 19%
Czechs 15%
Poles 9%
Ukrainians 8%
Croats 5%
Romanians 5%
Slovaks 4.5%
Serbs 1%
Slovenes 2.5%
Italians 1%
Bosnians 1%
NAVAL STRENGTH
MEDIUM ARTILLERY
150mm schwere
Feldhaubitze M94
MOUNTAINARTILLERY
100mm Gebirgshaubitze M8
70mm Gebirgsgeschtz M99
MACHINE GUN
8mmSchwarzlose MG
M07/12
RIFLE8mm Steyr-MannlicherM1895
6 older pre-dreadnought battleships58torpedo boats
10
observationballoons
39operational aircraf
3 dreadnought battleships,plus 1 under construction
6 operational pre-dreadnought battleships
9 light cruisers
8 river monitors(the Danube Flotilla)
15destroyers
6 submarines
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24 MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY March 2014
AT POWERS
Magyar wobblesWhen a C ouncil of M ini sters was
convened in Vienna on 7 July, Count
Istvn Tisza, the Hungarian Prime
Minister, argued that a strike against
Serbia would provoke Russian
intervention and the dreadful calamity
of a European war.
The crisis was revealing cracks in the
empires ruling coalition of Habsburg
dynasty, German bourgeoisie, and
Magyar gentry. The latter, a class
of decayed landowners propped upby government salaries, lived in fear
that their national privileges might be
diluted by the fur ther incorporation
of Slavs into t he Habsburg polity.
Tisza horse-breeder, Bible-basher,
Habsburg loyalist, implacable enemy
of the empires subject peoples was
their f itting representative.
Tisza viewed with part icular suspicion
plans for the dismemberment of
Serbia, the annexation of territory, and
moves towards a Triple Monarchy of
Germans, Magyars, and South Slavs.Conrads vision of a south-eastern
Europe remodelled by war seemed to
threaten Magyar national eclipse.
But what was the choice? Serbian
nationalism rampant was as much a
threat to the Hungarian lite as to the
Austrian; and the fate of both groups
hinged on the survival of the dynasty.
Tisza was eventually won over by
agreement that Austria-Hungary would
not seize any Serbian territory for itself.
Magyar opposition to war was not
the only reason for delay. Most of the
empires soldiers were busy gathering
the annual har vest: they would not be
available for service until late in the
month. And the French President and
stand against the nationalist tide that
threatened to engulf it.
The German EagleNow or never!, the Kaiser had exclaimed
on 4 July. The Serbs must be disposed
of, and that right soon! When the
Aust rian appea l w as presented the
following day, he offered, after only
the briefest hesitation, Germanys
unconditional support for action
against Serbia. This blank cheque was
endorsed by Wilhelms senior advisorsthe same afternoon. Both the Chancellor
Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg and
Army Chief-of-Staff Helmuth von Moltke
supported the K aisers decision.
They knew the risks. An action
against Serbia can lead to world war,
announced Bethmann-Hollweg two days
later; the Central Powers were making
a leap into the dark. But Germanys
leaders half-hoped that swift action
by Austria would present Europe with
afait accompli, and that Russia and
France, eager to avoid war, would seeka diplomatic resolution of the crisis.
Austria must beat the Serbs and then
make peace quickly, demanding an
Austro -Serbian alliance as the sole
condition, proclaimed Moltke.
The decision made, Gemanys leaders
left for their summer vacations. Europe
was still run by wealthy gentlemen, and
July wa s holiday time.
Except for the Austrians. They stayed
at their desks that summer: they had a
blank cheque to process. Even so, they
moved slowly: there were other hurdles
to surmount. The backing of the
German government for action against
Serbia had been secured, but not that
of the Hungarian government.
The Serbs could put 350,000 men
into the field, and their army was
ethnically homogeneous, highly
motivated, and battle-hardened from
experience in the Balkan Wars. Serbia
was not expected to be a push-over.
The Austrian high command was in no
doubt that it could not defeat Serbia in
the south and at the same time block
a Russian invasion in the east. But did
Aust ria sta nd a lone?
On 5 July, the Austrian ambassador to
Berlin delivered a letter from Emperor
Franz Josef to Kaiser Wilhelm II, alongwith a memorandum setti ng out h is
governments case for military action
against Serbia. In the light of this,
he needed to k now, would G ermany
support Austria against Russia in the
present crisis? Could Au stria seek the
final and fundamental reckoning with
Serbia that she desired, secure in the
knowledge that Russian intervention
would be checked by her ally?
Germanys leaders had little choice.
Austria-Hungary was now their sole
steadfast ally in an otherwise hostileor lukewarm Europe. Germany in
1914 faced a hostile coalition of
Russia, France, and perhaps Britain,
confronting her with the daunting
prospect of a war on two fronts against
superior numbers, and quite possibly
a crippling naval blockade.
In raw numbers, some 70 million
Germans faced 160 million Russians in
the East, and, in the West, 40 million
French, 45 million British, plus the vast
manpower reserves of the French and
British colonial empires. The effect of theAustro-German alliance was to place the
51 million people of the Habsburg Empire
in the service of Prussian militarism.
The 39 million non-Germans whom
the dynasty had strapped around a kernel
of 12 million Germans historical
manure for the field of German culture
in Russian revolutionary Leon Trotskys
phrase constituted a Central European
manpower reserve th at had become
a vital German national interest. So
much so that it was Imperial Germany,
the empire of blood and iron, now
the greatest industrial and military
powerhouse in Europe, that proved
more resolute, steeling the decaying,
creaking empire of Franz Josef for a firm
Now or never!The Serbs must bedisposed of, andthat right soon!
Kaiser Wilhelm II
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www.military-history.org 25MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY
COUNTDOWNTO
WARand restructured by diktat had, since the
Council of Ministers on 19 July, hardened
into a determined will to war. They were
not now to be restrained.
The face of Austria was transformed
in an instant. The streets filled with
flags, ribbons, and bands playing martial
music, with columns of marching soldiers
in blue-grey uniforms, with crowds of
patriots urging them on with shouts of
Death to the Serbian dogs!
This country, noted the British
ambassador, has gone wild with joy at
the prospect of war with Serbia, andits postponement or prevention would
undoubtedly be a great disappointment.
Many felt a sense of relief, as if society
was at last climbing out of a dark vale of
ennui to a bright upland of clear purpose.
Things couldnt have gone on like this,
wrote Alexander Freud from Vienna to
his brother Sigmund, who, like much of
middle-class Europe, was on vacation. The
great psychoanalyst shared his brothers
enthusiasm for the Habsburg cause:
Perhaps for the first time in 30 years, he
declared, I feel myself an Austrian.The nationalist mood was widespread,
extending across class and national lines
that had of late become increasingly
embittered. The writer Stefan Zweig
was struck by the popular unit y and
enthusiasm on display when he returned
to Vienna a few days after the declaration
of war. All differences of class, rank,
and language were flooded over at
that moment by the rushing feeling of
fraternity. All the little people seemed
to have lifted themselves up to meet this
moment of world history, as if each onewas called upon to cast his infinitesimal
self into the glowing mass, there to be
purified of all selfishness.
From 28 July, Vienna and Budapest wore
the festive colours of dynastic and imperial
power. Discord and disunity had been
cauterised by the red heat of militarism.
This much of Conrads project had been
accomplished in a trice. But at what
price, and for how long? Everything now
depended on what Russia would do. And
news of Austrias mobilisation had been
met in St Petersburg with deep unease.
The Serbian replyThe Serbian reply was due the following
day, and until then Belgrade not
Vienna, Berlin, St Petersburg, Paris, or
London was Europes centre of gravity.
How would the Serbs respond?
The Serbian Prime Minister Nikola
Paic had no desire for war, but he found
minimal room for manoeuvre between
the hawkish belligerence of Vienna
and the red-blooded nationalism of the
Serbian press, the officer corps, and an
electorate that, as chance would have it,
was about to go to the polls.Perhaps Russia would come to
Serbias aid? But the Tsar offered only
moral support and advised against war.
So it seemed that Serbia, in the event,
would be on her own; and in that case,
she would surely be crushed.
Paic had no choice except, at great
political risk, to concede all that
he possibly could. This was a lmost
everything, but not quite, and the modest
reservations included the demand
that Austrian officials participate in a
government enquiry on Serbian soil; hepresumably figured that he could not
have survived the domestic political storm
that such a g ross violation of national
sovereignty would have unleashed.
It hardly mattered. When Paic arrived
in person to deliver his governments
reply, the Austrian ambassador had
destroyed his papers, packed his bags,
and had his official car waiting to take
him to the station. Vienna had already
made its decision.
Austro-Hungarian mobilisationOn 28 July, the Austro-Hungarian Empire
ordered partial mobilisation of its armed
forces, declared war on the Kingdom
of Serbia, and opened fire on Belgrade
across the Danube. The Third Balkan
War had begun.
It was a panic reaction to the moderate
mood that the conciliatory tone of
the Serbian reply had engendered in
European capitals not least in Berlin.
A great moral success for Vienna,
the Kaiser declared on the very day
the first shots were fired, but w ith
it all reason for war is gone. The
growing sense among Austria-Hungarys
leaders that the hostile forces ranged
against it had to be shattered by violence
Prime Minister were on a state v isit to
St Petersburg: better to wait until they
wereen routeback to Paris, lest the crisis
break with the two allies fortuitously
placed to concert action. So time passed.
The Austrian ultimatumMost Europeans, enjoying the fine
weather, went about t heir daily affairs
without any sense of crisis. There was a
crisis, but few yet knew it, for the drama
was played out at f irst among tiny groups
of statesmen and generals meeting in
secret conclaves.One such took place in Vienna on
19 July, a reconvened Council of
Ministers, and it was here that a critical
decision was taken: an ultimatum
would be delivered to the Serbian
government on 23 July, one so contrived
that it would be impossible for the
Serbian government to accede to it.
In general terms, it demanded of the
Serbian authorities that they condemn
anti-Austrian propaganda, suppress
anti-Austrian agitation, and withdraw
recent anti-Austrian statements bygovernment officials. More importantly,
it demanded a full enquiry into Serbian
involvement in the assassination at
Sarajevo, and insisted that Austrian
officials be a llowed to participate in
this. The Serbian government was given
48 hours to respond.
The ultimatum was a diplomatic
time-bomb. Few European leaders can
have doubted its significance when they
read it. The British Cabinet had been
debating Ireland on Friday 24 July, when,
as Winston Churchill, then First Lord ofthe Admiralty, recalls,
The quiet grave tones of Sir Edward Greys
voice were heard reading a document which
had just been brought to him from the Foreign
Office. It was the Austrian note to Serbia
This note was clearly an ultimatum; but it
was an ultimatum such as had never been
penned in modern times. As the reading
proceeded, it seemed absolutely impossible
that any state in the world could accept it,
or that any acceptance, however abject,
would satisfy the aggressor. The parishes
of Fermanagh and Tyrone faded back into
the mists and squalls of Ireland, and a
strange light began to fall and grow
upon the map of Europe.
NEXT MONTHRUSSIA:gendarmeof Europe
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March 201426 MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY
WAR ON FILM
Cold War symbol, the Berlin Wall, wasbuilt. Behind this growing tension was
the macabre shadow of the thousandsof nuclear weapons accumulated bythe Soviets and the Americans, and thepossibility that they would one day be
used, possibly by accident, resulting innuclear Armageddon.
By the early 1960s, the Americanswere keeping a dozen B-52 bombers, fully
armed with nuclear weapons, constantlyairborne on patrol ready to strike attargets within the Soviet Union, an
operation known as Chrome Dome.Kubrick read avidly about the mechanicsof the nuclear threat, and subscribed tojournals and magazines about military
weapons. Then he read a novel bya British writer, Peter George, whohad been a flight lieutenant in theRAF, but who had become thoroughly
disillusioned with the whole conceptof nuclear deterrence and mutuallyassured destruction.
The novelTwo Hours to Doom(Red Alert
in the US) imagined a scenario in which
a commander of an American air-basebecame depressed after being diagnosedwith a fatal illness, and ordered his B-52
bombers to attack targets inside the SovietUnion. The commander sealed his base,knowing that an attacking force wouldsoon arrive to try to discover the recall
code that only he knew.In the War Room under the Pentagon,
the American President and his chiefs
of staff eventually decided to help theRussians shoot down the B-52 bombers,but agreed with the Soviets that if a
Russian city was bombed, Strategic AirCommand would itself bomb AtlanticCity. In the end, the only bomb that gotthrough the Russian defences landed inopen country and there was no need to
nuke Atlantic City. The book ended onan optimistic note, with the Americanand Russian leaders agreeing they mustavoid such risks in the future.
Preparing to lmKubrick purchased the film rights to the
book for the laughably low sum of $3,500.Peter George flew to New York, where hestarted to work with Kubrick on writinga screenplay based on his scenario. The
script remained totally serious, but Kubrickbegan to think that maybe a subject as
Taylor Downing delves into the weird world of Stanley Kubricks
Cold War black comedy.
DR STRANGELOVEOR HOW I LEARNED TO
STOP WORRYING AND LOVETHE BOMB
In the spring of 1960, the Russiansshot down an American U2 spy plane,capturing its pilot and all his cameras.In the presidential election of that
year, the Cold War loomed large, as theAmericans (wrongly) feared a missilegap, believing that the Soviets hadmore nuclear missiles than they did.
In 1961, a CIA-supported invasionof Cuba backfired, and the ultimate
After making his FirstWorld War epicPathsof Glory(seeMHM40),Stanley Kubrick directed
two movies,Spartacus(1960), again with Kirk Douglas, andLolita(finished in 1961), with PeterSellers in a supporting role. Then, during
the early 1960s, he became fascinated bythe escalating tension of the Cold War.
LeftColumbia Pictures insisted that Peter
Sellers appear in the movie due to the success
of the previous Kubrick lm he had appeared in:
Lolita. Sellers ended up playing three characters
in total, including the bizarre title role.
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the gung-ho Texan pilot of a B-52. In the
end, Sellers found the multiple roles too
demanding, and could not or would not
master the Texan accent, so an American
rodeo cowboy named Slim Pickens was
cast as the B-52 captain.
There are three principal sets for the
film: the air-base, the B-52 interior