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I've been reading Johnston's book The Austrian Mind. While informative, I found his military section to be a bit lacking in sources. This led me to question (rightly or wrongly) some of his conclusions.

Specifically, he paints the Austro-Hungarian military 1740 - 1918 as a bunch of parade ground buffoons. He suggests that Koniggratz was representative of the military during this period - specifiically that the hopeless disorganization of the officer class made coordination and security of operations a joke. (He says the Prussians knew all of the Austrian troop deployment to a level equivalent of the Austrian CO's before Koniggratz, and knew the terrain better than the Austrians.) He then goes onto demonstrate the conservatism of the officer classes by demonstrating that they still considered duelling for honor into the 1900's, and rejected the man who was building an experimental tank in 1910 - 1911. He also had a slight tone of "if they were a bit more Prussian, then their military would be better."

Now, this makes me wary. They did not make tanks in 1911 because they had not fought WW1 yet. While duelling for honor is silly, lots of armies of the time recruited officers from upper classes. Lots of armies were conservative. The Prussian Army had problems in its officer class as well. Additionally, Prussia and Austria had different railway densities, and their "opponents" had different railway densities, and different ideas about deployment. Prussia did not have to deal with the fact that its infantry spoke several different languages.

Essentially, this is a question aimed at the military historians:
Compared to its contemporary armies, was the Austro-Hungarian Army ever very badly equipped or badly indoctrinated? Was there any type of operation that they revealed themselves to be extremely and consistently bad at?

I don't know much details, but as a Hungarian going trough rudimentary studies on my own nation's history... that does sound bad.

I'll look up more specific events from my history book tomorrow, but if I may, a few things from the top of my head:

Dueling partly may persisted because of tradition: Hungary could not develop as much as other nations when it was divided by the Turks. Hence, even though with many efforts to modernize, some medieval ideas persisted. During medieval times, and this may sound contradictorily at first, dueling was made to keep the bloodshed in control by getting everyone and anyone away between the dueling parties. Otherwise, a lot of ugliness can happen.
Medieval times was looked upon with nostalgia in Hungary during the 19th century, partly due to the fact that some of the old feudal system (again, I'll have to look up the specifics of the term) remained and was the principle counterweight to the Hapsburg's political power.

As for rejecting the tank... there could be many reasons. There is the Nazi lesson of R&D: don't spend too much on new weapons when you can make better use of the old ones. Perhaps the first tanks looked too crude to be a worthwhile investment?

Both the German and Austro-Hungarian governments wanted an industrial company to develop a prototype of the Burstyn tank design, but none of the arms companies wanted to invest the resources for developing it, so the idea lapsed.

The Austro-Hungarian Army was so poorly equipped it made extensive use of dogs as draft animals because of a lack of horses in WW1. They had some good leaders, and some very nice artillery but not enough of either. More importantly the Austro-Hungarian Empire spoke half dozen major languages and another dozen minor ones, which meant it was almost impossible to issue orders coherently. Officers had to speak three or four languages just to be able to talk to the NCOs, who could then translate for everyone else. The Empire only lasted as long as it did because of the linger threat of the Muslim Ottomans sweeping back into Europe, and because the Germans saw its leadership as stable and thus didn’t want it to go away.

If the Italians were not even worse equipped, and even more poorly led then the Austro-Hungarian Army would have completely disintegrated in 1916 and Germany would have lost the war that year. As it was, they almost did anyway.

The Austro-Hungarian Army drilled its conscripts in a very simplified German "command language" that consisted of a set of stock phrases. I believe it was about 80 in all, supposed to cover every possible tactical maneuver. In any case much of the polyglot Empire was multilingual, and difficulties of communication don't seem to feature in the (admittedly few) firsthand accounts of the war in Austrian sources. The tendency of the Empire to concentrate regimental recruiting in particular areas, insuring that one or two ethnicities dominated a given unit, made communication at that level much easier while at the strategic level the officers all spoke German. I suspect the emphasis given to presumed linguistic difficulties is a legacy of the political fractiousness of the Empire and the way it shaped Anglo-Saxon views of the Dual Monarchy; Russia was, after all, just as or more diverse and had it's own problems with unreliable minorities but that rarely gets cited as a factor in the inefficiency of the Tsarist Army.

A much bigger problem of the Austro-Hungarian Army was a lack of long-service NCOs, exacerbated by the enormous losses incurred during the opening campaign in Galicia and especially in Conrad's disastrous attempts to recover the Carpathian passes over the winter of 1914. Austria also had the lowest military expenditures and rates of conscript participation of any European Great Power, being outspent even by Italy, not due to a lack of manufactures or even funds but thanks to the parsimony (and often downright hostility) of the Hungarian Diet, which had power over the common budget. The inability or unwillingness of the High Command to grasp the weaknesses of the Army led it to make a number of impossible demands on it, though it was the breakdown of civilian infrastructure and order which ultimately delivered the final blow to the KuK Armee. The recall of the Hungarian troops by a secessionist government and the conditions of privation that prevailed in the Army in Italy after mid-1918 were fatal, just as the realization by the minorities (including with delusional conviction the Hungarians) that they could obtain a better post-war deal with national independence was fatal to the Empire as a whole.

Adding to the A-H problem was that many units raised from outside the German / Hungarian core areas didn't want to fight and had no real loyalty with the nation. This inserts lots of weak links in the frontlines, it hardly matters if the Hungarian division on the left and the Austrian division on the right put up a fight if the Czech division in the center roll over and plays dead at the first charge. Italy had the same problem particulary in WWII where elite divisions (mostly northern) could put up a hard fight but many line infantry division (mostly southern) fell appart at the first enemy charge.

Keegan addresses the issue of the "reliability" of various ethnicities in the A-H Army, and his general conclusion is that the army was actually pretty reliable.

Being the "core" of the Empire, both Austrian and Hungarian units were always reliable. Poles were also surprisingly reliable, which Keegan attributes to the fact that they enjoyed far greater electoral privelages with the Austrians compared to the Russians. Croats were reliable due to their Catholicism, while Bosnians and other Muslim units were kept in check by keeping them in sepoy-style regiments. The only really problematic ones were the Czechs (with their budding canny nationalism, leading to their epic march through Siberia) and the Italians.

That being said, it may be fair to say that the Austrian Army (and the Austrian/Habsburg nation as a whole) had always been straddled with conservatism. During the Napoleonic Wars, the Austrian Army was pretty much forced to reform only at the prodding of Archduke Charles (despite catastrophic defeats like Ulm and Austerlitz). Significantly, the reforms actually resulted in the Austrians winning a battle outright against Napolen (Aspern-Essling), while the rematch a couple of weeks later was in practical terms a bloody draw (Wagram). Unfortunately, the Austrians tossed in the towel after Wagram, and Charles and his reforms were essentially sidelined.

Zinegata wrote:The only really problematic ones were the Czechs (with their budding canny nationalism, leading to their epic march through Siberia) and the Italians.

The Italians were less of a problem than usually depicted: while the Czechs WERE problematic (the Bollettino della Vittoria even mentions a Czech DIVISION as part of the combined army that fought the Austro-Hungarian at Vittorio Veneto. Given that its author was the Italian chief of staff, I think he knew what forces he commanded), the Italians of the empire were mostly neutral (yes, there were Italians from the empire in the Italian army, but they were a minority), and their main politicians didn't care of 'liberation' and tended just to try and protect their people (just to make a single example: Alcide De Gasperi, future prime minister of Italy after WWII, at the time was a member of the Austrian Reichsrat (the PARLIAMENT), and wondered where all the people that welcomed the Italian army in Trento in 1918 came from after the city had been evaquated since 1917. Not exactly the act of a pro-Italy politician).
That was in WWI, and in XIX century the Italians from the empire were mostly pro-Austria: Von Tegetthoff's fleet at Lissa in 1866 was crewed mostly by people from Veneto (that passed to Italy after that very same war) and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Austian territories mostly inhabitated by Italians, and were quite proud of the victory ('ironclad men on wooden ships beated wooden men on ironclad ships' was how they summed the battle).

As far as I know, the Bursteyn was a rather good tank design, which looked quite similar to a Sherman, giving it a rather hard to hit size, only half as long and wide as a Mark I. Armor was a bit lighter but, and the final weight was calculated at only 7 tons. That, and the idea to use strange 'legs' to increase the ditch-crossing abilities would have proven helpful in the terrain tanks were used back then. It was planned to field a 37 mm gun, which was much smaller calibre than other contemporary designs, but had the advantage of higher ROF and much more ammo to be carried. Also, 37 mm proved to be adequate way into WWII, so the decision was sensible.

Apart from the financial problem, the fact that horses didn't like motorcars too much was a main reason for the dismissal of the tank, they didn't even consider a prototype. I was told by the owner of a tank museum I am friends with, that the officers were wary that their own cavallry would have problems when used in combination with that new weapon, as they shied near combustion engines. Conservatism combined with tight purse strings - the worst enemy of advance.

Bottlestein wrote:I've been reading Johnston's book The Austrian Mind. While informative, I found his military section to be a bit lacking in sources. This led me to question (rightly or wrongly) some of his conclusions.

Specifically, he paints the Austro-Hungarian military 1740 - 1918 as a bunch of parade ground buffoons. He suggests that Koniggratz was representative of the military during this period - specifiically that the hopeless disorganization of the officer class made coordination and security of operations a joke. (He says the Prussians knew all of the Austrian troop deployment to a level equivalent of the Austrian CO's before Koniggratz, and knew the terrain better than the Austrians.) He then goes onto demonstrate the conservatism of the officer classes by demonstrating that they still considered duelling for honor into the 1900's, and rejected the man who was building an experimental tank in 1910 - 1911. He also had a slight tone of "if they were a bit more Prussian, then their military would be better."

Königgrätz actually is a pretty bad comparison for overall Austrian effectiveness, given how they simply did not anticipate the massive advantage and speed of the Prussian forces (Neither did the French, but nobody is blaming their entire army for having lost every war in a one-on-one fight from 1800 onwards). And at Königgrätz the Austrian artillery actually did a great job.

That said, the Austrian Army of WWI was a very weak one, but they simply did not have the money for widespread investments in the military.