Fall of the Double Eagle

Despite the renewed interest in the First World War, the opening campaigns that decided the course of the global conflict remain under-examined; this is especially true for the Battle for Galicia in August 1914. Not only was Galicia, a historical region located in today's southern Poland and western Ukraine, the site of the bloodiest battle of the conflict, but the impulses that precipitated the engagement and the unprecedented carnage that resulted also effectively doomed the Austria-Hungarian Empire just six weeks into the war.In "The Fall of the Double Eagle," John R. Schindler draws on extensive archival research, memoirs, and diverse secondary sources in a dozen languages to explain how Austria-Hungary, despite military weakness and the inevitable consequences, consciously chose war in 1914. Through close examination of the Austro-Hungarian military, especially its elite General Staff, Schindler shows how even a war Vienna would likely lose appeared a preferable option to the "foul peace" the top generals loathed. The study considers how the polyglot empire was outgunned and unable to subdue Serbia, resulting in a humiliating defeat that generals sought to cover up. Worse was to come, when Austro-Hungarian divisions launched an offensive into Russian Poland in hopes of defeating the numerically superior enemy. By the time the Russians were halted at the gates of Cracow, over 400,000 Austro-Hungarian troops had been lost in just three weeks, a figure equal to the prewar standing army and a loss from which the empire would never recover. While Austria-Hungary's ultimate defeat and dissolution was postponed until the autumn of 1918, its fate was preordained in in the late summer of 1914 on the plains and hills of Galicia.