Why were the Austro Hungarians weak in WW1?

[drronnie]

I know this is not related to the game itself but I wonder why the Austro Hungarian did not do so well in WW1 Eastern Front despite being pretty well equipped and big

[barkingamer]

Originally posted by drronnie:

pretty well equipped

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ztVMib1T4T4 Seriously though they had to melt church bells for metal to be used as munitions

[barkingamer]

Plus with a guy like hotzendorf as commander in chief any country will lose a war

[drronnie]

Originally posted by Canis latratus:

Originally posted by drronnie:

pretty well equipped

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ztVMib1T4T4 Seriously though they had to melt church bells for metal to be used as munitions

They lacked heavy artillery though

[cvahoo]

Don't forget they did better than Russia, Romania, Serbia and Italy. They won war at 3 fronts, and in September 1918 there were no enemy troops on A-H soil. Weak economy and blockade broke the country.
A-H suffered tremendous losses of 1st class units in the first months of war (same as Russia). Reinforcements were not the same quality as German reserves. Commanders were generally weak, with some few notable exceptions (again, same problem in Russian Army).

Church bells were melt by Germans as well :-). Heavy artillery was of high quality, in fact some of the units were borrowed by big brother during the war. But because of weak economy and bad pre-war planning there was not enough of artillery pieces. (again, Russia had the same problem).

[Марко Пасури]

Ausro-Hugarian were weakl because of:
1.Multi-cultural.
2.Most of arty were old.
3.Their warplan had fail at Serbia.
4.The Great Britain naval blockade.
5.War at many fronts.

[Марко Пасури]

Answer to question "why austro-hungarians were so weak during the great war"extended edition.
1.The army of Austrian-Hungary were multicultural.It had austrian,hungarian,polish,rumanian,ukrainan,czech,slovakian,slovenian,bosnian,italian and croatian soldiers.It was harder to control because HQ orders had to give for many languages and soldiers from eastern and southern borders weren`t so high moralized because they had to fight against their own kin those live other side of border of Habsburg empire.Some soldiers were sended to other regiment as replacements as example austrian to polish or hungarian to czech.
Those soldiers cannot communicate accordinly to their group members during the battle and those who were separated from their own kin were pretty disapointed.
2.Austro-Hungarian army had modern artillery as 10 cm Skoda light howitzer vz 14,15 cm Skoda howitzer 14,22.5 cm mortar and 305 cm Skoda howitzer 14 "Thin-Emma".Those were one of best guns in the world at these days and "Thin-Emma" were so effective that even germans lended it for besieging and bombing the fortress of Liege.But all those modern guns had one problem--their number were too few.So Austro-Hungarian artillery was creepin` old for most parts.
The "Thin-Emmas" were quickly transported to eastern front after the disaster what Russian attack have been created.
3.The Austro-Hungarian plan B were aimed to destruct the Serbia but the serbians countered austro-hungarian attacks and did some succeeded counter-attacks too.So the eastern front weren`t strong enough to hold back the russians and they were retreating at there.The Austria-Hungary had to ask reinforcements from Germany to push russians back to behind the Austro-Hungary`s border.

[Марко Пасури]

4.The Great Britain had naval blockaded the Central Powers and Austro-Hungary suffered the most.There began the shortage of food and many children died for exhaustion.And army didn`t gain it`s daily meals so combat effectivities had going down.
5.The Austro-Hungary were surrounded by enemies.At Alpine border were Italy,Russia and Rumania at the east and Serbia at south (later Greece too).Austro-Hungary hadn`t troops for every front and they had ask aid from Germany.Germany`s 9th army commanded by Erich von Falkenhayn were sended to take out Rumania alone and they succeeded at it.At Serbia Austro-Hungary were aided by Bulgaria who will help them later too at Macedonia and Greece.At Austro-Hungarian part of eastern front had german soldiers too just to help the weaker "brother".
6*.The peoples of Austro-Hungary weren`t as hard fighters as serbian,german french,briton or russian.
7*.Some (as Adolf Hitler) didn`t want to fight for Habsburg empire at every case and rather recruited to German army.
8.The Austro-Hungary`s army had poor leaders those affected only defeats and shame to army.So they had to (again lend something from) lend generals from Germany and they kicked out some Austrian generals as Conrad von Hötzendorf.
9.They had later war shortage of everything affected by longlasting war and naval blockade by Great Britain.
10.The army suffered from large mass surrenderings along the was as Vittorio Veneto.Affected by weak morale from multicultural army.
11.The Austro-Hungarian troops (czech legion) simply changed it`side.

[drronnie]

Originally posted by Marko Pasuri:

4.The Great Britain had naval blockaded the Central Powers and Austro-Hungary suffered the most.There began the shortage of food and many children died for exhaustion.And army didn`t gain it`s daily meals so combat effectivities had going down.
5.The Austro-Hungary were surrounded by enemies.At Alpine border were Italy,Russia and Rumania at the east and Serbia at south (later Greece too).Austro-Hungary hadn`t troops for every front and they had ask aid from Germany.Germany`s 9th army commanded by Erich von Falkenhayn were sended to take out Rumania alone and they succeeded at it.At Serbia Austro-Hungary were aided by Bulgaria who will help them later too at Macedonia and Greece.At Austro-Hungarian part of eastern front had german soldiers too just to help the weaker "brother".
6*.The peoples of Austro-Hungary weren`t as hard fighters as serbian,german french,briton or russian.
7*.Some (as Adolf Hitler) didn`t want to fight for Habsburg empire at every case and rather recruited to German army.
8.The Austro-Hungary`s army had poor leaders those affected only defeats and shame to army.So they had to (again lend something from) lend generals from Germany and they kicked out some Austrian generals as Conrad von Hötzendorf.
9.They had later war shortage of everything affected by longlasting war and naval blockade by Great Britain.
10.The army suffered from large mass surrenderings along the was as Vittorio Veneto.Affected by weak morale from multicultural army.
11.The Austro-Hungarian troops (czech legion) simply changed it`side.

Marko thank you very much for your detailed response. Much appreciated. Looking forward to play the Austrians when Tannenberg comes out

[The Great Mighty Poo]

Strange,thought while not having a great industry as Germany had,A-H didn't had serious shortages until late war. Specially food,as I've read austrians troops mocked the germans for their lower quality rations.
Anyway,what Marko said makes a lot of sense,plus Austria-Hungary was an aging state (not as hard as the Ottoman Empire) and was probably not ready for a war of that kind,like the recently formed German Empire was (which was headed by the prussians,experts on fighting wars).

[Monsanto's RoundUp]

Originally posted by Sgt.Kar98:

Strange,thought while not having a great industry as Germany had,A-H didn't had serious shortages until late war. Specially food,as I've read austrians troops mocked the germans for their lower quality rations.
Anyway,what Marko said makes a lot of sense,plus Austria-Hungary was an aging state (not as hard as the Ottoman Empire) and was probably not ready for a war of that kind,like the recently formed German Empire was (which was headed by the prussians,experts on fighting wars).

Also the Austrians had not won a major war in the past 70 years

[Player 1]

While its true that the polyglot nature of the A-H military was certainly a factor, it was a secondar y, or even tertiary catalyst, for the dismal performance of A-H forces. This was futher exacerbated by Conrad's slavish devotion to a military doctrine of offense and the subsequent loss of the professional (and more importantly, multi-lingual) officer and NCO corps in utterly pointless and wasteful offensives (as is evident in the vast majority of operations on the Serbian and Galician fronts), when the strategic and tactical situation could have easily provided victory through defensive posture, as could have been the case east of Lemberg.