A Mad Catastrophe
Subtitle: The Outbreak of World War I and The Collapse of the Habsburg Empire
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 440
ISBN-13: 9780465028351
Description: "The Austro-Hungarian army that marched east and south to confront the Russians and Serbs in the opening campaigns of World War I had a glorious past but a pitiful present. Speaking a mystifying array of languages and lugging outdated weapons, the Austrian troops were hopelessly unprepared for the industrialized warfare that would shortly consume Europe. As ... historian Geoffrey Wawro explains in [this book], the doomed Austrian conscripts were an unfortunate microcosm of the Austro-Hungarian Empire itself--both equally ripe for destruction"--