Page - 199 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

In 1914 it could initially be said of no European power that its industry and economy were really adjusted to waging war. There had admittedly been spurts of armaments activity and a forced expansion of strategic railway lines. Practically all states had also prepared emergency regulations in the event of war, which would ensure the transition to a war economy. But if and how this would function was just as unknown as the question as to whether any of the basic operational ideas could be realised. The Brit- ish military historian John F. C. Fuller applied the following vivid comparison in his book The Conduct of War :467 ‘Wäre am 4. August ein Zuschauer um den Kriegsspieltisch herumgeschlendert und hätte sich die Karten der Spieler angeschaut, so hätte er mit zehn zu eins auf einen Sieg Deutschlands gewettet. Aber fünf Wochen danach, nach- dem die Karten gespielt waren, hatten alle Spieler strategischen Bankrott erlitten.’ This could be continued by asking which of the players the detached observer thought had the worst cards  – and I would wager that he would have pointed to the Austro-Hun- garian. In the aforementioned five weeks, however, the Austro-Hungarian player had fared better than the others. The result would be no different, were one to develop elab- orate calculation models and occupy oneself with algorithms and numerical or symbolic methods instead of looking at the army budgets, troop strengths, weapons and mobi- lisation tempos. What had happened here can be reduced to the simple formula that the operational theories had been based on false assumptions. It had turned out that a literal and generally superficial interpretation by whomever  – whether Clausewitz, Jomini, Ardant du Picq or even Archduke Carl  – ended in a bloodbath. To quote once again Fuller, who occupied himself above all with Schlieffen and General Ferdinand Foch, the Commander-in-Chief of the French Northern Front and later Marshal of France : Foch resembled at the beginning of the war a ‘taktisch verblödeten Napoleon’ because, although his engagements were based on the weapons of his time, he ignored these weapons. With minor deviations, he followed Napoleon step for step, and, con- sidering the automatic rifles and rapid fire cannons, he did this as though these were the muskets and cannons of Jena and Friedland. The French ‘Plan XVII’, comparable in its importance to the Schlieffen Plan, demanded ‘marching directly against the en- emy without hesitation. […] Only the offensive accords with the temperament of our soldiers.’468 After less than two weeks, the tactic of marching straight at the enemy had cost the French 300,000 dead, wounded and missing soldiers. But it would be unrea- sonable to just pick on Foch. Moltke, the Chief of the Russian General Staff Nikolai Yanushkevich, Conrad von Hötzendorf and countless others could be placed alongside