A Mad Catastrophe

by Geoffrey Wawro

  While his attackers overran the Austrian front lines, Putnik pushed Serbian reserves and artillery closer to the front. General Adolf von Rhemen’s XIII Corps was down to a combined strength of just seventeen thousand men spread along ten miles of front near Arangjelovac, and was blown to pieces by two Serbian divisions. A pair of Serbian divisions sufficed to rout the Austro-Hungarian VIII Corps as well; hit hard, the Austrian corps quickly ran out of ammo and called for more, only to discover that their ammunition columns were empty. As the desperate troops flung up the lids on one empty caisson after another looking for shells and bullets, they were told that the ammunition was in Valjevo, where it had been sent by rail but not carried up to the men in time.62

  Potiorek, holed up in Koviljaca spa, fell silent for an entire week. He raged at the weather; it had slowed his pursuit with rain, snow, fog, and mud, yet had suddenly brightened. The sun came out on December 4, dispelling the fog, drying the ground, and facilitating the Serbian bombardments, attacks, and pursuit.63 King Peter traveled with the Second Army over the hills of Sibnica and Rogaca, urging the men forward. Potiorek’s press corps, which had been picking its way across the desolate land between the Sava and the Kolubara to witness “the decisive battle,” was abruptly and without explanation hustled back across the Austro-Hungarian border before the journalists could witness and report the worst of the developing rout.64

  In the hills around Valjevo, the Serbs hit the Austrians with everything they had, thrusting into the gaps between tired Austrian units and ripping them apart—or themselves. The Serbs were attacking and taking ground so quickly that they lacked sufficient telephone wire to connect the racing infantry to the artillery behind, which was confused by the fog in the hills and frequently fired into attacking Serbian units instead of retreating Austrian ones.65 Each Serbian army reported taking hundreds of unwounded Austrian prisoners every day. “We’ve taken lots of booty and many prisoners; the enemy is panicking,” the First Army reported on December 5.66 Terrified Austrians stumbled into disused trenches from the fighting in October and November and lay there until they too were overrun and captured.67 A disbelieving Potiorek commanded from his spa hotel that the men hold on. He ordered XIII Corps to hold the line at Lazarevac, connect the Sixth and Fifth Armies on its wings, and prepare a counterstroke toward Arangjelovac.68

  The Serbian counteroffensive in December 1914 shattered Potiorek’s South Army. Here two Austro-Hungarian soldiers huddle in a trench under Serbian fire.

  Credit: Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Wien

  Potiorek, never much of a commander, had clearly lost his grip on reality. Perhaps under the influence of the healing waters of Koviljaca, reputed to reverse pessimism, he now complained that the “unexpected retreat” of the Sixth Army had exposed the flank of the Fifth Army “at the very moment when the Fifth Army was preparing to deliver a war-ending blow to the Serbs.”69 But only the Serbs were delivering blows by this time. Just how weak the Austrians were was attested to by the ease with which the Serbs, racing out in front of their supplies and ammunition and attacking Austrians who were being pressed back on theirs, were able to knock the Austrians out of prepared positions and out of Serbia altogether.

  This whirlwind of action would later be dated December 3–13 and named the Battle of Arangjelovac, which was the town on which the two Austrian armies had been converging. In real time it was a confusing melée, as divisions of the Serbian First and Third Armies hammered Potiorek’s Sixth Army out of their trenches and wrested the critical high ground between the Kolubara and the Western Morava from the Austrians.70 Austrian battalions, many reduced to company strength, had nothing left to give and fled before the Serbs. “No sign of friendly troops, no orders received, my men shattered,” one officer scribbled as he led his battalion out of Serbia.71

  On December 9, Potiorek finally divulged to an incredulous Hofburg that all was lost. He had been thrashed again. Putnik pronounced the Austrians “effectively annihilated on the left and the center.” He marveled at the number of Austro-Hungarian prisoners and the count of abandoned artillery, machine guns, and rifles, which littered the ground everywhere. So did the Austrian wounded, who had been left to their fate by retreating comrades. The word “Panik” recurred in every Serbian report on the Austrians.72

  Putnik’s Second Army then struck at Rhemen’s XIII Corps on the Kolubara around Lazarevac, which was now the hinge connecting the two Austro-Hungarian armies. These Serbian troops then fanned northward to drive the rest of the eighty thousand Austrians of the Fifth Army out of Belgrade. The First Army swarmed over the hills above Valjevo, taking five thousand prisoners, and one of its divisions looped into the city, cutting the Sixth Army’s main line of supply and retreat.

  The Croats of the 42nd Honvéd Division were flung off the heights north of Grabovica. As they retreated on December 7, trying to keep a connection with the 36th Division on their left, they began crossing the Ljig on a single bridge, which collapsed under the weight of the troops, trains, and guns. Serbs appeared and began firing into the forlorn mass, detonating a panic that spread from unit to unit. Men of the Polish and Ukrainian 30th Landwehr Regiment, lined up behind the Croats, scattered in all directions, abandoning their artillery, machine guns, trains, and ammunition to the Serbs.73

  Nowhere did the Austrians launch an effective counterattack; their daily situation reports, intended to juxtapose their strength (in blue) with the enemy’s (in red), calculated their shrinking strength well enough but depicted the enemy’s with nothing more than red question marks. They had utterly lost their grip on events. Entrenched at Lazarevac, the Austro-Hungarian 52nd Regiment reported itself “struck with vehement, astoundingly accurate artillery fire.” The unit of Slovaks and Hungarians completely dissolved, overrunning its brigade headquarters in a panicky flight to the rear. The stampeded headquarters failed to stem the rout and ordered the neighboring 78th Regiment to fill in the gap, but no one could find it either. “They too had abandoned their positions,” an officer wrote.74

  Potiorek’s entire army was racing in a sauve qui peut toward the Drina and Sava crossings, or up to the bridgehead at Belgrade, which was still in Austrian hands. The 42nd Honvéd Division, a Croatian unit, crossed the Kolubara near Lazarevac and paused to improvise a rearguard with the neighboring 40th Honvéd Division, but the 40th—Hungarians all—hurried past without stopping, their officers curiously insisting that they had “strict orders to retreat,” not fight. The 42nd followed up muddy roads under a cold rain toward Belgrade. Their horses were too weak to pull the divisional artillery or trains, which were abandoned to the Serbs, who crossed the Ljig below the Croats and struck into their flank and rear. Deployed nearby, the 4th Honvéd Regiment was also routed. Observing the Serbs busily digging up to their front and around their flanks, they simultaneously observed the withdrawal of the German and Czech units on their right and left and decided to withdraw themselves, throwing away their packs, blankets, and cartridge pouches to speed their flight. When they reached the Sava, the regiment counted just nine hundred survivors. Seventy percent of its strength was listed as “missing.”

  Sabac was flooded with fugitives trying to flee the Serbian pursuit. Ordered to cover the escape across the Sava of the Czech 102nd Regiment, the 6th Honvéd (Serbs recruited in southern Hungary) picked their way down a road blocked by abandoned guns and trains. First they encountered a party of Serbian officers who appeared out of the darkness to talk them into surrendering; “we shot two of them,” an Austrian officer recalled. Then they proceeded to the rescue of the floundering 102nd. The Honvéd officers warned their men not to speak Serbian to one another during the march, but they did, and the terrified Czechs of the 102nd Regiment, hearing their approach, opened fire and wouldn’t stop. The Honvéds actually had to dig trenches to protect themselves from the friendly fire, which continued through the night.75

  Hurrying to cross the river at Belgrade, William Shepheard of the Evening Sun reported “masses of wounded and
panicky men, a total rout.” An Austrian junior officer confirmed that the mingling of three frightened Habsburg corps there led to “total and indescribable confusion: orders were not transmitted, rear guards were abandoned, as was everything else—artillery, ammunition, wagons, food, ambulances, wounded, in short, everything.”76 Falling snow blocked the roads, and Shepheard witnessed “many officers literally going mad.” With its low budgets and small peacetime strength, the Austro-Hungarian army had relied since the 1880s on “reserve officers”—middle-class students or professionals with just one year of military service—and these greenhorns cracked under the strain of this awful campaign. Shepheard watched as an Austrian major rode past a wounded lieutenant sprawled on the side of the road; the lieutenant shouted something at the major, who furiously drew his pistol and shot the lieutenant several times (succeeding only in hitting him in the foot).77

  Closing in from the flanks, the Serbs shot better, and raked in guns, shells, and so many unwounded prisoners that escorts for them could not be spared. Austro-Hungarian POWs were simply pointed south or east and told to “follow the telegraph wires until you come to Lazarevac”; cold, wet, and hungry, they dully complied. Austro-Hungarian after-action reports marveled at the alacrity with which their own troops surrendered: “How is it that entire units went into enemy captivity without a struggle?” General Schön scribbled from his office in Hungary. “Serbian prisoners confirm that this happened—that this-or-that unit of ours viewed surrender to the enemy as the obvious, natural solution to its predicament.” Surely “there is nothing lower or more ignoble than to go unwounded and without a fight into enemy captivity.” Schön vowed to investigate all returning Austrian prisoners after the war “to determine the extent of their complicity in their own capture.”78 Many of them, however, planned not to return after the war. Ten thousand Czechs surrendered in Serbia and would shortly join a “Czechoslovak Legion” for service with the Entente against the Central Powers.79

  Potiorek, who had seemed on the cusp of victory, had instead lost the best part of another army: 28,000 dead, 122,000 wounded, and 40,000 missing. Thousand-man Austrian battalions were down to a hundred men or less. The 36th Division had lost half of its officers and 60 percent of its men. The 1st Division’s brigades counted barely three hundred men each. Across the board, Austrian survivors of the debacle were judged Kampfmüde—battle-fatigued—and useless for further operations.80 Many Austrian troops tramped past signs, daubed in the Slavic languages of the monarchy and then nailed to fences, trees, and huts along their march routes: “Soldiers of the already defeated Austro-Hungarian monarchy! Give yourselves up! Stop fighting against your own brothers for the benefit of your German masters!”81

  On December 9, the Serbs punched a hole between the Fifth Army, huddled around Belgrade, and the Sixth Army, which was crowding up to the Drina and Sava crossings. Reflecting on the defeat, the Austrian general Heinrich Pongracz concluded that this one, like all the others, stemmed from the fact that Austro-Hungarian troops still viewed themselves as “dumb parts of a mass instead of thinking, responsible individuals.” They refused to patrol aggressively, retreated too easily, never coordinated artillery and infantry attacks, and permitted their rear areas to fill up with shirkers, deserters, or thieves, like Lieutenant Arthur Fischer, who received five years in the brig for rustling dozens of geese and pigs from despairing peasants and breaking into churches along the line of retreat to steal icons, chalices, candlesticks, and furniture.82

  With the Serbian pursuit biting deep, Potiorek finally authorized a shambolic retreat. Commanders were permitted to abandon their supply trains and focus on evacuating their men. Taking care to call this rout a mere “backward maneuver” (rückgängige Bewegung), Potiorek pulled both armies back across the Danube, Sava, and Drina with the loss of most of their equipment and dozens of guns. It was like Dunkirk, only more hopeless: the demoralized, infighting Austro-Hungarians would have a hard time recovering from this defeat. Like Conrad, Potiorek spouted excuses (“We’ve been in uninterrupted combat for a month”) and shifted blame (“We were crippled by the lack of fresh reserve troops and ammunition”).83

  On December 15, Serbian troops retook Belgrade just a day after General Sarkotic’s new military government had seated itself there. Potiorek, still at Koviljaca, had grandly ordered his troops to “hold Belgrade or die fighting,” but the men retreated instead. Orders went out to arrest telegraph operators who transmitted retreat orders, but that didn’t stop the flight either.84 (“Potiorek would be shot if he appeared among his own troops,” one officer scoffed.)85 In his last throes, Potiorek reminded one of an old Napoleonic maxim: “In war, it is the man, not men, who counts.” Potiorek howled that his troops had become criminals: “deserters, cowards, rapists, murderers, arsonists, thieves, bullies, plunderers and cheats.” In a calmer moment, he asserted that the loss of Belgrade must not be interpreted as a “Serbian military victory, but instead as a mere symptom of Austrian exhaustion.”86

  Franz Joseph, who had enjoyed Potiorek’s jubilee gift of Belgrade for less than a fortnight, did not appreciate the distinction. Bolfras wrote Potiorek that “His Majesty is not pleased,” which—in the decorous language of the Hofburg—really meant, “His Majesty is furious.”87 The Germans were furious too. “People here are asking how the so-called backward maneuver out of Serbia could have followed so quickly on the so-called conquest of Belgrade,” Austria’s minister in Dresden wrote Berchtold. Kaiser Wilhelm II, flattened by flu and bronchitis contracted during his visit to the Eastern Front in November, was “shattered” by the news and confined to bed.88 The latest losses in Serbia were so monstrous that the Fifth and Sixth Armies had now to be compacted into a single army of just 95,000 rifles. Had the Serbs themselves not been devastated—22,000 killed, 91,000 wounded, 19,000 captured or missing—they might have pursued across the rivers and into Austria-Hungary.89

  Conrad von Hötzendorf now saw that his name would not, as Karl Kraus had quipped before the war, “be linked with a famous battle on the Drina in the mind of every Austrian schoolboy.”90 Conrad deplored this latest “thunderbolt” from the Balkans, which destroyed the last of the Habsburg army’s credibility. The thunderbolt was all the more shocking because Potiorek—a château general who never got closer than seventy miles to the action—continued to peddle excuses for his own witless operations, now blaming them on “desertions among our troops of Slavic nationality.”91 Potiorek even wrote Bolfras on December 12, pleading for another army and another chance: “I’m convinced that I can make everything right; just give me men, rifles and ammunition!” In four weeks he’d be ready to invade again. The Serbs would have “exhausted their means” and would not survive a fourth invasion.92

  But Bolfras and the emperor had heard this song before, and Conrad finally had the club he needed to beat his rival to death. “Now is not the time,” Conrad wrote Bolfras with feigned forbearance, “to try to solve the mystery of what happened there.” Instead, “we must deal with the facts—an undeniable defeat suffered—and the consequences: not a single man could be spared from the Russian theater” to reinforce the Balkans. If Potiorek could not pull his shrunken force together, the Austrians might have to retreat all the way back to the Danube at Budapest, ceding everything in between to the Serbs.93 Potiorek’s leadership, Conrad said, was “a puzzle.” How could so much have been lost so quickly?94 Conrad had earlier counseled Potiorek to “take the offensive into the heartland of the enemy,” but now he pretended that he hadn’t. The “present surprising turn of events is a mystery to the AOK,” Conrad lied.95 At German great headquarters in Mézières, Falkenhayn deplored the inevitable impact of Potiorek’s defeat on the other fronts and coldly asked Stürgkh: “How on earth did this general attain such a dazzling reputation in your army?”96

  This time even the Hofburg had lost faith in Potiorek, who had expended three hundred thousand men in his three botched invasions. Heartened by this latest defeat, the Italians were inching closer
to intervention against Austria-Hungary. They held back for political and economic reasons—there was little popular support for war and the kingdom lacked everything from steel and iron to ammunition, chemicals, lumber, and rubber—but support was building, impelled in part by a demagogue named Benito Mussolini, who had formed a “revolutionary interventionist fascio” in Milan and was calling for pro-war demonstrations in every Italian city. Prime Minister Antonio Salandra gave speeches in parliament demanding war to “fulfill Italy’s territorial and maritime aspirations” at Austria’s expense.97

  “All of the advantages we’d wrung from the Serbs at such a bloody cost have been squandered,” Bolfras chided Potiorek. “All of your errors are now visible to the public, which holds the supreme leadership responsible.” To spare the crown further embarrassment, Potiorek was bundled into retirement on December 22, along with General Frank. Recalled to Vienna for an exit interview with the emperor, Potiorek was met on the railway platform by imperial adjutants and told to continue on to his home in Klagenfurt. The meeting with the emperor “was indefinitely postponed,” and indeed it would never happen. Potiorek did not miss the rebuke and compared himself with the disgraced commander of 1866. “Like Benedek, I must go quietly to my grave,” he jotted, with wilting bombast.98

  Conrad met with Foreign Minister Berchtold just before Christmas to describe the ruin of the Habsburg army: the best officers, NCOs, and troops had “either died or been removed from service” by wounds, illness, or capture. The old Austro-Hungarian army had been decapitated and gutted by 957,000 casualties in all theaters: 189,000 dead, 490,000 wounded, and 278,000 prisoners. What remained, as General Adolf von Rhemen put it, was “fantastically undisciplined.” Officers wrote directly to their commanders demanding awards for bravery; troops plundered their own civilians, shambled around in ragged uniforms, and scowled menacingly at their officers.99