Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

Wars and ConflictsΒ  permalink

Serbia & Austria-Hungary in First World War

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by Stoggler (U14387762) on Wednesday, 17th November 2010

  In the UK we are aware of what happened on the Western Front in the Great War, but I have read very little about what happened to Austria-Hungary and Serbia during the war. Considering the whole thing started with Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia following the assassination of the Archduke in Sarajevo, did those two nations fight each other? How did Serbia fare against its larger neighbour? And how did Austria-Hungary fare generally in the war (I know they fought the Italians, but were they successful? And did they fight the Russians prior to the Revolutions of 1917?)?

  Link to this forum: Serbia & Austria-Hungary in First World War

  Report message1

• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Wednesday, 17th November 2010

  Cue Nik ...

  Link to this forum: Serbia & Austria-Hungary in First World War

  Report message2

• Message 3

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Wednesday, 17th November 2010

  In the UK we are aware of what happened on the Western Front in the Great War, but I have read very little about what happened to Austria-Hungary and Serbia during the war.Β 
  
  John Keegan's "The First World War" has quite a lot of detail about Austria-Hungary, and Mark Thompson's "The White War" is supposedly a very good account of the fighting on the Italian Front.
  
  In brief, it took over a year for Austria-Hungary to overrun Serbia, and then only by a combined attack with German and Bulgarian allies. Bulgaria joining the fray meant that the Serbian army couldn't defend the length of the front. The Serbs fell back to the coast and large numbers were evacuated by the GFrench navy and fought with the allies through the war. Against Russia, A-H did poorly, having to be helped out by her German allies. However, against Italy she performed well. The Italian army was poorly equipped, trained and led and had only limited avenues of attack available. the many battles of Isonzo were A-H victories at fright ful cost for the Italians. A-H units also served on the western front.

  Link to this forum: Serbia & Austria-Hungary in First World War

  Report message3

• Message 4

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Wednesday, 17th November 2010

  Heheheh White Camry. No I am not any specialist in the Serbian-Austrian front. For detailed battles I have to at least run to wikipedia as a first quick source. Myself mostly remember 3 things:
  
  1) That this front was the first WWI front following the assasination of Archiduke Ferdinand of Austrohungarian Empire a country 10 times larger and even more times more populous than Serbia which had only about 9 years ago annexed more or less completely arbitrarily Bosnia much to the reaction mainly of Serbs (but Croatians back then did not agree either - it would be the muslims that would prefer that from being with the Serbs their ex-slaves). The assasination was pepetrated by a youngster who was not any terrorist but a random poor youth given a pistol and told to wait. In reality the whole affair had been a scenery and the murder was a set up by Austrians themselves (or anyone else apart Serbs who had nothing to do with that). In fact there were several other Bosnioserbians given weapons "from above" that day and it was quite well known to Austrians that there was a grave danger if the duke visited Serajevo and that it should certainly not circulate without protection. So what did they do? Well they placed him in an open car with his wife and launched him into the people. The whole drama was a farse : there were more than 3 attempts to murder him, one tried to shoot the others' grenade did not explode and finally the driver decided to make the "wrong turn" into a random street where a bored Gavrilo was waiting, he turned and showed the car in disbelief, he took out the pistol he was given and shoot - himself not even fully conscious of the consequencies, still a youngster.
  
  The murder goes certainly goes as the most comic murder ever, but then what can we do about it, it was a set up. A set up that was used as a pretext for Austrians to sue for war the all-innocent Serbia that declared it had nothing to do with that (and till today there is nothing out there to link even the Serbian Black Hand organisation or other underground nationalist organisations to Gavrilos' little band of kids - Serbian nationalists simply did not see that murder as any great achievement for their scope - otherwise Austrians (or whoever was behind the murder) would not have to find refuge to that blatantly comical murder scene...
  
  Sorry to move back our topic but I had to repeat the above to stress how unfairly the Serbian nation was driven to war, in a war that decimated it.
  
  2) The first Austrian attack and the failure, then the second Austrian attack from the Adriatic and the combined Bulgarian attack at Skopje and Nis which caused the epic retreat of the Serbians through Albanian and Autonomous North Epirus (an autonomous Greek state that due to Italians remained to be today the southern part of Albania - as such Greece's shape is going down at Corfu... after Italian demands to avoid sharing control of Otranto with Greeks...) territory to land down to Corfu in a semi-allied semi-neutral Greece under the grip of of Allies and Axis powers facing the fasm of what else, civil war.
  
  3) The practical genocide of the Serbian nation which lose about 1 in 4 of its people!!!! I.e. the equivalent of modern Germany losing as it is 20 million people. So much people were killed in that war and mostly the fact that Serbia had lost half of its men that the very survival of the nation was being questioned with enemy Bulgarians wondering if that was not the end for the Serbian nation afterall! all while there had been international prayers for the Serbian nation among the allies. Top that with another genocide of about 1 in 5 Serbians in WWII and then you understand why Serbians in later years found themselves in a deficit in regions like Kosovo or Bosnia (where still they were the 40% of the population) all while Albanians and Bosnian muslims boomed their demographics going complete unscathed.
  
  You have to know at least the basics to comprehend the psychical traumas of the Serbian nation, to understand the horrible crimes of the Albanians and the muslims as well as the catholic Croatians to comprehend the amount of suffer that Serbians passed and still continue to pass for the single reason that they were deemed as too Russian-like to be permitted to survive and prosper in the Balkans. Mind you, this is no orthodox-alliance thingie, Bulgarians are also orthodox and there are even some Albanians and all are against all and even Serbians had never been any particular friends of the Greeks having eyed parts of our country (namely the places where I come from) and we Greeks tend to question every single Slav that approaches us - it is an instinct. But reading their history one cannot but feel sorry for the second most civilised and most progressive nation in Balkans (after Greeks, sorry Bulgarians come third! their FYROMian failed branch contributed to that)... You have also to keep in mind that it is not accidental that right now all these three nations that just one century ealier used to be the 3 major nations of the Balkans and the three only meaningful entities in the region (apart an Albanian state but more north, with little parts of Kosovo and Montenegro and FYROM but without North Epirus... ) are all three of them under direct geopolitical attack from current world powers who give emphasis in the destabilisation of the region using the triple axis: Albanians, muslims & FYROMian propagandists (ex Bulgarians altered by Tito's regime to think Alexander spoke Russian and Boucephale was a Zastava).

  Link to this forum: Serbia & Austria-Hungary in First World War

  Report message4

• Message 5

  , in reply to message 4.

  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Wednesday, 17th November 2010

  Anyway, enough of my "propaganda", let us get to the subject. No Serbia was not exactly conquered by Austrians but was rather defeated by the ferocious Bulgarian assault and the friction with local muslims and Albanians that hindered their movements. Austrians just profited and re-entered.
  
  In summer 1914 when the war started there could be no comparison between the Austrohungarian Empire still included in the Great Powers (and in terms of numbers indeed being one) and little Serbia which not only was a smaller nation (about 10 times smaller) but also much of its ethnic population was within Austrian territory but with no suitable organisations to aid as this was was fought mainly by tactical army movements rather than beng guerilla based - though Serbian army eventually had to adopt at cases guerilla forms. Austrohungarinas were not only bigger but also had top technology while Serbians were considerably lacking in that. Serbians also had little supply networks even in their own country, the result of their relalitvely recent independence.
  
  However Austrohungarians had several disadvantages too: they were a multinational Empire containing many uninterested ethnicities. If Hungarians were interested to get some regions in the south, Romanians did not care much and many of Slovenians and even Croatians felt allegiance to the Slavic scope. Then Austria had to reassign half the initial army destined to attack Serbia to the Russian front which was much more important. At the same time they had to face the Italians and there was a huge battle also going on there. Austrians fighting in these three directions fared better against Italians who were both not ready for war as well as suffering geographical deficit as Austrians had strong natural defenses while the Italian plains did not offer that chance to Italians. Austrians fared mediocre against the Serbians if not bad, and they struggled against Russians where they cooperated with Germans - i.e. they had already overstreched their capacity for war operations.
  
  Nontheless in the first year, the Austrian general (do not remember name) had underestimated the capacity of Serbians and despite sendng half the initial army he went for a daring plan, i.e. not invade Serbia from the plains of the north, natural point of invasion, but from the hilly west. In fact Stepanovic (I think it was him) the Serbian general could not believe that this was the main Austrian attack despite all indications and so kept the bulk of the Serbian army in the north. When he realised that Austrians indeed were risking in an attack coming from Bosnia, he sent there more army and Austrians were stopped suffering great losses, albeit Serbians also suffering quite a lot. With Austrian army surrendering and fleeing, the Germans were worrying and were pushing the Austrians to resend a new bigger army and go on for the kill. At the same time they were jumping on strictly neutral Greeks and lukewarm neutral Bulgarians to join the Axis so as to encircle the Serbians and clear them off. The great game was to link Berlin, Vienna, Belgrade, Thessaloniki and Constantinople with the railway so that German and Austrian troops could mobilise quickly up to the middle east which afterall was the key reason of the whole WWI affaire - not Germany wishing to capture France or something: the main fear was that sooner or later, the whole Middle East would be controlled by Russians, including the Suez and that the Eastern Mediterranean could become a Greek sea (as Greeks were traditionally the ship magnates working for Russians since the 18th century still under Ottomans...).
  
  However, Greeks were neutral, and a fraction was particularly pro-British (Venizelos fraction). Bulgarians however, following the 2 defeats of the British at Knut in Iraq and mostly at Dardanelles in 1915 they were finally convinced and so they mobiled all of their army - albeit sending on 2 fronts : one against south Serbia which was modern day FYROM - evidently a clearly Bulgarian land stolen by Serbians during the 2nd Balkanic war where they were celebrated by locals (grandparents of modern day FYROMians, back then of evident Bulgarian national consciousness) as liberators but then sent also the other part of the army to attack the real Macedonia, i.e. north Greece so as to occupy their target port of Thessaloniki themselves claimed as Bulgarian (with the support of all those FYROMian Bulgarians back then) saying such funny things as that the real name of the city was Solun and that it took the name from St. Demetrius the Solusnki (the equivalent of saying Paris took the name by Nicolas Sarkozy the Parisian!!!!), all while for them Macedonians were never Greeks and Alexander spoke a pre-slavic language closer to Bulgarian and other such funny things most of which were later used by Tito to formulate the post-WWII propaganda for the new construction of artificial state of FYROM.
  
  With Bulgaria attacking Serbia and Austria coming back things were not so good for Serbians who were not ready to fight on two fronts (just 2 years previously in the 2nd Balkan war (the prelude to WWI) they had beaten the ferocious Bulgarians only because they were allied to Greeks and Romanians and so Bulgarians had to divide their forces - note Greeks however had to fight against the Ottomans too allies of Bulgarians). With the Serbian front at risk Allies who were already present in the Aegean forcing their presence through Greek territory on will ignoring Greece's wish for neutrality they came into contact with pro-British (well... British agent) Venizelos who pushed for entry in war and went up to the point of aiding Venizelos dividing the country in half (something unthinkable), as well as sending troops to invade Athens to deal with the pro-royalists who followed the pseudo-king (another agent. of foreign interests...), who was more pro-German due to his family ancestry (just picture that... imagine.. to what men lied the interests of Greece...). However when Bulgarians invaded Macedonia with some minor German help, that stroke a chord in Greeks' soul and the fasm of Bulgarian presence which meant even possible genocide for the populaion, the real Macedonians (i.e. Greeks, namely my own grandparents!!!), the Greeks rushed in the ranks of Venizelos and the voices for Greek entry rose so that the Greek state now under Venizelos (with the king kicked out), send officially the Greek army to fight in the fronts. Nontheless in Macedonia there were already British and French troops under French command of general Sarreil, which were already fighting the Bulgarians with minor success - as their troops were of low capacity (mostly colonial troops), and it was the addition of the Greeks who fought for their lands that gave another dynamic and finally yielded the resistance of Bulgarians.
  
  Onmy that all that came quite late i.e. after 1915 while Serbians had already been squeezed by the second year by invading Bulgarian offensive and the 2nd Austrian one. The most memorable event was of course the epic retreat of the Serbian army. Having been surrounded by Bulgarians and having no exit to the north were other parts of it were pressed by the Austrians some 200,000 people, mostly troops but also many civilians living next to the by then agitated Bulgarians (modern day FYROMians) and Albanians of Kosovo who feared slaughters followed the Allies' advice for evacuation and continuation of the struggle on other fronts instead of capitulation. The lot marched a miserable long distance from south Serbia into Montenegro and then northern Albania to reach the coastline and from there go south to find refuge in the Greek Ionian islands (already invaded by Allies despite Greece's neutrality). In that march some 50,000 Serbians died of hunger and typhus as well as by the continuous harassement that Albanian and Bulgarian armed civilian militias kept excersising against them. So hard was the march that out of the 150,000 who reached the shores of Greek Ionian islands many (from another 1/10th and up to 1/5th more) died in the later weeks out of exhaustion and despite the whatever aid given to them.
  
  What followed in occupied Serbian lands between 1915 and 1918 is easy to imagine : Bulgarians (FYROMians) were naturally taking revenge for all the crimes of Serbians against them after the loss of the 2nd Balkan war (where Serbians had crashed so badly the Bulgarians that had famously slaughtered even the patients inside the hospitals not letting them to die from their illnesses...). Albanians who had not suffered really much from Serbians but who as muslims simply could not stand have them as rulers and who remembered the good old days of the Ottoman Empire simply went out for loot, kill and rape, the usual stuff we saw in the 60s, 70s and 80s prior to the Jugoslav war as well as during the Kosovo war particularly after the invasion of Serbia by NATO.
  
  As such the overall losses of Serbians to battle losses, civilian slaughters, famine and typhus were about 1 in 4 Serbians wiped out and it was mostly the men (up to about half Serbian men were wiped out) which was a practical form of genocide for which ... none could be responsible but some curse that hunts Serbians for some uknown reason...
  
  Serbians and Greeks (mainly those of Minor Asia) were the nations that suffered most in WWI, not just in Balkans but also in comparison to all other European or other nations. Greeks might have a finger to point for the genocides they suffered - the Turks but Serbs do not even have that chance and as such that part of their history is even less known.
  
  Good to note a thing or two before deving into this region.

  Link to this forum: Serbia & Austria-Hungary in First World War

  Report message5

• Message 6

  , in reply to message 5.

  Posted by Eliza (U14650257) on Thursday, 18th November 2010

  Hmm, well, I blame the Ottomans for invading the Balkans in the first place. On the other hand, maybe all the ethinic/national conflicts would simply have focussed on Catholic vs Orthodox instead.
  
  Interesting to read the conspiracy theory about Princip and the Archduke...hadn't heard that one before (I don't move in Serbian circles...!)
  
  It does have a logic to it though - and the Archduke wasn't v. popular with the rest of the Hapsburgs, was he, on account of his morganatic marriage to his (non-royal!) duchess. I can't believe Franz-Joseph would have been party to it - he strikes me as an honorable sort of chap, whatever his other flaws. (He's a sad example of a man who outlived his time and lived long enough to see his world ending, and too, too many personal sorrows.) (That's another 'if' of history, isn't, if he'd died before Mayerling happened....)

  Link to this forum: Serbia & Austria-Hungary in First World War

  Report message6

• Message 7

  , in reply to message 6.

  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Thursday, 18th November 2010

  In reply to Eliza:
  """Hmm, well, I blame the Ottomans for invading the Balkans in the first place.""""
  
  Hehehe, the usual Balkan excuse... Turks' face fills with spots when they hear that! No, we have to be fair. It was certainly not the fault of the Ottomans. Inter-ethnic strife in Balkans goes fart before that and we can trace it in the first descend or the Slavic tribes. For Albanians I cannot speak since their link to Illyrians is not verified yet (though plausible), but when they appeared not more than 1000 years go, they do participate geatly in the inter-ethnic rivalry (and it is for that reason most of them became muslims afterall).
  
  """On the other hand, maybe all the ethinic/national conflicts would simply have focussed on Catholic vs Orthodox instead."""
  
  Not at all. Bulgarians and Serbians and Greeks are all orthodox yet I do not know whom Bulgrarians hated most, the Greeks or the Serbians? It must had been the Greeks since they are afterall non-Slavic and you know, they are still shocked of stories of 99 blinded men guided by 1 single-eyed (ref. to Byzantine history).... no kidding, Bulgarians during the guerilla war of the 1900-1910 and during the 1912 1st & 1913 2nd Balkan wars had the habbit of blinding captured Greek troops and civilians alike - with an innovative addition of cutting the tongue, a message that the real Macedonia had to stop speaking Greek.
  
  On the other hand Slovenians are also catholic yet they never had any trouble with Serbians. In Serbia there was always a Hungarian minority in Voivodina but they do seem to get along with Serbians just fine. You have to keep in mind that the word "orthodox" in english language has often negative connotations (of someone conservative, traditionalist, perhaps even fanatic) but in Greek language (as well as in Slavic languages) it has no such connotation for the simple reason that Orthodoxy, be it traditionalist is rarely fundamentalist. During the 1st WW, Croatians would rather look sympathetically their ethnic/linguistic brothers Serbians. The clash between Croatian catholics and Serbian orthodox came after the 1920s when Croatians had got rid of Austrians but then they saw that they did not like to cohabitate with Serbians whom they esteemed as too un-European. Effectively, much more than the usual good old catholic-orthodox division the centuries of living under different Empires had created an observable cultural divergence. What is interesting though is that Slovenians who are less related to Serbians in comparison to Croatians and who are also catholic did not express such feelings in the violent way Croatians did so for the simple reason that they did not cohabitate with Serbians while Croatians had "grey zones" that they eyed in the eventuality of their independence and as such were more agitated.
  
  Note though that there is a 3rd parameter since then... which became obvious much later, in our times: the muslim parameter. Bosnia had been incorporated to Austria just 10 years prior to WWI. Then after WWI Croatians came into being under one roof with them as well as with Serbians. It goes without saying that Croatians hated (and hate) more Bosnian muslims than Serbians and do not be fooled by what happened in the 1990s where Croatians concentrated in cleansing about nearly 1 million Serbians from the federal state Croatia to create the current state of Croatia and they allied with muslims (under the advice of Americans and some of the western Europeans). However in reality, Croatians could bear living next to Serbians but could never bear living next to muslims - just note what is going on right now in Bosnia where the 10% Croatian minority despite being allied to muslims against the Serbians, they still do avoid the muslims like the devil. So you have to imagine that back then the prospect of Croatians enterring in a state having to deal with muslims and Serbians and their rivalries was already a headache. The Slavic-brotherhood that Croatians sold to Serbians was just to gain freedom from the Austrian grip but then their idea was eventually to get independent.
  
  """"Interesting to read the conspiracy theory about Princip and the Archduke...hadn't heard that one before (I don't move in Serbian circles...!)""""
  
  Actually there are far more details. One should wonder how on earth the archiduke was so naif as to accept being paraded like a clown in an open car in a city where even out of nowhere just any local would throw at him stones or bullets. I mean, the whole scene defied all logic. Today historians while they know very well the case they are afraid to open that can of worms... afterall it was the spark that ignited the WWI where million died, can you imagine now opening the can and what kind of worms will get out? Poor Gavrilo suffered in prison not only for his crime but also having to think that he became the reason for the death of millions yet he was smart enough to claim that "I just killed a man bu the war would happen anyway, the Great Powers would had found just any other stupid reason to launch the WWI".
  
  """It does have a logic to it though - and the Archduke wasn't v. popular with the rest of the Hapsburgs, was he, on account of his morganatic marriage to his (non-royal!) duchess."""
  
  REALLY???? I did not know that!!!!!!!!!!!! This is extremely interesting!!!!!
  Because it coincides with the story of the marriage of Alexander son of the king Konstantinos of Greece (buof you know, the royal family was Dutch-German-British, imposed by the British) to a Greek woman Aspasia Manou (or Manos as she was known in Europe where the name does not change between male and female, Manos, Manou).. Alexander went against all tradition of the pseudo-royal foreign imposed family, his own family, against his own father and did not marry any other European princess but a Greek "commoner". In reality Aspasia Manou was no... common commoner but her ancestors were traced along the families of Manos (Phanariots, governors of autonomous region of Moldavia), Soutzos (Phanariots, governors of Wallachia), Karatzas (Phanariots), Mavromihalis (ruling clan of north Peloponesus) - the Phanariots were descendants of ancient Byzantine Constantinopolitan aristocrats and after Russians demanded from Ottomans the autonomy of Wallachia and Moldavia, they ruled as governors there (in the 1800s around 1 million Greeks lived in Romania which was a huge percentage of the population). However, western European royal families while recognised them as aristocrats (though in Greek tradition there were no official titles or something), they did not accept them as royalties. Hence the relation of Alexander an Aspasia was not taken well by King Konstantine and all the family - however a few members had expressed that since Aspasia was also descendant of the Sutzos family which was one of the few Phanariots that were actually one of the few remaining well-traced descendants of the Komnenian Imperial family (in which the Palaiologoi also belonged - Komnenians, an extended family clan, were the last lineage that ruled the last 400 years of the Empire as well as being a base family for all European royal families (especially in Germany and Russia as well as to most Venetian and Genovese aristocracies) and as such dear Aspasia was more than OK for being a royalty anywhere in Europe let alone in her homeland Greece.
  
  So, Alexander was deemed as the black-sheep, as a victim of his love for a woman, as a woman-follower, as naif etc. And as such Venizelos when used the aid of the British in 1916 had king Konstantine out, he kept Alexander as a more manipulated one. However Alexander kept having his own ideas and his own visions about himself, his role as a prince of Greece and future king of Greece if the royal regime was to be continued as well as - more importantly - his vision of future Greece. Actually Alexander had started becoming very popular not only among the circle of Greek royalists (people federated politically around the circles of the royal family - not out of belief in it but mostly as political fraction) but also even among neutral and anti-royalists (the bulk of Greeks) even sometimes some lukewarm pro-Venizelists who normally hated the royal family. Venizelos kept monitoring. And, Alexander finally married Aspasia in a civil wedding (since no church man could take the initiative against the will of the king as well as... that of Venizelos!!!!????) just after the end of the WWI in 1919, Venizelos (prime minister then and an anti-royalist) was mad (what for really? he was an antiroyalist!!!), he did not approve of it and started procedures to take him out. In the meanwhile Aspasia was never accepted as Queen but was called for some time with the very common "Madame Manos".
  
  And then what happened? "Fate decided"!!!
  
  While Aspacia had just fallen pregnant, Alexander one nice morning wished to have a peaceful walk in a zoo and was attacked by 2 escaped monkeys and was bitten, infected and died some days later. The whole storyline as given in the internal and international press was that young prince Alexander was walking in the zoo with his dog, then 2 escaped monkeys attacked the dog, Alexander tried to save his dog and to fend off the monkeys with a stick, hit the one but the monkey had bitten slightly his hand, then the other monkey attacked and bit him deeply before Alexander fending it off albeit having his hands bleeding. The 27-years old Alexander was taken to hospital where he died of a blood infection since the monkeys - as they were found and analysed - were indeed infected. And the storyline remained about "the young foolish prince, slave of his woman, slave also of his pet (Greece is a macho country and no pet loving one), who wanted to save his dog and got killed tragicomically by the monkeys". In the mean time, king Konstantine was pressing to return to Greece, Venizelos declared elections (and made everything possible to lose them, then he left the country), and king Konstantine (father of Alexander - but who had not approved him at all), returned and supported the new government of Gounaris who was elected to end all military campaigns but actually next day declared after the British demand the expendition to the depths of Minor Asia!!!
  
  However, that is not all the reality behind. Not accidentally, WInston Churhill had commented that "It was because of a monkey bite that Greeks were slaughtered in Minor Asia"!!!! An incredible statement. Why would he mention that?
  
  Well... let us take things again - all the timeline! Alexander had went against all the Danish-German-British tradition. He was perhaps the one and only of the pseudo-royal family who had obtained a conscious Greek consciousness. While Aspasia Manou was a beautiful lady, much more beautiful than the bulk of the aristocracy of the times elsewhere in Europe, Alexander was not just in love with her for that reason. In reality, the background ideas of Alexander hid bigger plans, big ideas... i.e. nothing more than reigning over a doubled Greece over the 2 side of the Aegean becoming a true monarch of the Greeks. He considered himself Greek afteGrall - his personal friends were mostly among the "good" Greek families and not among European aristocrats. As such, Aspasia Manou was his ideal wife - not only she was Greek and as such he would be even more closer to the Greek people but she was also of an ancient Byzantine aristocrat family and as such she made directly the link to Constantinople and Minor Asia. I.e. what he dreamt was to open a kind of a truly new royal house, one that could finally
  make a living link. And it was this exactly what had enervated his father Konstantine who was not at all along the same lines and who preferred to be under the umbrella of his fellow folks of north Europe. But what is strange is that Venizelos - who was also pushing for Minor Asia even more than Alexander - should had been jumping of happyness with the event, yet he was even more against than Konstantine himself... why?
  ... well guess why... Venizelos was just an agent for the British and as such he served as a trasmitter of British geopolitics. And British geopolitics wanted no Aspasia Manou and no Alexander there.
  
  So taking again all those parameters, the actual timing of his death (as well as the overall grotesque event) are too strange to be ignored : Alexander dies, Konstantine wants to return back, Venizelos calls for elections (while he did not need to do so as he had a very nice majority!!! ) and does everything to lose them so as to go out, Gounaris and the royalist win and decide to follow the initial British plan of sending armies deep in Minor Asia to chase phantoms leading to a defeat and the completion of the genocide of Greeks (which - it is important to note - had already started in 1910, so little to do with that campaign, it can't be used as a justification....).
  
  I am telling you, there is no easy way to find out but things are way too weird to accept casually the storyline sold by majorly British lines.
  
  """I can't believe Franz-Joseph would have been party to it - he strikes me as an honorable sort of chap, whatever his other flaws.""""
  
  I am not fond of royalties. But a good man can come from anywhere. It strikes me that the two of them, Ferdinand of Austria and Alexander of Greece (ok, for me pseudo-royalty), one murdered, the other possibly (that is my opinion) murdered were actually two good men as well as both happened to take the wife of their choice thus enervating even more their circles.
  
  """(He's a sad example of a man who outlived his time and lived long enough to see his world ending, and too, too many personal sorrows.)"""
  
  ... while Alexander was an ambitious man that wanted to create a whole new world and even his own lineage. Had the Greek royal family continued to intermarry with the Phanariot aristocrats they would make much more close the link to the ancient Byzantine times with all direct connotations of that - no wonder there was instant reaction to that.

  Link to this forum: Serbia & Austria-Hungary in First World War

  Report message7

• Message 8

  , in reply to message 7.

  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Thursday, 18th November 2010

  Sorry, wrote this part by part over 2 breaks but forgot to split! Anyway, I found the stories of Ferdinand and Alexander having some uncunnily common points.

  Link to this forum: Serbia & Austria-Hungary in First World War

  Report message8

• Message 9

  , in reply to message 5.

  Posted by Sixtus Beckmesser (U9635927) on Thursday, 18th November 2010

  "Nontheless in the first year, the Austrian general (do not remember name) had underestimated the capacity of Serbians"
  
  That'll be Conrad von Hotzendorf then!
  
  As a slight tangent, my great-great-grandfather was an officer of dragoons in the Austria army and was killed in a charge during the Przemsyl campaign in the Autumn of 1914. My late grandmother had a marvellous photo of him in all his prewar gold-braided and fur-trimmed grandeur.
  
  

  Link to this forum: Serbia & Austria-Hungary in First World War

  Report message9

• Message 10

  , in reply to message 3.

  Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Thursday, 18th November 2010

  The Italian army was poorly equipped, trained and led and had only limited avenues of attack available. the many battles of Isonzo were A-H victories at fright ful cost for the Italians.Β 
  -----------------------------------------------------
  
  Comparing the casualty statistics of Italy with, say, the UK provides some remarkable results.
  
  The UK lost approximately 885,000 military dead during the First World War while Italy lost 650,000. The population of the UK at the time was about 45,000,000 while that of Italy was about 35,000,000. In percentage terms, therefore, both countries lost about 2% of their population in combat.
  
  This is a remarkable stat when one considers that Italy does not really feature in the story of the 'major fronts' of that war - i.e the Western Front and the Eastern Front.
  
  To think that Italy's losses in the First World War were actually, and proportionally, more or less the same as those of the UK's is quite astonishing.
  
  In November 2007 I visited Venice with my partner and we were struck by how virtually every church we passed, (and needless to say there are a lot of them in the city), had a substantial First World War memorial on the side of the building. The memorials tended to take the form of a plaque listing the names of the parishioners who had fallen in the war. Our attention was drawn to these as (it being Sunday 11 November) the memorials were bedecked with wreaths and ribbons etc.
  
  It was a very moving sight.

  Link to this forum: Serbia & Austria-Hungary in First World War

  Report message10

Back to top