The Austro-Hungarian Revolutions
Chapter X – Operation Wallenstein
Consolidation
After the lightning red advance of 1935, 1936 couldn’t have opened up any bleaker for the Habsburg Empire. In Bohemia, Prauge itself was half encircled and under fire from the Red Army of the North Slavic Peoples Republic. In Hungary, only the Danube had stopped the Soviet Hungarian Red Army and in the south, the South Slavic Peoples Liberation Army was held in check at the borders of Croatia mostly by Ustasja troops with an agenda of their own. The Austrian troops were badly battered, demoralised and thinly spread. The only thing that had allowed a temporal stabilisation of the front was that the Reds had outrun their supply bases in the Carpathians passes and would have to wait for their stocks to build up again.
In fact though, the Austrian Army was well on its way to recovery even before the stabilisation of the fronts around New Years Eve. Imperial Germany, while reluctant to intervene directly, had nevertheless opened up wallet quite without restraint. Kaiser Wilhelm II had proclaimed in a speech that while Austria was quite capable of dealing with its internal problems, Germany would act as an “arsenal for the monarchies” and give every kind of material help needed. Thus, since a few weeks into the conflict, trains stocked with every kind of war material, including fuel and canned food, had been rolling over the border crossings. With German help, replacement troops were being trained and equipped and new units formed. Before the lull of mid-winter, the Austrian troops were firing little but German made ordnance, their track forces had been enormously swelled by hundreds of former German Sturmpanzer II tracks and German advisors were present at every level of the Austrian army from regimental command and up to the Imperial General staff, where an OHL
Generalmajor and aide gave advice on operational planning.
As the Red advance continued through autumn and early winter of 1935, the Kaiser and the OHL decided that Germany was going to send expeditionary forces to Austria. Chosen for the task were the three mountain divisions of
Generalleutenant Paul von Lettow-Voerbeck, hero of the battle of Dar Es Salaam. These were outfitted in Austrian uniform, officially (if temporarily) discharged from German service and sworn in as Austrian soldiers. The Austrian army was by this time heavily reliant on German equipment anyway, so the that particular aspect of the transmogrification of German into Austrian troops did not present much of a problem.
Another prominent German officer to don Austrian uniform would be the aide to the aforementioned OHL chief adviser to the Imperial General Staff, Mj General Erwin Rommel. Colonel Heinz Guderian, a proponent of radical ideas regarding track warfare was apparently (and it has to be said,without sanction from the OHL) able to convince Kaiser Otto I of the validity of his ideas, and was given permission to form an experimental track division using three dragoon regiments and two track brigades.
The advice given by the OHL representatives to the Imperial General Staff proved to be of the traditionally aggressive German kind, and was accepted only after much debate and through the personal decision of the Kaiser; since the troops strength to defend the long front was lacking, the temporary self-imposed stop of the enemy advance was used to strip most of its length next to bare and concentrate available units on the flanks of the Red salient jutting into Bohemia.
Operation Wallenstein – opening stages
On January 3rd, the Red Army of the North Slavic Peoples Republic made an attempt to secure its deep right flank by launching a local offensive against the right shoulder of their Bohemian breakthrough at the city of Ostrau/Ostrava, administrative and industrial centre of Moravia-Silesia. Its capture would not only have strengthened the Red Army’s position in Bohemia-Moravia immeasurably, but would also have constituted a rude blow to the slowly recovering Austrian war economy, which was just finding its legs again after the massive disruptions of orderly production caused by the loss of the eastern 2/3rds of the Empire.
To their surprise, the Red Army troops were quickly and bloodily repulsed by vastly superior numbers of Imperial troops. Unwittingly they had stumbled upon the northern mass of troops marshalling for the upcoming Imperial counteroffensive, operation “Wallenstein”. Alarm bells began to ring in Red Army headquarters, but it was already far too late. On January 4th, the Austrians attacked from Bratislava, Hollabrun and Tabor in the south and from Ostrava in the north. The primary objective for the operation was Brünn/Brno, but as an afterthought, Panzer-Division Radetzky had been allowed diverge from the main Axis towards Sillein/Zillina. If that locality could be captured, not only the Red Divisions in Bohemia, but also all those in Moravia would be surrounded.
The southern pincer punched straight through the Red Army front and while Panzer-Division Radetzky careened off towards Sillein the infantry trudged on towards Brünn. In the north, the
Kaiserjäger of the Austrian Alpenkorps ran into heavy resistance, but were also able to break through as enemy forces were pulled from the northern sector to plug the hole in the south. Pinning attacks were also made in Bohemia to keep the six Red divisions there in place.
On January 6th, forces of the VII. Austrian Armeekorps of Lt General Ernst entered Brünn, prompting USSR to initiate a massive program of logistical support to the rebels. For the troops in Bohemia and Moravia it was however far too late: a desperate breakout attempt by the Bohemian pocket was beaten back on the evening of the 6th, and on the 7h all Austrian troops around the pocket went on the offensive, squashing it from all sides.
Any residual hopes of breaking out were squashed when Panzer-Division Radetzky captured Sillein on January 8th, effectively putting a long-stop behind nine enemy divisions, six in Bohemia and three in Moravia. Three furious counterattacks were beaten back by Guderian’s green Panzercrews during the evening. The surrenders began that very night and by morning the 9th nine Red Army divisions, some 130.000 troops, walked off into captivity.
Operation Wallenstein had opened with a colossal and much needed victory for the Empire which enormously strengthened the faltering Austrian morale. The victory of the revolution no longer seemed a certain thing. The success now opened up for a continuation of the offensive into Slovakia, which was only lightly defended by anarchist Militia and some regular North Slavic Red Army troops. On January 9th the expeditionary forces of von Lettow Voerbeck’s Gebirgskorps arrived in Bratislava, after being diverted from their intended participation in a subsidiary offensive in Croatia to reinforce the huge success of “Wallenstein”. Hardly had they detrained before the tough German mountain troops were sent to capture the city of Neusohl/Banska Bystrica while Panzer Division Radetzky advanced towards Miskolc. Neusohl was bravely defended in pitched street battles by anarchist troops which were eventually forced to bug out to prevent encirclement. The city was finally taken on January 11th, opening the way for a continued advance into Slovakia. Meanwhile, the Red Army of the North Slavic People’s Republic was marshalling newly arrived Soviet T-26 tracks in Presov for a counterattack…
Day of the Three Kings
On January 6th, two events drew attention away from the Austrian recapture of Brünn: the Italian Duce, Benito Mussolini, marched troops into the undefended Austro-Hungarian region of Istria, long claimed by Italy, and declared it annexed to the Kingdom of Italy as a Three Kings Day present to the Italian people. Vienna protested stridently but ultimately impotently, since there were no troops available to try to dislodge the Italians, even if such an action would have been seriously considered. Under immediate threat of war with France and the Soviet Union, Germany was not eager to add Italy to its list of enemies and counselled Vienna to take only diplomatic action for the time being, a counsel taken to heart by the Austrian Kaiser who lodged a formal complaint with the League of Nations. Reduced numbers of German troops were however sent to guard the new border to avoid any further bloodless annexations – if Mussolini wanted any more of Austria, he’d have to spill blood to get it.
From the New World, January 6th, the Day of the Three Kings as it was celebrated in many latin Catholic countries, was also a day to notice. In Brazil, elements of the army rose in the name of a broad left-wing coalition named the ALN (National Liberation Alliance) but the coup was led by the Brazilian Communist Party leader and Comintern agent Luís Carlos Prestes. The day was chosen because many “non-progressive” officers were home celebrating the end of Christmas with their families while the “progressive” ones had volunteered to work in their place. The coup was a complete success and toppled the right-wing government of Getúlio Vargas, replacing it with a Marxist-Trotskyist dictatorship headed by the aforementioned Luís Carlos Prestes. The Revolution had leaped across the Atlantic and set foot in the new World – and that was only the beginning of its march across the Americas.
