January 1st 1915 – December 12th 1915
At the start of 1915 the Quadruple Alliance sat upon the precipice of defeat. Their armies were losing and their home fronts were breaking. Austria was forced to send soldiers into the cities of the German Empire to help the government quell revolt whilst the situation in Austria itself was even more intense. Austria needed to secure victory in France and it needed to do it fast.
The Western Front
The Great Spring Offensive that lasted from April 3rd to June 15th was Austria’s last throw of the dice. A massive offensive involving some 8 million soldiers using the storm trooper tactics employed by the Russians during the Brusilov Offensive, almost 2,000 tanks and untold amounts of artillery.
The Offensive was split into 3 attacks. The Indian Army launched a diversionary attack to the North near Lille, the Austrian 5th, 6th and 7th Armies launched an attack directly to the South of the Ardennes whilst the mainstay of the Austrian army launched an almighty attack towards Paris. Having lost so many men it was pretty clear that France would not fight on if Paris fell.
In April Austria secured a series of victories in the trenches unlike anything seen over the past 2 years of deadlock. Breakthroughs were made in all three sectors. Finally the right tactics and technology had been uncovered to end the static slaughter of trench warfare.
Austrian cavalry opened up behind the broken Entente lines and charged towards its objectives. By the start of May the Austrians had arrived on the Seine and the outskirts of Paris, the city now came under an intense artillery bombardment.
The Austrians had been halted on the outskirts of Paris after the quick formation of a defensive barrier in the city’s suburbs. With their supply lines stretched and their army exhausted the Austrians hoped that by shelling the great city of the French their enemy would consider surrender.
Yet the French proved unwilling to give in. Philippe Petain, now Commander in Chief of the French Army, issued an impassioned plea to the French people demanding that they fight for the freedom of Paris lest the French nation die upon her glorious streets. Between May 8th and May 25th the French and Austrian armies did battle in North-Eastern Paris. As the Army pleaded for help from the civilians, taxi drivers help soldiers move around the front, women and children brought food to their soldiers and ordinary civilian men took up rifles and fought. At the end of the battle the Austrian Army was in tatters and a now energised French military was prepared to counter attack. The Austrians continued to try to advance in other sectors until June 15th.
Following the halting of offensive actions both armies lay exhausted from the fighting. The French seemed eager to counterattack (and remove the threat of shelling on Paris) but lacked the resources to do so. Following the Spring Offensive the Austrians had to slowly withdraw troops Eastward to deal with the Russian threat which was now in the midst of yet another Summer Offensive.
At the start of August The British, French and Scandinavian armies on the Western Front began the final offensive that would win the war.
The Offensive began with the Battle of Meoux (near Paris) in which a Franco-British army totally crushed the Austrians and forced them into a large scale retreat. This victory was followed by countless victories elsewhere as the Entente began to quickly advance forward.
It is unclear whether the Entente had ever actually expected to find such success. After 3 years of total warfare the Austrian Army seemed to have finally broken. Morale and manpower were wearing thin, no real defensive lines could be formed, logistics were starting to collapse and the chain of command was falling apart.
The decisive day came on December 3rd 1915. It was mid-winter, the 6th Army had gone without adequate food rations for two weeks, it had only recently returned from a mauling at the hands of the British Army. After being ordered to turn around and attack 20 Austrian soldiers refused to move, they were executed on the spot. By December 8th the entire 6th Army had joined together in mutiny, refusing to throw their lives down in a futile counterattack. With the line starting to crack in the East and the war in the West clearly lost there were crisis talks in Vienna. On December 12th Austria surrendered to the Entente on the sole condition that Kaiser August von Habsburg retain his Imperial throne. On the 12th hour of the 12thday of the 12th month the guns finally fell silent over Europe. The estimated war dead on the Western Front alone was anywhere between 3 and 6 million with casualty rates more than three times that number.
The Italian Front
Incredibly at the time when everything was falling apart around Europe Austria achieved yet more victories in Italy.
The Eastern Front
Considering the situation the Quadruple Alliance (by this time Austria contributed 80% of Alliance strength in Europe) 1915 can be considered a year of incredible achievement on the Eastern Front. Badly outnumbered with armies on the verge of collapse the massive Russian Summer Offensive of 1915 (the largest of the war involving over 12 million soldiers from 6 countries) was supposed to end the war. Instead the Russians suffered terrible losses and gained very little land (although their gains did include Danzig and West Prussia. However whilst the Austrians survived the attack they did so in bad shape.
The loss of the grain shipments from the Empire, from Poland and from Hungary had each delivered a crushing blow to the Germanic Empires of Central Europe who so relied on imported food stuffs. These hammer blows had one by one cut off the cities of Central Europe from their food supply with most home produced food going to the military. Therefore after brutal battles in West and in East by the time Autumn arrived Austria and Germany were in famine and food supply to the military had to be cut down. This is perhaps the most important reason for the Quadruple Alliance collapse in 1915.
Despite halting their advances for Winter (as had become the pattern during the war) the Russians attacked again in October at the behest of the Western Entente who feared that troops could be transferred West to halt their own advance in France. The Russians attack tentatively and not in the overwhelming numbers they had presented in the Summer yet secured significant gains even if the Austrians continued to fight hard for their lost land. The Russians continued this slow advance until the armistice was signed on December 12th.
The Rest of the World
Whilst 1915 saw military collapse in Europe Austria’s now independently functioning Empire continued to fight on. In Africa minor but hard fought losses were suffered in Tanganyika whilst at the same time gains were made in South-West Africa. Elsewhere a mixture of British and Japanese troops launched attacks upon the Albrechtine Islands and other isles of the Austrian East Indies. The Indian Empire fought hard to prevent the loss of these colonies but lacked the naval resources to continue to fight.
It is notable that in China the Civil War came to a temporary end in 1915 as in the Spring of that year the last Chinese Emperor abdicated. Whilst the Ming were gone there was no clear government as the local warlords who had supported Yuan Shikai on his road to victory paid little other than lip service to his Beijing Republican government. In reality the Republic of China had little power outside of Beijing and the Yangtze Valley.
The Armistice of 12/12/1915
Both the Austrian and German Armies were forced to de-mobilise and disarm as all artillery, armour, mines and aircraft were surrendered to the Entente.
The Austrian Fleet was also to be sent to the French and British (its Admirals scuttled it rather than do so).
1. The Alsace-Lorraine was annexed directly by France
2. The Rhineland was placed under temporary French occupation until the eventual peace treaty could determine its future
3. Russia would occupy all of Poland, East Prussia and the German Baltic territories
4. Hungary would occupy the Sopron area (and its mighty fortresses) as well as Slovakia
5. Bohemia was to be granted full independence – all Austrian soldiers within Bohemia were to withdraw
6. Scandinavia was to occupy the Schleswig and much of Holstein
7. The German Kaiser was to abdicate and a Republic was to be established in Germany (August von Habsburg retained his throne in Vienna)
8. Italy was to occupy all of Lombardy
9. The Austrian Protectorate on Egypt was ended and Alexandria granted to the Kingdom
10. The Suez Canal Zone was taken from Austria and turned into an international territory
Elsewhere August von Habsburg was forced to surrender his Indian throne. The Indian Empire was then told to elect a native Emperor. The Austrian Empire was left under occupation by a mixture of Entente and Austrian soldiers until its fate could be decided in a Peace Treaty.
The war was finally over. The Austrian Empire and her Habsburg Dynasty had survived – barely. Yet even as the ink dried on the Armistice that ended the Great War the first shots of the Austrian Civil War were being fired back home as the far-right and far-left armed themselves for war. At the same time millions of unemployed, armed and dissatisfied young men returned home to join them.
