Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 152 - Conrad Von Hotzendorf Part 1: Load Bearing Franz

Episode Date: April 26, 2021

A new challenger for the worst commander of all time has entered the arena. ** corrections** Gavrilo Princeps is mistakenly called a "Bosnian" during the episode. What we went to say was "Bosnian Serb" and our brain melted mid sentence. sources for both episodes: A mad catastrophe: the outbreak of World War I and the collapse of the Habsburg Empire Collision Course: Franz Conrad Von Hötzendorf, Serbia, and the Politics of Preventive War https://www.historynet.com/carpathian-catastrophe.htm http://roadstothegreatwar-ww1.blogspot.com/2019/11/forgotten-campaign-carpathian-winter.html support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hello, Lions Led by Donkeys fans. The following is a two-part series that didn't actually start out as a two-parter, but since the episode went long, it made sense to break it up. So please enjoy part one and expect part two about a week from now. And for the record, the guy's name is actually pronounced Franz Conrad von Hützendorf, or if you want to be really fancy, Franz Konrad von Hützendorf. Hello. Hello.

Here I am laughing at something that happened before we started recording, because we're professionals. And welcome to yet another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. With me today is Francis and Shox. And I don't know if we're going by the term zoo crew here, because we're about to talk about like thousands of people freezing to death and i don't think that it's it's cool to use like morning radio voices in terms for that and you're dead dead dead and then he died of trench foot fart noise i mean that just makes us a barstool podcast, I'm pretty sure. God damn it. Now we have to do something racist. Fuck. So, but no, really, if you listen to barstool, go fuck yourself. Anyway, so once upon a time, a couple months ago, it was this year, I think, 2021, where we had our first ever live show, of in the confines of of twitch

because we live on opposite sides of this country quite literally like one on the far east one smack dab in the middle and me out in the middle of pacific ocean i'm excited to start referring to massachusetts as the far east you know it's funny because that was like the old timey word for armenia well sorry no they called ar No, they called Armenia the Near East during the genocide. They call it Near East Relief. Close enough, I guess. Yes, the fine. The over there-ish relief.

Yeah, the people not far enough east where we have to be racist to them. I mean, if I'm the Far East i mean that makes francis the middle east they're white people but they talk funny wait if you're from the far east does that mean marky mark has to commit a hate crime against himself uh yeah i mean i think technically yeah he has to punch himself in the dick 15 times rochambeau you take the first 50 turns. So long time ago, um, it seems like way longer than it actually is. Uh, cause time is dead. We did a kind of live show,

uh, where we did a, a, a Luigi Cadorna reboot where, I mean, I did publish as a regular episode and we managed to fuck up the sound because we're professionals. I think it was mostly me.

Um, and then that one, everybody's like, no, no, no, no. Luigi isn't the worst commander ever. This guy is. That guy isn't the worst commander ever. Luigi is. And then so on and so forth, back and forth for almost three years now. So I've decided to enter another. A challenger has entered the arena.

He is Mario to the Luigi. And that is Franz Xavier Joseph Conrad von Hotzendorf. Oh, good old Frank. I'm going to call him Conrad for the whole time because there's we're talking about austria hungary here so there's a lot of franz's i don't want to get franz's all the way down um just a pile of franz do the austrians still have rad names like von hotzendorf well von is a noble signifier so no those were abol were abolished. Fine. Hotzendorf. Like,

are there, is there like a Joe Hortzendorf? Yeah. It's just the, the German version of Smith. Really? The whole place is lousy with Hotzendorf. I mean, for,

for this and any other questions that you might have, uh, over the course of this episode, we do encourage you to at Edward Hapsburg. Um, that's E D U A R D Hapsburg. That's E-D-U-A-R-D Hapsburg. And just any questions you might have

over the course of the episode, any clarification you might want. We really do it. We've been in contact and he's really interested in taking all of your queries. And tell him to keep his chin up. Hey! Yeah, it's... Social media is horrible um but the one thing

that we've managed to do is you know like small domino big domino is now you can literally shit talk someone who used to be able to order you to die just based on like virtue of his birth and to ask like oh you guys still fuck your cousins and he will answer you so like he has to read it it's law and he's not even verified which is somehow the funniest part of all of this like even twitter doesn't recognize the hapsburg fucking family line anymore it means that the uh the bethe family line is actually more recognized right now than the hapsburg family line on twitter and I think that's beautiful. So throughout this episode,

I'm going to be calling Austro-Hungary, Austro-Hungary, Austria. Sometimes it's known as just the Habsburg monarchy. But yeah, so people don't get confused. And Conrad von Hotzendorf would eventually become the chief of staff of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I am not going to go super in-depth on how the fuck the quote-unquote dual monarchy functions, because it's dumb as shit.

But I will touch on a few things so I don't lose people along the way. So if people are like, how is it Austria and Hungary? Wikipedia that shit. I'm not touching it. It's going to be wild when you learn about this place called bosnia herzegovina actually we talk about bosnia so um so the reason why conrad as i will call him because you know we're cool like that we're on a first name basis uh throughout this episode the reason why people believe that he could be he's a candidate for the worst commander of all time. I'm not saying that they're

incorrect. I'm actually kind of swayed on this because without him, there's a very good chance we don't have a World War I, which is kind of incredible. Maybe not so much. Some version of war may have happened.

Probably not what we saw. Germany was also itching for war. But Austria-Hungary's entrance into the war, which started the war, really, is because of him. So, not that he would agree on that. Wait, Joe, I'm digging back into what I've learned about World War I. So, did he assassinate the Archduke? No, but... world war one so did he assassinate the archduke no but well then then he didn't start world war one because that's that's the only thing i learned that started world war that archduke was coming

right for him um somebody cast a lot in archduke and all of a sudden the turks got all he wasn't wrong this fucking austrian dickhead just rolling through sarajevo and a bosnian shoots him he shouldn't have fucking been there yeah i, I mean, and you know, I'm like wearing that like, you know, gold embroidered hoodie that he was wearing. I mean, he was just asking for it. I cannot believe that I'm on a podcast with people blaming the victim.

When it's an Archduke, you can't be wrong. Though, to be fair, that guy, Archduke Franz Furnett, did hire Conrad von Hutzendorf. Directly, twice. And we will talk about that. Not to be his driver though, right? No. If he was, the world would be a better place.

So, Conrad was born in Penzening, Vienna in 1852 to a military family. His father, Franz, like I said, I'm not going to go by Franz. They're all Franz. It's just all Franzes. All of Austria-Hungary is held up by load-bearing Franzes. Do you know what you call a large group of Franz's

or Franz's Franz's that would have been so good I had too much Franz's I mean that's the issue that's like the wine in a box right yeah damn right it is not only is it the wine in the box it's like the one

that like the junkies buy because it's like very fucking sugary that is hilarious because i grew up with boxed wine in my household my parents were not junkies but they do like a lot of crap ass wine so my dad was a junkie did not drink wine we get to meet in the middle somewhere um junkies drank no boone's farm is drank by teenagers. Thunderbirds drank by junkies. To be fair, Boone's Farm was also drank by ICP. They literally rapped about it. Boone's Farm was drank by everybody.

There, the circle's complete now. We've once again mentioned ICP on one of our shows. The Wild Irish Rose and those, to be clear, those are bum wines. They're not junkie wines. I just want to be very like, you know, I don't want to disparage like the fine branding of like you know mad dog 2020 for instance we're gonna get fucking sued by boone's farm of all people and that's gonna it's gonna be a class action lawsuit between boone's farm and the hapsburg monarchy so franz's uh dad franz uh was a retired colonel in the Hussars.

Just so you can get a feeling of how his family is involved in some of the most impactful things in Western European history. His dad fought against Napoleon. Show off. His dad won his battle, which is something that Franz would never have to worry about. Or Conrad, whatever. And his great-grandfather also franz is the reason why they are they have the von in their name is that like his service to the emperor ennobled them which i don't talk about this but conrad would become ennobled two more times eventually having graph in his name which is like a baron before those things were abolished. I mean, anyone can get ennobled, but I mean, getting in big and is really where you're trying to be.

Getting in big and Lee nobles with the Habsburgs. That's what sounds like the worst fucking cooking show in the history of time. It's all about just cooking face meat. just cooking face meat um now following his family's footsteps he joined the cadet corps of of the hainberg regiment at the the ripe old age of 11 um this is pretty normal for nobles and rich people at the time is to like kind of give their children to the military at a very young age or for the uk now i mean let's be honest at least they have to be 16 this motherfucker's 11 what were you doing at 11 years of age um I don't know I was almost

certainly playing like Pokemon red or blue I don't remember which one I got first I'm trying to think that was what 94 man I don't fucking remember I hardly remember what I did last month asking me about 11 years old fuck out of here

so after a few years in the cadet corps uh he was admitted to the military academy uh where he was until 1871 where he's commissioned as a lieutenant in the kuk feldjäger battalion number 11 wait so how old is he now uh i believe he's 18 or 20 okay so at least he least he is somewhat of an adult before he got commissioned. Yeah, the cadet corps really seems like just like a boarding school for rich, retired military probably has a lot to do with nobility. Now, like the Austria-Hungary pride itself on having like an actual meritocracy-based ranking ranking system which i know

we all laugh at but was on paper quite cutting edge for the day uh like for in prussia and even the uk uh like you know um effectively buying your rank or using connections or connections to royalty whatever rich people were officers now that was almost always the case in Austria as well, but they said that it wasn't. So most of these people are from very well-to-do families. And it just prepares you for where other rich kids go, which is military academy. Now, some German-speaking people might recognize Feldjäger

as being military police in the Bundeswehr. That was not the case in the KUK, which is the imperial and royal army of Austria. Because it's the dual monarchy. I'm just going to assume people know what that means and move on. I mean, I feel like in all these situations, part of the reason why none of these armies ended up accomplishing very much of anything was because they extended all their titles to the extent by the time you were done addressing a motherfucker, the battle was over.

It's like, you know, 15... Idi Amin's title. Idi Amin's title is one of my favorites. It's ridiculous. Oh, yeah. King of Scotland and the rest of that fucking bullshit. And I believe all the beasts and fishes. And conqueror of the British Empire.

I mean, who wouldn't want that title, to be honest? Yeah, but you got to earn it. You can't just give it to yourself. It's like giving yourself a fucking nickname. I'm going to give it to Jerry Adams. If you call yourself the conqueror of the British Empire, the fucking Ugandan flag gonna be flying in london or you're just full of shit i mean it would have been fucking awesome if like george

washington just adopted that i mean he wouldn't have been wrong right kind of i mean he'd be like technically correct which is the best kind of correct uh so like the feldjegers were light infantry uh and infantry-based warfare he'd eventually become like the general of the infantry uh before he was chief of staff he never really learned anything else uh he only knew infantry warfare and even then badly uh oh yeah that really matters no by all accounts he was a very good junior leader at least by the standards of the day which i assume just means beating your soldiers he didn't he didn't beat them quite to death like just halfway i will say in the comparison to luigi um where he was like just

a horrible disciplinarian um by up conrad wasn't but with the flip side is that he just didn't know anything about the army that he was is that he just didn't know anything about the army that he was commanding, so he didn't even care enough to execute his own soldiers. So plus one for Conrad. He was not like, you know, one of the things that Luigi did was execute more people than anyone else in World War I. Conrad didn't do that.

In fact, he's the oneck caused Luigi to do all that because this is the person that Luigi is fighting during all of the war, for the most part. So, after that, he went to Kriegschule, which is like staff college for about

three years. And again, in school, he graduated and did very well uh he he graduated with quote distinguished success uh which i don't exactly know what that means i assume some version of commandant's list um and after that he like shot up the ranks um he was attached to the general staff in 1876 literally he shot everyone who was ahead of him. I mean, that would make more sense, honestly. So one thing that's constantly... The Starship Troopers method of gaining rank.

Yeah. Something that's constantly mentioned in a lot of analysis of his career is that the whole time that he's ascending up the ranks, pretty much most of the Austro-Hungarian Empire has no real war experience. like he's good on paper um he's he's very good at theory the worst kind of thing to be good at um so he's a poster yeah i would hate to see this motherfucker post and you'll see why uh he was eventually sent to bosnia and herzegina. So the reason for that is they signed what was called the Treaty of Berlin in 1878.

That was after Russia crushed the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877. What up, Russia? Good job. I remember that one. Now, the reason that this actually is a good starting point of how World War I eventually turned into what it became. So it gave independence to Romania, kind of. It gave independence to Serbia and Montenegro.

Montenegro, while Bosnia was allowed to be occupied by the Austro-Hungarians while still technically controlled by the Ottomans. Oh yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it's dumb. This is all part of the great game shit

about picking apart the sick man of Europe, which maybe if you guys would have done a little bit faster, my great-great-grandparents would still be alive. But one of the reasons why... Wait a minute. Would your great-great-grandparents be alive in 2021?

Sure, why not? We're immortal unless we get shot by a Turk. That's how it works. We're the Highlanders of the Near East. Now, jokes on you have to live forever, you fuck. It's actually punishment. The reason why is because if you remember one of the reasons that started World War I

is a Yugoslav partisan named Gavrilo Princep shooting the Archduke while he was on tour in Sarajevo. Sarajevo would not have been part of the empire should Russia have not parted the Ottomans apart quite like they did, meaning the war probably wouldn't have happened. Or maybe he would have shot a Russian prince or whatever, and then it would just be Russia's problem.

I don't fucking know. Joe, I'm, I'm going to, I want to ask because also I know about the, you know, uh, the assassination attempt.

Even that is part of a, just like, man, if this hadn't happened, maybe world war one would have been averted. Like all these tiny little things. Like you've got, we've got the,

you know, cause the, the, they originally tried to assassinate the archduke with a grenade and the grenade went off too late and they're like oh well shit well let's go get a sub sandwich and then they're just like having a sandwich and the archduke drove by and they're like oh shit and get the gun as much as i wish that was true the sandwich story is not true oh no joe yeah i'm sorry that's fine nate cut all of that

out it would have been it would no i mean you're not it's like we you know we talked about in another episode is like sometimes uh myths end up being so wrapped up in everyday retelling of a story they eventually just become accepted fact and like you're probably one of 10 million fucking people who who think of the sandwich story is true because it's funny like we like to think that these incredibly powerful people are just killed on on happenstance or like he just barely escaped and then got clipped by a gavarillo as he's getting a fucking five dollar footlong or whatever it's like that is funny uh but yeah i mean i mean world war one we're gonna talk about a little bit more it was just a really it was a continual saga of dick measuring that nobody wanted to back down

from like even like you know like russia the czar and the kaiser were writing each other because they were fucking cousins like ah well i guess there's nothing more we can do except destroy each other's countries now. Yeah. Like literally the breaks a bit and everybody like, you know, however many millions of people would still be alive. Yeah. There is really no like this is the thing that caused World War One. It's it was it was going to happen at some point. It's just where is the damn going to burst first?

And we'll and we'll talk about a little bit more later on. But yeah, there was when are you going to do a World War one series joe just from from the beginning to the end man we already did it called the great war and it's very well done uh but you would still be in the middle of it and also dan carlin's series count it was a blueprint to the apocalypse is magnificent i'll never outdo it uh you know he puts out that attitude. He puts out one episode per year or whatever and each one of them is fucking hot fire. So I'm not going to fuck with that. Look, I think that you should absolutely do

a seven-hour podcast with me and Kerry. Just seven hours straight recording of you telling us about the French Revolution. But take no notes. Do none of that. Just do it off the cuff and just like remember things and have to go back and then come back forward. It'll be fantastic.

All three of us just like take some Adderall and then we just all do a stream for 24 hours and only talk about the French Revolution. This is just me falling further and further into a pit of my own psychosis. Yeah, I mean, that's what we're here for. So after he was stationed in bosnia uh conrad went back to the military academy this time as a teacher and he was promoted to major um now despite everything we will eventually be talking about he was considered a good teacher

and his students liked him though conrad himself hated being a teacher and wanted to command again and he eventually got the fuck out of there in 1892 and um started going back up the ranks once again now at this point of his career a lot of people liked him um despite the fact that he he only took part in a very small rebellion in 1882 uh his part was pretty negligible he wrote endlessly about military tactics uh the books that he wrote were incredibly popular even if he himself was not um like people read his work and they knew who conrad hotzendorf was sorry were they good for the time though or were they like were they good military tactic books no i mean it mean, it's hard to say good or not because the war that he had trained for,

he never would fight. Him, Luigi Cadorna, Joseph Jaffra, to a lesser extent, in France, all these guys trained for war, and then when they found themselves in a war, their tactics were already out of date. I was going to say, what even was a tactics book at this point?

Because I feel like, based on their performance in later wars, a lot of it was just uh i don't know gather a bunch of guys together and march them at the anime and uh hope that you uh have somebody when you reach the other side i mean that but also you have to understand that fast firing artillery wasn't really a thing machine guns were not widely deployed um you know indirect fire was pretty much just developed in the russo-japanese war i mean you didn't even really have semi automatic fire probably everybody had bolt bolt actions or rolling blocks yes yeah there was there was you know bolt up a competent bolt action rifle was all you could hope for. And if you were Canada, you didn't have that either. Oh, look, a crate of Ross rifles.

This would be great. Now, people really like the idea of Conrad Hötzendorf because he's a prolific writer. And one of his books found his way into the lap of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who suggested to Emperor Joseph that Conrad be promoted to chief of staff. And he was. Which, I mean, I assume that's how most of those promotions... That would own if you became chief of...

Like somebody, like Biden reads Hooligans of Kandahar. He's like, fuck it, this guy's in charge now. Do it, pussy. Fucking do it. This boy sounds like he's got a lot of good ideas. guy's in charge now do it pussy fucking do it uh this boy sounds like he's got a lot of good ideas he's in charge now now as soon as he got promoted and elevated into his effectively functioning as a politician at this point uh he started pissing people off uh he told everybody who would listen that the imperial army was dog shit and need to be modernized now to his credit he was 100 right about that and we will talk more about that dog shit and need to be modernized. Now, to his credit, he was 100% right about that, and we will talk

more about that dog shit army later on. But he also told everybody that the Empire was a laughing stock of Europe, which, again, partially true. But in order to fix that, their prestige, if you will, make people respect the Habsburg monarchy again,

they need to do some more Empire-type shit. Now, in the game of Emp monarchy again, they need to do some more empire-type shit. Now, in the game of empires, it isn't hard to boil it all down to some pretty simple things when you take out all the backroom backstabbing and whatever. If you're an empire or a kingdom in this age, you need to become

more powerful to enhance your prestige. The way to do that is via military conquests, meaning that at any given point you're always on a war footing or see everyone around you as a constant threat to your standing or a future enemy. This is what led to the never-ending chain of alliances that eventually sparked World War I. Now, Conrad wasn't alone in all of this, but he was the loudest person in the room. the loudest person in the room. Now, as we know in the US, that is generally not the problem.

Assuming that you're good in the realm of politics, you can get what you need to do done. People didn't always seize everything by a barrel of a gun. Sometimes you did it through backdoor politicking, which we will talk about a little bit. You can be a loud

dickhead if you're good at politics. Because you still have to... You can't keep your job if everybody hates you. So Conrad is only good at about 50% of that. He was dog shit at politics and wouldn't stop talking about how everybody sucked at their job except him. Pretty much everybody outside of the Archduke friends himself fucking hated him. He didn't socialize with anybody or make any kind of small talk. And someone described him as a loner, which is really weird for a chief of staff of an empire,

right? Right. He took part, even though he was technically a noble, he didn't take part in any of this nobility dog shit. A lot of times when galas and balls and shit came up, he would just ghost them. He was a pretty socially awkward dude and didn't like leaving his house,

which is all very weird, but also relatable. Yeah, but I'm also not chief of staff. Now, there is a reason for part of this. Around the same time he became chief of staff a couple years before, his wife died, who was also the mother of his four children.

Now, by all accounts, even though they were in an aristocratic marriage, they deeply loved each other, and that fucked him up pretty bad when his wife died. But in the years since, he had fallen in love with a different aristocrat, this one an Italian, who already had six children and currently married.

He, at one point... And it was Cardano's wife! No, I'm just kidding. At one one point he went to her home in italy and was like well i'm not leaving until like you know i get your hand in marriage or whatever she's like well i'm already fucking married i guess we can fuck so they started an affair uh which is very creepy um but Conrad was desperately in love to a future true crime event level. He wrote over 3,000 letters to her, some of which were 60 pages in length,

but because he was worried about his political standing in case somebody read his mail, which they probably were, because remember, everybody hated him and thrown imperial politics in the palace or whatever. it says that everybody's trying to backstab somebody else so he didn't send any of them for fear people would find out that he's fucking around on a married woman who also is part of like kind of an enemy nation uh joe were were any of them were any of them kind of hot i didn't read any of them because remember, I said some of them were 60 pages long.

Okay. I'm going to bring up another thing from history. We'll see if you're going to tell me I'm wrong about this one because it's just reminiscent of Ben Franklin writing about farts and stuff and how hot he finds it. I thought that was James Joyce. Was it James Joyce? It was James Joyce who wrote all the letters to his wife. It was talking about how he wanted her to fart on his face and shit.

Ben Franklin was into older ladies, right? Yeah, Ben Franklin fucked like crazy. Yeah, he was into every prostitute in France and developed a wide range of venereal diseases as a result. Ah, a worldly gentleman. range of venereal diseases as a result. Ah, a worldly gentleman. I mean, this is more, in my mind, this is almost more akin to how Petraeus got caught

fucking around. Apparently he did write an essay about farting proudly, but it wasn't necessarily a sexual thing. Anyway, sorry, go ahead. It was just for the dudes. We're not here to kink-shame Benjamin Franklin. I mean, I am.

That was actually the only reason I ever agreed to do this recording today, was to kink shame specifically Benjamin Franklin. Congratulations on completing your side quest. Conrad refused to send any of these letters out, but he didn't throw them away either. He compiled them all together and made it a giant book that was, again, 3,000 pages long

and titled it, quote, The Diary of My Suffering and hid it from view that was found by his children upon his death in 1925. He was emo. I mean, you know,

congratulations for him for like both being at the same time. I don't want to send any of these because I'm afraid of the blackmail material but I am gonna just collect them all together into one big binder of blackmail just to like you know just to have it easier

to his credit he did end up marrying that woman eventually I didn't even tell her about them I love the idea of him just hanging out and like he's got a journal that's just full of lyrics from like My Chemical Romance. Aren't we all just part of the

how you say black parade? I like that he became French right there. I can't do Austrian. Yeah, that's weird. I don't know. Someone do an Austrian accent and just splice it in. Now one of the ways that one of his favorite things

that he did in order for these imperial prestige projects was preventative war, which sounds great, right? It's like preserving your virginity by fucking. I was going to say,

I've never heard that go wrong, particularly not say in the last 20 years. Yeah, he would be right at home in the Bush White House. He, like, whenever anybody, like, flexed as part of politics, he's like, we should invade them. And everybody's like, dude, Conrad, shut the fuck up. Like, that was, like, his answer to literally everything was, let's fucking invade them. Let's fucking invade them.

Now, one of the people he pissed off with his constant calls of war was the Empire's foreign minister, Alois Lexa von Arendt. Which, remember, that is his job as foreign minister. Like, I refuse to believe that. Alois was Hitler's dad's name. Owned. Now, not because Arendt was particularly particularly good at his job because he was not because remember this is a couple years before world war one the foreign minister kind of sucks at his job um but because starting wars over dumb shit was his job and he was afraid that he was going to steal his thunder it was specifically because of him that the empire almost found themselves at war.

Now, we talked about the Treaty of Berlin, which ended with the imperial occupation of Bosnia. That was not formally part of the empire, but instead part of the Ottomans. So, like I said, the same treaty gave Serbia independence. But the Austrian Empire always wanted to take Serbia over. They didn't give a fuck about Bosnia for the most part. Bosnia was the stepping stone to taking Serbia as well. Now, Serbia was rightfully suspicious of any Austrian move to inch closer to them, i.e. occupying Bosnia. Also, they wanted to take over Bosnia for themselves.

Certainly nothing that would ever cause problems later on in history. for themselves. Certainly nothing that would ever cause problems later on in history. Now, Serbia also knew that if anything popped off between them and Austria, they could rely on Russia, who was supporting them and supplying their military. So, in 1908,

solidly after Russia got shit-kicked in by the Japanese and unable to really do anything militarily, Austria annexed Bosnia, knowing that it'd piss off serbia and then in turn russia who wouldn't be able to do anything i'm gonna i might need like an org chart here can you make me like a powerpoint slide wait a minute what is this war between japan and russia number one i have a podcast i can recommend you that you're currently on. Now, around the same time, Bulgaria also declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire.

All of this is pissing Russia off and Serbia and also the Ottoman Empire. Because remember, not only did the Ottoman Empire just lose Bulgaria, they also technically lost Bosnia, even though they didn't really control anyway. Austria was occupying it. Now, pretty much every power in the world not named Austria saw this annexation of Bosnia as a huge violation of the previous Treaty of Berlin. Now, even though Austria and Russia had talked behind closed doors that like, hey, I'm going to annex this. It's going to piss off Serbia. I want you to know that, I want to know that you're cool with it.

Russia said it was fine. They said that publicly, they would back Serbia and say no, annexing Bosnia is bad. You shouldn't do that. But privately, it's fine, but you have to give us this other piece of Ottoman land that you currently occupy

called the Sanjak of Novi Pazar. land that you currently occupy called the Sanjek of Novi Bazaar. I'm not repeating myself. So much about this period of Europe is just fantastical fucking names that you would never otherwise imagine relate to anything in the real world. I want to ask what it is.

These are mostly the traditional names which are then changed due to the continuation of imperialism throughout the balkans and eastern europe well now you're just made me feel bad you should i won't because you know what i've uh i pledged to never learn anything uh because of or related to the internet and i stand by that solid choice honestly um now remember russia said this is fine we're cool with it now when russia gives you okay then you know it's not going to be a problem right now when the annexation famously sticking to their word when the annexation actually took place uh russia was pissed uh mostly because they assumed that it would happen at a later date

they'd be able to there was a few other things at play. Effectively, Austria fucked over Russia. But here's the thing. They had receipts. So Russia pressed Austria. Like, hey man, what the fuck? I thought we had a deal. So Austria decided to...

Russia coming up on Austria with a bunch of screenshots of DMs. It's like, what the fuck, bro? This is exactly what happened. And then Austria responds with an email that they type out in the Notes app. bunch of screenshots of dms just like what the fuck bro this is exactly what happened uh so then austria responds with uh an email that they type out the notes app so what happened i promise we'll do better for world war one but a gigantic meltdown may uh god everything is not posting now uh when the when russia started getting shitty with austria austria began to leak all of the diplomatic cables and documents between the two that they had signed which russia was

like yes i'm fine with this annexation lol fuck serbia which of course uh at cursed balkan youtube so yeah someone's gonna like cut that clip out of context and just like send it to a serbian youtube and i'm gonna be fucking killed in my sleep um now when austria started doing this this of course panicked russia because this could be used to you know separate serbia from russia and uh when this happened all of the the previous signatories to the committee of berlin had had to get together and vote on if this annexation was a violation of the treaty. Russia was like, you know what? Fuck it. I'm saying it's fine if everybody else says it's fine.

As long as you stop leaking my goddamn documents. And everybody's like, fine, it's cool. It's yours now because you're up, right? now because Europe, right? Mostly because if Russia had refused to accent to the annexation, Austria almost certainly would have invaded Serbia right then, which

may have started World War I a couple years early or not started a war at all because Russia would not have had the ability to support Serbia. So who's to say this is good or bad, right? Now, leaking the documents had been Arendt's idea, and the entire time this was happening, Conrad had other

ideas. He's like, fuck it, let's just invade Serbia. Fuck Serbia, let's just invade them. Also, invade Italy, too. For some reason. This was actually Bill Clinton during the 90s. The history of the Balkans is very different, but also very the same.

Now, Italy was very, very mad about the annexation of Bosnia. There was a lot of Italian irredentalism at the time going on, which includes bringing all of what they consider Italy together. Some of it including parts of what was then the Austrian Empire. So they really didn't fucking like each other oh the great the greater italy crow prosperity spear of course yeah uh which also includes north africa for some reason um and uh and large chunks of the balkans yeah ethiopia um you know like you know just just getting wild with it just you know trying to maybe like you know maybe retaking carthage again just for, you know, shits and giggles.

What if we all just come together like strands of spaghetti? And, you know, not to mention the traditional Italian homeworld of Staten Island. Oh, cool. Cop racism island. Really? Now, so like I said, Conrad wanted war with pretty much everybody who flexed at them wrong, oddly, except Russia. And we'll talk why he didn't actually talk about invading Russia at the time. Conrad's explanation was, and I honestly can't say he's entirely wrong, was like, we just fucking invade serbia russia's probably too

weak to stop us probably he's carrying a lot of weight there but then there was also the let's invade italy too those motherfuckers are annoying like he was pissing people off um once again italian racism now pretty much every letter he sent to the imperial throne at this point was about invading either italy or serbia or both it didn't really matter he wanted to go to war against somebody but like you know who's to say if like they wouldn't have listened to him if erinthal's plan didn't work but erinthal's plan did work uh so like he had no friends left in office other than franz ferdinand who's still alive at this point so like erinthal got word on his uh fucking around with the italian

and blackmailed him with it in order to like blackmailed fran say hey if you don't fire him i'm gonna leak this so they fired him he got fired from chief of staff in 1911, but he would not be gone for long because Aaron Thal died that same year. And the Archduke Franz Ferdinand got kind of his old job back in 1912. I'm back, baby. Let's invade Italy. He didn't even ask. Or was Franz Ferdinand also just like,

yeah, fuck it. Let's invade somebody. Let's go. Well, I mean,anz really liked him um and so did the emperor for the most part but also nobody was like as war boner as he was i mean erin thaw was obviously very cool possibly sparking a giant eastern european wide war but also everybody wanted to like try to do other imperial fuckery before we just invade people uh but you know he got back into the office of the chief of staff right as the balkan wars were kicking off

in 1912 where like the entire balkans is tearing itself apart in two different wars it's really really bad i'm not going to go into it a lot because like anything new with the balkans very confusing stuff at least it only happened once. Twice. Before World War I, anyway. Then thankfully, never again. Anyway, we're going to go to Yugoslavia for our first live show. I can't wait to record from a bunker in Albania. People say that's a bit. I'm fucking dead serious that I do my first live show ever in Albania.

I mean, I've done dumber things. One of my running routes, there's a couple of uh there's a a plumber's truck that is uh for this um it's basically the american flag smashed together with an albanian flag so i'll talk to them we'll see if it's just like i'll have them come and fix some pipes in my house and be like do you know about podcasting just slide them out of five spot can you get can you set up the recording bunker do you have somebody we can stay with and do you have some cold war items for us to marvel over yeah like can we all like also just like full of them just like you know like do you have like a bunker we can record in that might also be full of you know

like aka 47 copies that we could take home with us i mean just you know throwing it out there i mean albania you know the deal call me uh but while this was all going on uh mostly it started as a war between the ottomans and the bulgarians and a few others jumped in but conrad see he's a man of opportunity he saw this as a chance he's like you know what we should do we should fucking invade serbia now at the at the time again they believe that serbia being easy target because they're already locked in all these all these wars and they just be able to like swoop in and and fuck them up now between 1913 and 1914 in just the span of a year, he demanded imperial authority to invade Serbia 25 different times.

This is before the death of the Archduke, mind you. That rules. Conrad was obsessed with taking over Serbia. At one point, he was telling the emperor that if they didn't strike as soon as possible, somehow, the Serbs

would gather enough weapons and invade the Habsburg Empire, toppling it. Or another part of it is like, it is this weird cornerstone of holding the dual monarchy together, which everybody at this point knows is pretty fucking rickety, right? He wrote to the Archduke and the Emperor hundreds of times over the course of this year, telling them why they needed to invade

serbia why they should invade serbia what would happen if they didn't what they could what the emperor or the empire would look like if they did take over serbia i've seen him called the donald rumsfeld of the austro-hungarian empire before i like yeah i was gonna say he's more of a dick cheney or john bolton though i would say calling him Dick Cheney is giving him too much credit. Or if we want somebody a little closer to home, he's more of a Sepp Gorka. No, because Sepp Gorka is Hungarian. Yeah. And he probably also believes Serbians are subhuman.

And he is a fascist. So he is a fascist. Then on the 28th of June 1914, when the Archduke and his wife got lit up by the Black King in Sarajevo by Yugoslav nationalists, the small domino leading to the big domino of World War I started. Now, I'm going to yada yada my way through the start of World War I, so bear with me. This eventually led to the imperial government issuing its july ultimatum to serbia

which had 10 points all of which are were purposefully impossible for serbia to meet and a lot of it boiled down to stop saying mean things about the empire and also let our cops into serbia to make sure you stop saying mean things about the empire uh but like they were they were effectively saying like you know as the kingdom of serbia you can no longer talk about like yugoslav uh uh unification and things like that because that that hurts us and also to make sure you're not doing that you have to lounge like thousands of secret agents from our empire to like monitor you yeah like let us say we're gonna fucking do it let us invade you so we don't invade you yeah uh and this was not conrad's idea his idea was just like let's invade serbia right but the whole time he the whole time he's telling anybody who's listening who'd listen

how prepared the army is why like they're gonna steamroll serbia they're not even people they're subhuman they need the our monarchy so they can live you know type shit he i mean he's by no means that the guy whispering into the other guy's ear for lord of the rings but you know if there was anyone to pump the brakes in the situation it could have and should have been him as the commander of the military instead he just like slammed on the brakes and was like let's go baby um now obviously the start of world war one is way more complicated than that but that's what i'm going with conrad finally got his war with serbia unfortunately for him he also got a war with russia now and also eventually italy um which classic mistake now here's the very dumb thing at this point everybody knew a war serbia men of war with russia right common knowledge russia has said as much publicly and to the build-up of the war

like that was one of the things that like people knew that they flipped the switch there's no turning back because like russia's like no no if you invade serbia which is like the other part of the ultimatum if you don't follow the july ultimatum like it means war russia's like we have no choice but to mobilize which means we're gonna go to war so then he invaded serbia and he was like oh shit the russians got involved like they fucking told you they were gonna get involved i i what was it the uh uh i can't believe that the panthers ate my face for the panthers eating face party yeah now he had not planned for a war with russia at all not to mention a two-front war whatsoever now the man had been demanding war against Serbia for like a fucking decade

and never once thought that Russia might actually fulfill their promise to defend Serbia. Great. It's also like you don't even war game that shit once. Now, here's the funny part about the war games. You actually, if you were following a script, that's how you'd segue

into this next part. We're going to talk about Australian military planning. Or Austrian military next part because we're going to talk about Australian military planning or Austrian military planning. Oh yeah let's talk about Australian military planning. They're fighting the emus again. Yeah so we're going to talk about Austrian military planning. Now you know

you guys are both in the US military. Shocks kind of. Supposedly. So but like you know if there was like an operational thing like you know operation iraqi freedom you know that great wonderful war that we totally won those plans were formed by like hundreds of people all of them talking to one another kind of you know this it was certainly an organizational capacity type thing right i would hope i mean it's at least going to be talked to by like the joint chiefs and then various other yeah i mean even military planning in austria went through conrad and conrad alone oh yeah he had full dictatorial powers

over all things to do with the military which is I have never heard of another military quite set up this way like remember this is in monarchy an absolute monarchy and like the emperor and the archduke and all these other people would ask him about his plans

and he would just not show them like yeah don't worry about it I promise you a quick victory. And they'd be like, all right. That was it. Imagine the president of the United States not knowing just how the fuck we were going to invade somewhere. Like, nah, you're good. I trust you.

Go ahead. You're fine. Well, he's been asking to invade Serbia at a certain point. Just like, yes, fine. Go away. Sure. Rightfully, yes, fine, go away. Sure. Rightfully, you assume this guy has a good plan for invading Serbia. It's all he talks about.

Yeah. You would only assume that if you don't have like one of those cousins that's always like, dude, I got an idea. We're going to make so much money off of this. All right. All right. Whatever. 20 bucks. Yeah.

so much money off of this. All right. All right. Whatever. 20 bucks. Yeah. So when he found himself fighting a multi front war that he had no plans for at all, he just didn't tell anybody.

Oh, all right. So he took the E4 kind of perspective on this one. He's like, Hey, Conrad, you guys, it's all figured out.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. I just need to, you know, tighten some things. It's like when my editor asks me if I have a couple chapters coming. Yeah, yeah, for sure, bro.

I'm almost done. I'm just editing, really. I'm just, you know, I'm just going over some stuff, just making sure the language is fine. In reality, I have like chapter one written on a paper. Space, the final frontier now this is why after when the Empire declared war on Serbia and Germany at this point also already involved in the war is like hey you guys need to fucking invade Serbia because they figure it would it would suck Russia into a war against Austrians and keep them out of a two-front war as. Conrad didn't do anything for a month.

He's the dog that caught the car tire that he was chasing. He's like, Oh fuck, I actually have my war with Serbia. What do I do? I mean, we've all been there when it's, you know, like,

you know, like you mean to send a thank you card, like, you know, for something. And then it like goes on for a while and, you know, like a month and a half passes. And then you just like like don't really want to do it anymore because now it just feels

weird like you know it's that except with uh you know with like international conflict between several major nation states in a tinderbox of europe yeah i mean now here here's here's the even dumber thing he's the chief of staff of the military. He has dictatorial powers over everything the military does and plans and everything. He didn't know fucking anything about his military. He wrote some nice books, though. Yeah. So he knew so little about the inner workings of the Austrian military that when he ordered a full mobilization, he had no idea it was even possible. mobilization he had no idea it was even possible uh so at the time it was traditional for soldiers you know the the people on the active duty to go home and help harvest crops in the summer

right uh so like all of his bodies that he would be mobilizing in this general mobilization as it would be called he just couldn't because they're all at home uh something he probably should have known also you can't just cut the harvest short you're about to go to fucking war you're gonna He just couldn't because they're all at home. Something he probably should have known. Also, you can't just cut the harvest short. You're about to go to fucking war. You're going to need that food. Right. So he is like a partial mobilization for a two front war.

Right. Not good. Good. Furthermore, his plans for the mobilized army that he remembered did not have were based on railroad timetables that were 40 years old so like you know he's deploying soldiers to the front all of this is going to be based

on railroad movements and very strict timelines I think we've touched about this before on like World War I era tactics so many strict timelines so if like one thing gets pushed to the left or right, everything kind of goes to shit. His very strict timelines were based on railroads

that simply didn't exist anymore. That rules. Yeah. Speaking of this army that he didn't have and couldn't go anywhere because he didn't have railroads, when he did get them, they were terrible. Now, he thought he had thousands more soldiers than he actually did have

because the partial mobilization, but he also had no idea what kind of training or equipment they would have. Despite the fact he literally wrote the book of tactics, they would be ordered to carry out. Now the equipment he did have was the worst in Europe. Just about the only decent thing he had was a bolt action rifle. Everything after that was old, shitty, or he just didn't have enough of them uh they had only recently gotten artillery that had any kind of recoil management meaning like he could fire them rapidly before this he

would like uh austrian gunners would have to dig a shovel between behind the wheel of of their cannons so when it fired in it didn't recoil too far back. I'd imagine that he's essentially just using what? Napoleon-era guns at that point? They're certainly newer than Napoleon's because at this point, that's 100 years ago.

They were made of brass because they were cheaper. Brass or bronze and they were cheaper. When they fired, they couldn't fire as fast because you'd destroy them yeah you literally just like split the cannon in pieces and uh the the recoil the guns that he did have with recoil management were hand-me-downs from france which was now an enemy nation so like the iran issue where like you end up with a lot of guns but they're all from your enemy well yeah but also it didn't really matter because those guns were so badly out of date

that they were outranged by pretty much every other gun in europe by a thousand meters or more to include the serbs and the russians so like if you give someone this kind of artillery and then you have you know the much better artillery it, whatever, they can't fucking hit us anyway. Who cares? Now, this is where shitty guns could maybe be outdone by good training, right? Maybe you can't shoot very far, but maybe you can shoot very accurately.

Budget cuts. The Imperial Army only had a budget for 250 practice rounds per year per gun so not a whole lot yeah now another thing he's supposed to be an infantry guy he's supposed to be the general of infantry at one point so you know obviously we know about command and control small unit tactics and things like that which were not foreign as a lot of people like to think they were during world war one non-commissioned officers were a thing. They led smaller units to make sure officers orders were carried out and

passed down, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So he just simply didn't have any, um, NCOs really. Oh,

okay. I was going to say he didn't have any, what, but like, so like he just didn't have any non-coms. So he, he did kind of, but he had the least of any army in Europe.

Now, the Germans... It's just all sergeants, first class, and lieutenants and privates. So, for comparison, the German army at the time, considered one of the best in Europe, had 12 NCOs per company,

and several more officers. The French had six, and the Austrians had three. How many, how many were in a company? Three. No, I mean all to get three. Oh, about 160.

Good fucking Lord. And one officer. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Now that is certainly a command problem, right? Now, I could see this kind of working. Assuming you spoke the same language, which they didn't.

So, this is my favorite oversight because of just how stupid it is and its simplicity. Language in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, again, Austria-Hungary, it's a dual monarchy. It had citizens that spoke several different languages, more than just Austrian and Hungarian, even more than that. Now, there was no real standardization,

and the imperial government did try to get around that by making German the official military language. But because of the empire's split nature, both Austria and Hungary, as well as the unified imperial and royal armies, all had their own formations. So the standard spoken language of the imperial and royal army,

which is the KUK, is German. But Austria and Hungary both have their own militaries. Also, there's various Baltic minorities that speak their own languages. And no, you didn't learn these languages in school. So, you know, the Hungarians spoke Hungarians and the various other groups spoke whatever languages they spoke. Now, in order to get around this, because someone eventually did come to the conclusion like, you know, we might have to work together at some point right so there were 80 parade ground phrases that everybody was

required to learn in german and then depending on the unit type each recruit was required to learn a quote-unquote service language of about a thousand words related to their service so that being you know infantry commands or artillery commands in that particular language. A service language was designed by, if that particular language was spoken by at least 20% of soldiers in that unit. So this meant that some units had to speak as many as five different languages. Can you imagine that possibly working? It's hard enough when you've got a soldier who doesn't speak English. Right. If you've ever had a guy who doesn't speak English as their first language,

there's a language barrier to get over that. I cannot imagine trying to do that with 5. Especially with, you've got to imagine all the dialects that are probably out there as well. I could see this possibly working in a parade ground situation in peacetime because say you get moved to a different unit or whatever, like, oh, I'm in a Hungarian unit. I have to learn a couple words of Hungarian. I have however many months and years to learn this.

Right. That's all gone because you're at fucking war now. So what really happened was absolutely nobody did this. Nobody spoke any fucking language very well and when things started moving rapidly and people started getting reinforced with various new recruits from whatever different region that just didn't have enough time to up and learn hungarian or german or whatever so at the end of the day a lot of units simply could not communicate uh there was a lot of company commanders who just could not talk to their own NCOs or soldiers

and then compound that times a million when you're supposed to like coordinate with a unit next door who maybe even has a different service language, let alone whatever other real language you speak, right? So you just can't fucking talk to anybody. Now, these are all very surface level problems right very simple things to figure out like hey as chief of staff of the military i'm going to ask these generals what problems do you have and you know maybe the first one that comes up is i can't fucking talk

to anyone in my unit. He just didn't. He didn't talk to anybody. He figured if there's any problems, someone would tell him, right? Nope. And remember, he's been in charge of this. He's been chief of staff on and off since before 1911.

He's had years to fix this, and he didn't do anything or like not even fix it but even just like create a different system or do something different in the first place right uh yeah instead he's like that well it worked for all of our other wars which there wasn't that many um and i mean there's certainly not on the scale no absolutely there's a reason why doesn't the austro-hungarian empire does not survive this war um i mean one of a million reasons farewell to the hapsburgs yep uh we'll see you on twitter at eduardo hapsburg for any questions you have about any of this i just i can't really i i really

can't stress that enough conrad is not a hapsburg. If you want to know why, please add Eduardo Habsburg and just ask why all of his buddies are not also part of the royal family. Now, after waiting a month to invade Serbia, Conrad had to have a knee-jerk response

because the Russians were getting involved. They're invading through the Carpathian Mountains, right? He split his forces at the last second without consulting anybody and then invaded Serbia anyway. And then ran into Dracula. Now, like I said before, it's gonna be

he's gonna have post-nut reflection real fast. He's gonna catch himself in the reflection of his monitor real quick. So, he's gonna catch himself in the reflection of his monitor real quick so like i said conrad did not think serbians were the same as austrians he thought they were below them they are stupid barbaric whatever in normal you know aristocracy type racism type shit you know i mean um so he underestimated them badly. So, of course, you know what happens next. Austro-Hungarians get their fucking ass kicked by Serbia.

It was considered, you know, until since this is the very beginning of the war, like, ah, this is so embarrassing. How could you ever, you know, how could things possibly get worse than this? It was shocking. Joe, would you say that it gets worse? Haven't gotten to that quite yet. We haven't even gotten to the Carpathian Mountains. But yeah, they get their ass kicked by Serbia. The Austrians do manage to take Belgrade, the capital, but lose it almost immediately thereafter.

So the only real victory that the Austrians could actually claim was the fact that them going to war in Serbia caused a horrible typhus outbreak that killed just like tens of thousands of Serbians, mostly soldiers, a lot of civilians too,

but they killed more soldiers with typhus than they did by invading. This is in fact the end of part one. Stay tuned for the next installment soon.