Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 153 - Conrad Von Hotzendorf Part 2: Mt Doom

Episode Date: May 3, 2021

The conclusion of the Conrad Von Hotzendorf story Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Welcome to part two of this episode. And for the record, the fortress is actually pronounced and not, emphatically not, Are we sure it was Typhus and not like 5G? Duh. The whole battle, like, being on a battlefield is bad enough. And like, Joe, you've been to war. And you've done more war than I have.

But like, just the idea, just like, Joe, you've been to war and you've been, you've done more war than I have. But like, just, just the idea, it's just like, uh, you might die because of mites because we're just not going to clean anything up. Uh, go fuck yourself. Like, that is just such a, like, I know that like we had to breathe in a bunch of like, um, you know, burning shit and, uh, and probably all have depleted uranium in our bloodstreams, but at least we didn't get typhus. Well, we also had vaccines for typhus. Setting a really fucking low bar.

Like, well, you know... It's not been invented yet. This sucks, but at least we don't have typhus. It turns out that early modern history is a really bad time to go camping out in the woods with hundreds of thousands of your friends. So what you're saying is dudes did not in fact rock. I assume everybody just shitting and pissing

on the ground wherever they want just makes that just fantastic. Yeah, food sanitation is just more of a vibe. Now, Austria got beaten so badly by Serbia and it was so embarrassing to the central powers that both Germany and

Bulgaria had to send forces to bail them out and then eventually did win. But yeah, Conrad did not defeat Serbia despite like edging for 10 years. Now, I could go to the various other things that Conrad fucked up because there was a lot of them. But to the crowning jewel that he's truly known for is his Carpathian Mountain Campaign, which might be one of the worst ones of World War I.

It is, however, the name of my first metal LP. The Carpathian Mountain Campaign? Carpathian Corpse Road. Yep. That sounds like a fucking rule. The only Carpathian I know is Vigo the Carpathian from Ghost is Viggo the Carpathian from Ghostbusters 2

which is a real fucking stretch into the bag for you young kids I understand trust me there was an even worse Ghostbusters movie than the one you know it's called Ghostbusters 2 it's great I have not seen any of them really? I've even seen Ghostbusters 2

I haven't seen any Ghostbusters what? you're missing out on the blowjob ghost. I don't know if I am. I'm not missing on the blowjob ghost because I've seen Scary Movie. Actually, I think that's Scary Movie 2, but whatever, either way.

Anyway, Carpathians. So, as you can imagine, after getting wrecked by Serbia, Conrad, who did not get fired somehow, knew that he had to win a major victory in order to regain the prestige that he lost trying to regain the other prestige.

So, in November 12, 1914, the Russian Imperial Army attacked the Austrian fortress of Polshemishly with a force from 150... Polshemishly. Say it one more time.

Polshemishly. Polshemishly. It's sounded out so I know it's correct. If you look up the fortress, you will never be able to pronounce it correctly until you found the spelled out version. The one pronunciation guide yeah uh and it might still be incorrect uh because i felt the pronunciation guides before people like oh you still said it wrong you know what fuck you i don't care yeah i mean it's legit and like 100 could not have said any better. Now, the Russians had about 150,000 soldiers.

The Austrians had about the same. And while the Russians normally were laying siege to these, or with artillery and ground assault and stuff, what they really did was just kind of surround it and wait for them to starve or surrender. So we're going medieval on this shit. They assumed that they would be smart enough to be like, yeah, fuck it.

I guess we lost. Time to go home. Because they're not going to sit there and starve. But I think the Russians were assuming that while this was an important terrain area to control, it wasn't that important. And it would make much more sense to preserve the lives of 150,000 soldiers they used later on in a winnable battle. Unfortunately for them, they were fighting Conrad von Holtzendorf, who said, I don't do that shit.

I don't retreat. Now, Conrad Holtzendorf didn't raise no pussies. He thought of withdrawing from Austrian territory, thought a fight is deeply dishonorable. So he ordered the garrison of the fortress to hold out and he would send reinforcements. Now, as weird as this sounds, it did happen once before, already in the war, where the Russians previously launched an attack on the fortress and then reinforcements did show up and the Russians did pull back.

But several months had passed. So this is now November. Winter's approaching in the mountains they get very very cold a counter offensive or a rescue mission seems very unlikely but that's what he tells them to do anyway so the attack on the fortress by the Russians begin in November

but Conrad didn't plan his counter offensive until December and it was not launched until January. So these guys have already been holding on for months. And when he did launch the assault for the first time in the war, Conrad's forces actually started winning, carving a 24-mile gap in the Russian lines, which is a hell of a gain for World War I.

The Eastern Front is a little weird when it comes out. It wasn't quite as static as the Western Front. Right. Of course, some of this was because the Russian defenders were simply badly outnumbered. And Conrad had ordered a 100-mile front, and the Russians simply didn't have the midnight cover at all. So they just gave some of it away rather than defend it. Midna cover it all so they just gave some of it away rather than defend it but as soon as the Austrians

kind of outran them they outran their own supply lines as well which is something you would think of if you were Conrad who had been planning a war for months not only had he planned the war against Serbia for years he had

three months to plan this rescue mission and he still fucked up his own supply line um what like i'm so like kind of curious at this point and this might not be like an answer that you have but like what like what did he plan you know what i mean like he like obviously he spent a lot of time thinking about this for like fucking years but like he really planned like the training or the equipment, or the supply lines. He wasn't dicking around playing Flappy Bird. What was he doing?

This is like that scene from Office Space. What would you say you do here? Yeah, he gotta have been doing something. I think he found himself wanting, like a lot of commanders did, in that they were trained to fight a war that they would never fight, and so they fought one they weren't prepared for but also he was just a dumb

ass but it was like even like more than like i don't know like you could say what you will about like joffrey and like some of the other dipshits on like you know the western front but at least like you know they were planning for a war of movement and ended up with a war of trenches and you know like they didn't adapt well and whatever, but like here, it seems like it was still like, it was still like fairly dynamic and he still couldn't like fucking figure it out. Uh,

I think a lot of it is, well, some of the Western front commanders did fuck up. They, some of them evolved, but it's also because they weren't controlling their military is quite like he was also his at a basic level, he believed a lot of the same thing that a lot of the other commanders did, which was like, I don't need to plan for much.

This is going to be a swift victory. No need for any backup plans, which obviously, eventually, the Western Front and even the Italians stopped really believing after a while. But he did not. front and you know even the italians stopped really believing after a while so he just like did not he just like wrote on a piece of paper like you know we will win and then just kind of doodled around it for like 20 years and called that a plan kind of um it it really seems like he was just a combination of just being a bad commander uh alongside of being up his own ass. Because he had other officers

that he could have worked with and instead he worked by himself. So other military officers have other military officers to bounce ideas off of, develop a plan. This isn't like... No military is truly a dictatorship

even though we all make those jokes. Right. And there's a reason why, like in our bonus episode in regards to the Toyota war, why armies love like that always fail hilariously. Yeah. Because one man can't control this much shit, let alone play.

Cause like, even if he was a very good military commander, which he was not, he's fighting, you know, the czarist army of Russia, which wasn't a great army. But, you know, they did have battle tested veteran officers who knew how things worked or how things were supposed to work in a war. Or at least, yeah, like a general idea of like, you know, all right, I'm in conflict. Like, this is how I do stuff. They had command and control. Right. general idea of like you know all right i'm in conflict like this is how i do stuff they had

command and control right um even though they're like the czarist army was by no means great or even good most of the time but like this is right after the brasilov offensive which was an incredible masterstroke by the czarist military um so they did have some ability to do those sorts of things they had a command climate, you could say, that was a general togetherness type situation where you could work together. Like a basic level of institutional knowledge. Right.

Well, he ran everything through him and nobody else. And then he would just pass orders down to the officers under him that did not have any ability to be like, this is actually a terrible idea. Right. Okay. Yeah. It just seems that he was given all of the power in the world

when he should have been, I don't know, maybe an army commander. Maybe not. I don't know. He would have done less damage as a major somewhere, but if he just never would have left the Krieg shul, he was the, he was the metaphorical, uh,

you know, um, container ship across the Suez canal of the, uh, Austro-Hungarian army efficiency. Yeah. Fine. Oh,

yeah. Yes. Uh, yeah. What, what will defeat the Austrian hunger, Austro-Hungarian empire, one giant czarist army or sideways boat you know you come to the history show for timely comparisons right um now uh like i said the

austrians outran their own supply lines because he was bad at that too. This forced their attack through the Carpathians and to the fortress to ground to a halt. Just as horrible winter storms were coming in. Now, these were not unseasonable storms. This is not like Mother Winter or General Winter of the Soviet Union grinding Hitler's army to dust or whatever. This is just normal weather in the Carpathian Mountains mountains which was so normal the Russians were very prepared for it they assumed this was going to happen Conrad just didn't um

it didn't have SWO back then man without the weather guy how are you supposed to know this was Austrian territory this is part of the empire right he wasn't invading anybody else but whatever. Hands on hips looking at the mountains

like there's no way snow could get on top of those. He didn't prepare for any kind of winter operations at all. And as such, no winter gear was sent to the front for the soldiers who were caught in the middle of it. Snowstorms were so blinding that soldiers just fell off mountainsides. Frostbite and pneumonia swept through the ranks and began to kill more soldiers

than the actual fighting did. Heavy rainfall, the blinding snowstorms, and icy river crossings left soldiers' uniforms literally frozen to their bodies. Cool. Now, Austrian command had no idea nor didn't care to learn about any of these facts instead they continued to deploy their soldiers on open ground and sub-zero temperatures for days or weeks

at a time without any kind of relief at night soldiers would force themselves to stay awake otherwise they would freeze to death in their sleep many stomping their feet and dancing to try to stay warm storms brought in snow that was six to eight feet in depth, which meant like more simply marching, which they continue to get orders to do was impossible. Not that marching as much of an option anyway, as their boots were lined with cardboard. So they lost their feet to frostbite pretty much immediately so uh yeah who needs

feet pussy how do people just not like start you know leaving just how are you gonna desert you're in the middle of a fucking mat like turning around you're gonna freeze to death too you might as well stay with your soldiers right i guess one of those things where like i mean you're also talking about there's like one officer and three ncos for like you know every unit like right like i don't know like you know what i mean like it's it's not you know there's not the same course of aspect there's like a lot of other armies like you could just like i don't know kill the four motherfuckers and like set off well here's the weird comparison right we did a series regarding um napoleon's invasion of russia last year yeah and you know one of the key components of that is his great retreat right

where everybody knows everybody freezes and starves to death and the greatest number of survivors came from units that stayed together uh the people who were like fuck this i'm leaving almost all universally died yeah uh so like they called it like units that rallied around the flag much better off i mean i mean you could still do that and also tell your officers to like you know jump off a cliff yeah it's like you only like carrie said you have you kill like five people and the rest of you just stay together and it it's like, let's go somewhere warm. Let's go find Tahiti or something. Let's go literally anywhere else

that isn't the Carpathian Mountains during winter for this fucking asshole. Our opinions on officers aside, statistically, they're much better staying together through everybody else that froze to death throughout the same region. It's just like, it gives you like obviously there's a psychological aspect to it but also a lot of it is the working togetherness even at a military uh like military level of egalitarianism makes it so the greater number of people survive um now in order for these uh formations to continue to move soldiers were sent ahead with

like shovels and stuff for uh hours and days to try to shovel snow um sometimes it wasn't even just a march it was to try to get supplies which when they did get supplies which was rare uh the energy they got from them simply wasn't enough um and like i said most time supplies just didn't get there and when they did get there the reason why they weren't enough to sustain life is because most of them are frozen solid and therefore unusable so they just had to break out all the whey protein and uh make some drinks yeah fine needed some soylent get the uh uh a bunch of otis spunkmeyer muffins up to him a whole bunch of Austro-Hungarian

soldiers sitting around drinking what is it not soylent but the other one like fuel or whatever it's called fuel human fuel yeah that's not weird at all

thousands upon thousands of soldiers uh simply stood out in the middle of nowhere uh and froze to death while on guard i've i've been there while others you only can do it once it turns out um and while others simply turn their rifle around and shot themselves in the fucking face still others decided fuck this and just stood up over cover so the Russians would shoot them in other situations kind of like the Italian situation where like Russian

soldiers would be on the high ground and see their Austrians and just wouldn't shoot at them they're like they look miserable enough just like standing on a miserable enough. Just like standing on a fucking hillside, just like screaming, shoot me as you wave your hands and the Russians don't even fucking do it. Kill me! What are you waiting

for? Do it! Nah. The one situation where an Arnold accent is applicable, because he's Austrian. Now, conditions at night is where things get terrifying because they're on mountainsides and stuff. Like most of these soldiers are from like the city. So like they were terrified by like shrieking wind

and like the pitch darkness. And someone commented in their notes, quote, mysterious mountain sounds. I don't know what that means. Fair. Fair. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of legit, I'll be honest. Yeah, I would want to be stranded out in the mountains. And when the people did

feel warm enough to sleep, their eyelids would freeze shut. Nighttime temperatures would drop as low as 25 below Fahrenheit, ensuring that most soldiers, if left exposed and outside of their group for any reason, just would not wake up.

Troops were forced to march for hours on end in the darkness because they figured it was the only safe time that the Russians wouldn't take potshots at them. Other times... Kind of, yeah. The Russians... I mean, like, night fighting is generally not common at the time um also whenever they were they wouldn't uh move around at night uh they'd get preyed upon by wolves

like they commented that like they would hear like or they would see shadows moving around and then they would the wolves would pick off the dying and wounded or the weak and drag them off into the night. And then they would hear them being eaten. So this is like the aftermath of the USS Indy sinking. Except you're not even just floating around in tropical waters. You're also fucking miserable the entire time. That's exactly what I was thinking. This is the Indianapolis,

but instead of sharks, it's wolves and Russians. Within only a few weeks, the entire Austrian Third Army had pretty much been annihilated. Most divisions had been reduced to brigade size or less without any hope of reinforcement because as a master of planning conrad who remember i need to underline this enough controlled every function of military preparedness

for years never thought to establish any kind of reserve component army or system to be used i told see people want to bag on the reservists man but we're we're important. Well, it's certainly a different kind of reserve. I don't mean like a whole bunch of dudes to, I don't know, take pictures or whatever. To do the poke shit. Yeah, like, you know, most other, actually every other army in Europe, to include the Ottomans, had a functioning reserve component. had a functioning reserve component. So like when you do, you know, mobilization, you mobilize every conscript between the ages of probably 17 to 23.

And then your reserves would be the next age bracket after that. Then your next age of reserves would be the next bracket after that. Austria doesn't have one. They just sent everybody out there to die in the snow. I mean, their entire standing army for the most part which is why like they never recovered from conrad's most early fuck-ups mostly carpathian mountain campaign like while the war was going on they were rapidly attempting to create one and then draft every dude with a heartbeat which is a hell of a thing to do on the fly right every other military in europe had a system in a thing to do on the fly, right? Every other military in Europe

had a system in place already to do this, which is why so many fucking people died. Plus also, like, not for nothing, but, like, not only is it a lot to do on the fly, it's a lot to do on the fly with, like, a barely functional, like, central administrative state. Right.

Like, someone outlined that Austria-Hungary was never going to do good in this war, but the reason why it did so poorly is because of Conrad von Holtzendorf, but also because his mistakes were so bad early on that the main solid core of actual professionally trained soldiers, NCOs, and officers all fucking froze to death or died in Serbia. So through the rest of the war, you're kind of just playing catch up until you can't keep up anymore. Or even the very end of the war, the last main German offensive on the Western Front. And it's like, on one hand, they succeeded, but they also just killed off anyone in the German

army who was really still worth a shit and so pretty much from that point forward it was kind of just all downhill yeah by the end of the war the western front was just full of starved teenagers eating mostly turnips right that didn't like reoccur twice in the same 30 years nah nothing bad could happen twice like that um now like they're honestly looking at all this it doesn't make me so shocked that all these soldiers were shooting themselves in so great numbers. Because in most situations, the reality was that these soldiers knew that there was no relief coming for them. Because there simply wasn't one, right? Every other army had a rotational system in place pretty quickly after things began to go static,

which they realized their giant quick war of mobility. Wasn't going to happen. So you would stay on campaign or on the front for, you know, a week or two. Um, and you know, for instance,

the Western front, uh, I think the normal French soldier stayed at the frontline trench for like a week and then would be off it for several weeks. Yeah. Um, the Austrian, nope.

Kind of like you're there and you're there. you just get fed to the mountains um and the and everybody knew this uh the the empire soldiers knew nobody were coming for them nobody was coming to relieve them so they were gonna sit on that mountain pass until you froze to death got shot or were captured or if you just shot yourself and sped things up a bit now if that doesn't sound hopeless enough when they did attack there was no real coordination because remember they couldn't fucking talk to each other there's they didn't speak the same language so like when other officers did get orders to attack they would attempt to you know pass things down coordinate or whatever things would get lost in translation or sometimes people wouldn't understand anything at all and just wouldn't support the attack.

So they would like the Austrians to be committed to an attack in like piecemeal fashion, right? So the Russians who are almost always on a higher ground just constantly stomp them into the dirt without much of a fight. So by the time Conrad finally did see the writing on the wall around 90 000 austrians were casualties uh which was a full 75 percent of the entire third army which is

just an incredibly large amount uh for an entire army uh most of them died before they even got a chance um to die in like combat which i mean for earlier for earlier conflicts it's pretty common but like this is only a couple weeks right like this campaign didn't this wasn't like a whole war situation right like this isn't like oh yeah most of the most of the casualties from the civil war were you know sickness and i wish i could say that conrad got fired but he didn't uh instead he fired the guy in charge of that offensive and simply put another guy in place and began planning another one uh he created this uh the second army which was slapped together out of the remains of the third and then fresh draftees. Now, you would think that he would wait until spring,

summer, or whatever, for the second Carpathian offensive, seeing as the fact that, look what happened the last time we went up into the mountains covered in snow. That wasn't his fault. That was the other guy's fault. Yeah, that's why i fired him he's got a new guy who knows how to not freeze in the mountains right so uh instead of waiting you three four months or whatever it was planned for february 25th

so it'd be even colder yeah this time as soon as the army set out it began to fall apart temperatures began to fall and the constant movement of troops and supplies destroyed the few roadways on the Austrian side of the mountains leading towards the front this meant that the draft animals that were carrying everything because the little amount of mechanization that

did exist in World War I certainly wasn't existing yet and certainly not here like this shitty early 1900s cars were not going to make it up the mountains um so this led to these draft animals getting stuck in these fucked up roads or just dying of exposure uh disease swept through the ranks along with you know all of the Frostbite, and crippled entire regiments. But Conrad shrugged and just kept ordering them to attack because he really wanted that fortress still. Because in case you forgot, that's still who they're trying to rescue here.

Cool. And also, what's the fortress like at this point? Is everyone just fucking miserable and also starving to death? Oh, God, yeah. I was going to say. So not only they're going to rescue all these people they're going to go rescue all these people who probably

just should have fucking surrenders at this point i assure you it's dumber than that and we're almost there um now instead of the 100 mile front like the first offensive this one's going to be just 12 miles because i guess even conrad saw that last plan and was like, oh, I don't want to do that again. Now the smaller front made it much easier for Russian units who were much better led, deployed, and supplied to counterattack them. As the disorganized Austrian

leadership committed units into battle against the Russians once again in a piecemeal fashion. So that doesn't work at all. And again, the weather is killing way more people than the Russians. On March 1st, which

the offensive is still going on, Colonel Veith of the 3rd Army wrote, quote, Fog and heavy snowfalls. We have lost all sense of direction. Entire regiments are getting lost and falling off the mountain. Resultult in catastrophic losses.

This is like just kissing your mom. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna fight for, you know, fight for our country, mom. I'm gonna make you proud and just fucking fall off a mountain. Just like some straight up like just like Wile E. Coyote shit. Just a whole bunch of lemmings dressed up

dressed up as Austrian soldiers marching into the snow. Or just like they all like march off into like whole bunch of lemmings dressed up dressed up as austrian soldiers marching into the snow or just like they all like march off into like the air but they don't realize it until like one private looks down and then realizes that they're all just like walking in the air and they all just like fall to their fucking deaths the game lemmings but the point is to kill every lemming archduke joseph august uh commander of the seven corps reported that uh over two days has a hungarian havid division quote suffered terrible losses it's effective force number less than 2 000 and tomorrow despite all these casualties we have to attack again like maybe just don't so let's go turn around like like we're just gonna like we're just

gonna kill several hundred thousand people just like you know try to save like a hundred thousand I'll be fine we just we have no other choice we have to go march into our deaths just off a fucking mountain this reminds me of the movie Pearl Harbor like every time that they would cut to the Japanese commander

who was just like, they'd be like, oh, Pearl Harbor, Ben Affleck doing Ben Affleck stuff. And then they'd cut to the Japanese preparing for the attack. And the Japanese admiral was just like, oh, I wish it didn't come to this. But you know,

oh, I wish this war could be avoided. It can. Don't fucking do this, dude. This isn't some like, oh oh we have to nobly go into this battle with america just don't genocidal assholes i'm now just imagining like the japanese star bombing pearl harbor and ben affleck walks outside of his barracks and a cig. It's just like, sir, have you no decency? Fuck, now I need to Photoshop that.

Just looked at it, just like, oh, man. Fucking been there. Mondays, am I right? Nobody likes him, not even Garfield. Not even Garfield at Pearl Harbor. So, by mid-March, it was obvious to everyone but Conrad likes him not even Garfield not even Garfield at Pearl Harbor so by

mid-march it was obvious to everyone but Conrad that the second offensive was also completely lost and pointless this time it didn't even get within 50 miles of the fortress but he continued to pass orders to the closest units which are around

60 miles away that they are to rush out and relieve the fortress between March 20th and 23rd. Keep those dates in mind. Which, besides being batshit insane, which would have required, by the way, one of the largest and most successful Austrian advances of the war in order for this to happen. Which, you know, spoiler spoiler alert doesn't work um so remember those hundred thousand or so soldiers held up in that fortress they were still there uh and they were rapidly losing their goddamn minds uh they've they've been trapped in there for over a hundred days at this point And they had been starving to death. They had long since ran out of food and they had killed all their horses to eat.

They'd also been cutting what little bread they had with fillers like sawdust. And some of them were fighting and killing each other over every little speck of food they could find. There really wasn't any leadership or command and control left. They probably died already or stopped giving a fuck. The Russians had effectively turned this into a fortified armed concentration camp. Cool.

Conrad gave them explicit orders never to surrender. While he never commented on the condition within the fortress by mid-March, we can probably assume if he did, he wouldn't have given a shit. Because on March 19th, 19th, that's one day before he ordered the other unit to go and rescue them. He ordered the soldiers within the fortress to break out. Cool.

So everyone knew this is completely pointless to include Conrad and the soldiers within the fortress, but he said it was to restore their honor that they had lost. Like, who do you even fucking order at that point? Like you said, like command and control broken down, which is like, yeah, I don't know, man, like round up like the 12 guys around you and go charge some barricades. They still listened. I can figure it out. I don't know.

I guess these guys lost their honor by following Conrad's other orders to not surrender the fortress for months and eating horses and probably a dude or two. I don't know. I don't know. Like what part of that, like at any point, they're the most honorable unit of the Austrian military.

Cause they're still fucking there. It's just like, you don't want to sacrifice your honor as you're like chewing on the fucking thigh bone of like the dude that you went through boot camp with uh this attack wouldn't have worked uh but it was made worse by the fact that the russians had long ago cracked the austrian telegraph code so they knew exactly what was coming so when the when the starved half-dressed and frostbitten soldiers came out of the fortress

thinking they were going to surprise the Russians, it was turned into a firing squad. After that, the few survivors finally said, fuck it, and surrendered. Oh, Jesus. Now, remember, that was on the 19th. Somewhat incredibly, Conrad did not

tell anyone that the fortress had surrendered. He was worried that if he told the second army that the soldiers surrendered, they wouldn't fight as hard to secure the fortress. Wait, what? Like, yeah. All right, cool. So, like, this is, like, the whole thing, like, oh, don't worry, we have one left in stock. Cool. Can I buy it?

No, because then I wouldn't have any. Like, this is, like, essentially like that, but, like, applied to, like, an entire fucking army of people in stock. Cool. Can I buy it? No, because then I wouldn't have any. This is essentially like that, but applied to an entire fucking army of people in a fucking fortress. So a day after the fortress surrendered, the attack was launched to liberate the fortress that Conrad

also ordered, which again ended predictably with thousands of more casualties. This one with the added benefit that if they actually had driven to the fortress and taken it over, which they didn't, they would have then also had to lay siege to it because it was occupied by Russians,

which again, they did not know about. Cool. After this, Conrad finally gave up on his mission to capture the fortress. While the emperor was looking for a way out of the war almost as soon as it started and began to spiral out of control, Conrad was one of the few people in the Imperial inner circle with power demanding that it continue in order to preserve the Empire and restore their glory. Glory, I assume, that also died of frostbite.

It's always a dick measuring contest. Like even like, all right, man, like you've killed literally like most of the like breeding stock of the entirety of our country. But no, that's fine. Just keep doing what you do. And every time he like lost a battle, he would blame his subordinates,

fire them, shift them around or whatever. Um, and it, which is all just kind of incredible when you think about, um, how much he had to do with the Austro-Hungarian military being so bad in turn,

destroying the empire as a whole. Um, but after his horrible Carpathian campaign, the Austrian military pretty much effectively came under the command of the Germans for the remainder of the war. The Germans were already pretty thoroughly within their ranks. There was Germans within the Austrian chain of command

and things like that, which fucking Conrad hated. He fucking hated to the point that he actively attempted to undermine them while they worked, which had the downside, of course, had the downside if you're a soldier of getting more of you killed because the Germans were so much better at their job than he was. Yeah. Now, he was not fired after that either um now if you remember the luigi cadorna episode the crushing victory they had against the italians uh at caporetto something that conrad 100 takes credit for that was under the command of the germans um so like that's just like how intertwined the two became at that point

like the Austrian chain of command was Germany at that point now when Charles I rose to the throne in 1916 because Joseph died he knew he had to replace Conrad I assume that he had some fucking dirt on Joseph or something

I don't know but when Charles rose to the throne he knew he had to get rid of him but he admitted that he had some fucking dirt on Joseph or something. I don't know. But when Charles rose to the throne, he knew he had to get rid of him, but he admitted that he couldn't find anybody that would replace him. I assume that means he couldn't find anybody that actually wanted to replace him. Because he's like, oh man, if I get put in charge of this mess, I have to lead it. They make you fit a very precise brand of intelligence, which is not too high, but not too low. We want you to

like be able to like have a basic level of executive function but also like you know just grind our armies in a hamburger for whatever fucking reason some some austrians are still alive in this country and we'd like you to fix that um but meanwhile the ad just says need a problem solver so he was actually promoted to field marshal only one of three in austria hungary but charles began to slowly strip away conrad of his total power over the military before finally taking power for himself as chief of staff and firing conrad in 1917 uh conrad wanted to retire uh but uh charles asked for him to stay on board and command an army, which he did. Uh,

so he had enough time to command one last terrible battle, uh, at the battle, the second battle of the Piave river against Italy, in which Ashi was utterly crushed, setting the stage for Italy to knock them out of the war entirely. A few months later at a Veneto, uh,

it was like Veneti Veneto. I think it was, um, after the war, Conrad refused to accept any blame for anything. Not only for sending tens of thousands of soldiers to freeze

the death horribly in the mountains, but also for having a major hand in starting the war in general. Because in his excuse, he's like, well, I wasn't a politician. Oh, cool. Well, all's forgiven then. I mean, never mind that you wrote like 20 fucking notes just to go to war with Serbia in a year.

25, yeah. He died in 1925, a complete fucking failure, defeated in every single campaign he ever planned and commanded, which I think is a record for this show. So, I mean, I don't know who's necessarily worse, him or Luigi Cadorna. But I will say probably Conrad, simply because he was integral to the whole war starting in the first place. Well, didn't even Cadorna Cadorna, like, you know, luck into, like, you know, some amount of, like, victory at the end? No, that was Armando Diaz. Yeah, Luigi got fired, and then Diaz took over the army

and immediately started winning with it. Well, at least that, well, even to that point, I mean, like, then at least Cadorna, like, you know, built something that could work, just not in his command. Like, I don't think, like, the Austro-Hungarians ever fucking worked in any capacity not until the Germans pretty much took them over like their only victories in the Italian front

were because Germany was in charge I mean I guess it's hard to say they sucked for different reasons because like Conrad von Holtzendorf is a fucking idiot who had a hand in starting World War One but you know he also didn't enact a decimation

in his ranks and make people get executed all the time he just threw them to the mountains and let the wolves eat them which I don't know which one is better really I don't know either at least when you're when you're doing that there's the the idea of like no no I have an idea I promise like otherwise you're doing that, there's the idea of like, no, no, I have an idea.

I promise. Otherwise, you're just doing some nonsense. You're just pissing everybody off. He was good at that. I don't know. It's hard to say. I guess we'll leave it to a vote. Remember, if you need to and you have any questions about this episode, as always,

at Eduardo Hapsburg and ask him who he thinks was worse. Was it Gadorno? Was it not? I think there's really only one true arbiter here. I'm actually curious who he thinks is worse. I would say he definitely thinks Conrad is worse because he's the reason why he couldn't

be a fucking constitutional monarch or whatever. Yeah. Why did he end up with the British monarchy treatment? Yeah. So, gentlemen. That's a fucking curse thought. Just imagining

an Australian-Hungarian flag laugh-cry emoji Twitter. I think it's just Twitter. Oh, God. I think it's just him. Now, gentlemen, we do have things on the show called Questions from the Legion. If you'd like to ask this question,

Legion, donate a dollar to the show. Email it to me. DM to me. Whatever other way you want to use it. Attach it to a wolf. Have the wolf run through the Carpathian Mountains. And today's question

from the legion is who is the most unhinged crazy military leader in modern times uh it says it's like modern times is right now i think that has to be michael flynn right like hands down or or maybe joseph coney since technically he's still alive somewhere. Yeah, I mean... It's hard to say who's crazier at this point. Because Michael Flynn would 100% be Joseph Coney if he was allowed to be. Yeah, I mean, there's also probably a good number of folks... I don't know. I'm thinking of some...

I mean, there's all the fucking just absolutely bad shit, evil military leaders in Myanmar right now who are just killing fucking protesters left, right, and center. Yeah, but that's crazy, but you can also see why they're doing it. They're despots and they're pieces of shit, and fuck them. But they're not like Q-pilled Michael Flynn, who's legitimately insane. Right. They at least have a reason for what they're not like Q-pilled like Michael who's legitimately insane. They at least have a reason for what they're doing. Well to be clear you do not actually have to hand it to them. You don't.

You don't have to hand it to them but you can say I understand. What about like some like one of the fucking North Korean generals who like has an entire breastplate full of medals I mean that's just don't hate on the drip man hate the player not the game

so gentlemen this episode went long as hell thank you for joining me everybody else let me know who you think the worst commander is and until next time stay out of the fucking Carpathian mountains it's just not for you man or at least take a coat with you