The Austro-Prussian War: Austria's War with Prussia and Italy in 1866

Austro-prussia War; WawroBad review bad maps.3 starAlthough research and scholarship are very good, writing mostly good; editing allowed several errors. But maps are quite poor. True, good maps for military histories can be time consuming and costly but if a picture is worth a thousand words, good maps are worth hundreds certainly. Applying the description “maps” is exceeding generous since these diagrams miss basic carto craftsmanship. Only thing that makes them resemble maps is that they purport to show spatial information. Not much excuse because Rothenberg’s Warfare In Age Of Napoleon (1977) have good maps, not fancy. Good line drawing simple but look good, see p150. And more contemporary, Royle’s Crimean War (2000) has good black and white line drawing maps p200, 271, 285. Wawro’s very poor maps insult the considerable effort in research and scholarship and the reader. All this particularly true in that readers in one major market, USA, are very unlikely to have basic knowledge or even familiarity with the geography of the subject theater of war. At least a one star deduction for bad maps. And mark against author and publisher to foist such poor work on readers.

If every history book read as crisply as this one, there would be little room for fiction on the best-sellers list. Geoffrey Wawro, in this book, gives an openning statement, then prosecutes it. He sets out to prove that rather than Prussia winning the War of 1866, Austria, through mistakes and poor selections of leadership, threw away what should have been a winning situation. Each chapter develops his case. to be sure, he gives Prussia their just due for staff work, the adoption of the repeating rifle, and bold leadership at company and platoon level. However, the old adage that "he who makes the fewest mistakes' comes home here as Austria repeatedly misses the chance to punish Prussia for the errors that they make, then compound the situation by piling on their own.I have since read Wawro's "The Franco-Prussian War", and it is another triumph of historical work.

The Austro-Prussian War, by history professor Dr. Geoffrey Wawro, is a well-written and interesting revisionist account of that oft-neglected conflict in 1866. Dr. Wawro has assembled an impressive amount of existing and new source material that sheds an entirely new light on the brief war of 1866 that brought Prussia to the brink of German unification and presaged a new era of professionalization in war. Wawro's account is particularly strong in its use of Austrian and Italian sources; the Italian role in the war is usually reduced to a few paragraphs but in these pages it is covered in great detail. However, readers should be aware that Dr. Wawro's account is revisionist in intent and tone, which the author does not always make clear. Dr. Wawro's central hypothesis is that both Austria and Prussia were fairly evenly matched opponents but that, "Austria did lose in 1866 for many reasons, but chiefly because...Ludwig Benedek, Austria's supreme commander on the Prussian front, revealed himself to be a supremely incompetent general." While the author also cites the technical superiority of the Prussian needle gun and the poor combat performance of many ethnic minority units in the Austrian army, the main cause the author ascribes for Austrian defeat is the poor generalship of Benedek. The "inferior generalship" hypothesis is a difficult one to prove, particularly given notable lapses in Prussian generalship, but by and large the author succeeds. Overall, the Austro-Prussian War belongs on any bookshelf of anyone seriously interested in the evolution of 19th Century warfare. The Austro-Prussian War consists of 11 chapters, beginning with strategy and tactics in 1866 and origins of the war. Two more chapters cover opposing war plans and Italian involvement in the conflict. The fifth chapter covers the Battle of Custoza and the rout of the Italian Mincio Army. The next three chapters cover the covering force battles that preceded the decisive battle of Königgrätz, and then the next two chapters cover the battle itself. A final chapter covers the aftermath of the battle, which does an excellent job discussing the results and implications of the war. The author has included many sketch maps in the book, which while useful, are rather crude and incomplete. None of the maps have scales or depict railroad lines, or even depict tactical movements. I found it necessary to consult another source on the war that had better maps, to follow the author's narrative. There are also a number of photographs, mostly of Austrian generals (note, other than one photo of Moltke, there are no photos or illustrations from the Prussian side). The author includes excellent footnotes and a detailed bibliography, but no appendices. An appendix listing rival orders of battle and casualties in the war would have been useful. For military professionals, the author's discussion of the development of Austrian "fire tactics" and the needle gun will be an interesting evolutionary study. While the author notes that not all Prussian commanders subscribed to these tactics, the superiority of the tactics in themselves are not so clear because the author tends to ascribe too much importance to the needle gun. The author ignores the importance of combined arms tactics in favor of over-emphasis of one weapon system. While the needle gun was revolutionary as the first mass-produced breech-loading rifle and conferred firepower advantages to the Prussian infantry, the rest of the Prussian combined arms team was pretty weak. Prussian artillery was obsolescent, Prussian cavalry was timid and poorly trained and the vital support services were not up to supplying a fast-moving campaign. On the Austrian side, the retention of column assaults bordered on reactionary but such tactics did not become truly obsolete until the introduction of the machinegun. Austrian artillery and cavalry was superior, but these arms were improperly used. Two interesting areas of modern military technology that the author fails to address in detail are the use of telegraph and railroads. While the author does mention that the Austrians foolishly shunned the use of telegraphs, they do not seemed to have suffered badly for it, but the Prussians who did use telegraphs were often out of communications and suffered badly from lack of adequate command and control. The military use of the railroad is hardy mentioned, and one wonders why Benedek - who enjoyed an excellent rail net in Bohemia and Moravia - was constantly marching his troops to and fro instead of using rail lines to transfer troops rapidly. The author's conclusions about the implications of the war are also striking, "the complete triumph of Prussian grand strategy in 1866 served to tighten the political connection between the Prusso-German state and army. After 1866, the example of Königgrätz suggested that Prussia-Germany could extend its influence and make vast annexations against any rival if only it struck fast and hard enough. This thinking, which originated with Clausewitz and Moltke, would be the basis of Prusso-German military strategy in 1870, 1914 and 1939." The author notes that other armies attempted to copy the Prussian military professional standards after Königgrätz, but none fully succeeded. Indeed, the Austrians failed to learn much from their defeat and in fact their military capabilities declined. However, one interesting question that the author does not ask is that given the demonstrated military incompetence of the Austrian and Italian armies in 1866, why did Prussia choose to later ally itself with such second-rate powers? In choice of weapons and tactics the Germans clearly excelled, but in choice of allies they were clearly inferior.

As I read Geoffrey Wawro's excellent work on the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, I realized I was going to have to learn about this war as well, in order to better understand the latter. This book did not disappoint me either! It seems that Mr. Wawro did most of the work on this book as part of his PhD dissertation some years ago, however the book in no way reads like a dissertation. This is an excellent work, and as well-written as any. If any updates were in order, I'd perhaps have appreciated some additional maps, and/or better annotated maps, but this is a minor matter. I often found myself going to Google Maps or iMaps on my iPad in order to find and understand places mentioned in the text, but not shown in the book's illustrations. This is where it got interesting: The book uses the German place-names of cities that are all now in the Czech Republic. Google and iMaps, of course, use the Czech names. So map research became a 2-step process: google the German place-name first, and then usually the Wikipedia result would also provide the current Czech name. Then I'd take the Czech place-name, and type it into Google Maps or iMaps to finally find the location.

This is a superb book on a little known (in the US) conflict. Wawro goes into the major reasons why the war happened, and why Austria lost so badly. From Benedek (who disliked reading) to the illiterate conscripts whose main tactic was the bayonet charge, trying to fight well-drilled Prussians with breech loading rifles, Wawro presents a highly readable book. There is one oddity, where he says Benedek uses Jomini's theories, but most of the theories came out after Benedek had given up reading. That flaw is more than made up for by the excellent research and presentation. For people learning about the founding of modern Germany, this is an essential volume.

A very enjoyable read and a clear explanation of this little known war. I have tried reading this campaign before in other books but have ground to a halt due to tedious detail but Wawro's account held my attention to the very last page. Highly recommended.

fine

This book was full of the details of this neglected war, one which I wanted to learn more about.But whilst the book was scholarly (filled with references for example) and also comprehensive, giving a full account, in chronological order, of each and all of the skirmishes and mini battles that led up to the final denouement at Konigratz (Sadow), several things seemed to be missing.Firstly, more maps would have helped me properly understand the troop movements and the terrain.Secondly I needed an appendix with the chain of command in the armies. I found it very hard to follow the characters and exactly who was doing what. Some have similar names for example Prince Friedrich Karl and Prince Friedrich Willhelm, whilst others seemed to change their title and position during the conflict. I kept checking -- was this the person who previously was doing such and such on page y, or not. A list of the major characters at the end, together with the particular bit of army the were commanding, and when, would have been invaluable.But most serious of all it didn't seem to give the big picture. I was looking for the grand themes as well as the detail and they seemed either absent or simplistic. For example I was left thinking that the Germans won simply because a) they had a better gun and b) the Austrians were incompetent. Wawro seems rather dismissive of the loser.Despite these limitations I'm not sure you'll find a better book on the topic. His other book on the Franco Prussian war is much better!

I found this book to be very dry and a bit hard to get through. The theme is interesting.

I have titled this review after Wawro's favourite word. It is only used of Austrian forces and means variously: 'stopped, shaken, interpenetrated, losing, disordered,running,fired upon by nasty needle guns etc'. It is NOT used to mean what everyone else thinks the word means - 'no longer embodied as a force on a permanent basis'. I can't make up my mind whether this is a deliberate use of a word to reflect Austrian archival usage - or a lack of familiarity with military terms.This problem pervades the book. Are we being treated to unique insights drawn from in depth research of primary sources, or are we receiving the biased perceptions of an academic writing of inadequately grasped military matters? Or is it both? I suspect that to be the case. Ironically, the prose is far better than that of most miltary writers and the treatment of the development of the Battle of Konigrgratz is masterful. I was almost panting as I read, carried by the surge to and fro of the description.Apparently the book was based on Wawro's PhD thesis. If I had repeated myself so much in mine, I would have been suspected of regarding my supervisor as a moron. Even the most limited reader will be fed up with constant harping on the failings of Benedek. Surely his actions speak for themselves? The need to ram home the most obvious points makes the reader feel quite patronised. It is not as if the English speaking reader already had an entrenched belief in the genius of Benedek. 'The Lion of Soferino' is not even much regarded in Austria today.Finally, I would very much have liked Wawro to let us know what happened to the Austrian generals and their men after Konigratz. He only tells us what happened to the nations. It is not even made clear how the enquiry into the conduct of the war went. I seem to remember that most Austrian senior protagonists were forbidden to discuss it ever again, but what actually happened to them would give a good idea of how they were regarded subsequently. Clearly from the footnotes one can see that a lot of more junior officers wrote scathing memoirs. Authors like Richard Holmes and John Keegan (eg Six armies in Normandy) are able to seamlessly draw together the individual and personal with the social and strategic. Wawro will dramatically improve in his next book, but never develop the 'common touch'.