A Mad Catastropheepub,mobi,azw3格式电子书下载，作者：Geoffrey Wawro-读书派

The Austro-Hungarian army that marched east and south to confront the Russians and Serbs in the opening campaigns of World War I had a glorious past but a pitiful present. Speaking a mystifying array of languages and lugging outdated weapons, the Austrian troops were hopelessly unprepared for the industrialized warfare that would shortly consume Europe.

As prizewinning historian Geoffrey Wawro explains in A Mad Catastrophe, the doomed Austrian conscripts were an unfortunate microcosm of the Austro-Hungarian Empire itself—both equally ripe for destruction. After the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914, Germany goaded the Empire into a war with Russia and Serbia. With the Germans massing their forces in the west to engage the French and the British, everything—the course of the war and the fate of empires and alliances from Constantinople to London—hinged on the Habsburgs’ ability to crush Serbia and keep the Russians at bay. However, Austria-Hungary had been rotting from within for years, hollowed out by repression, cynicism, and corruption at the highest levels. Commanded by a dying emperor, Franz Joseph I, and a querulous celebrity general, Conrad von Hötzendorf, the Austro-Hungarians managed to bungle everything: their ultimatum to the Serbs, their declarations of war, their mobilization, and the pivotal battles in Galicia and Serbia. By the end of 1914, the Habsburg army lay in ruins and the outcome of the war seemed all but decided.

Drawing on deep archival research, Wawro charts the decline of the Empire before the war and reconstructs the great battles in the east and the Balkans in thrilling and tragic detail. A Mad Catastrophe is a riveting account of a neglected face of World War I, revealing how a once-mighty empire collapsed in the trenches of Serbia and the Eastern Front, changing the course of European history.

Geoffrey Wawro studied at Brown and Yale and is Professor of History and Director of the Military History Center at the University of North Texas. The author of five books, including Quicksand and The Franco-Prussian War, Wawro lives in Dallas, Texas.

arieszy

01-18

以前读一战的时候一直是巴尔干半岛是引发战争的导火索，直到读了这本书才真正的了解到其中的原因。随着奥匈帝国接连败与法国、普鲁士，奥匈帝国的势力开始走下坡，也让奥匈帝国治下的各民族有了强烈的民族意识，匈牙利的自治就是这样的产物。匈牙利对这样半独立的强烈维护是建立在牺牲这个奥匈帝国利益至上的，甚至加重了奥匈帝国的民族矛盾，再加上奥匈帝国的工业化程度落后，宫廷政治的混乱，让奥匈帝国成了一只纸老虎，但是又没有足够的自知之明。在南斯拉夫谋取在巴尔干半岛的霸权之后，两者的矛盾终于引发战争，同时也让欧洲各个想打破势力平衡的强权介入并将战争变成世界大战。奥匈帝国羸弱的军备与落后的战术能力，加上缺乏战略眼光，因此在战争中一败涂地，甚至受挫于南斯拉夫之手，帝国也就不可避免的崩溃了。

单宁

01-03

有点没读懂啊！看到中文版找来读的，这不是奥匈帝国的一战史吗？我还以为会讲整个哈布斯堡王朝的脉络和历史呢。感觉好多细节，淹没了阅读快感，在作者笔下，似乎奥匈帝国的王室、官员，都是蠢货。呃，可能是因为没看懂吧。