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Graydon A. Tunstall, Blood On The Snow: The Carpathian Winter War Of 1915., Lee Eysturlid

Faculty Publications & Research

By early 1915, the Habsburg Monarchy faced a self-inflicted strategic crisis of the first magnitude. Under thecommand of the ever fallible Conrad von Hötzendorf, successive Austrian offensives against the Serbs andthe Russians in 1914 had been outright failures. In both cases, Conrad had attempted to shift between frontswith insufficient resources and succeeded only in grinding the life out of the fragile, undermanned, andunderequipped Habsburg Army. As a result, the Russians were able to lay siege to the critical Austrian fortificationof Przemyśl, which guarded the great Hungarian Plain against Russian invasion. In reaction, Conradgathered forces to relieve Przemyśl with an offensive …