Military Diplomacy in the Dual Alliance: German Military Attaché Reporting from Vienna,1906—1914

Abstract

This article examines the reporting record of the German military attaché in Vienna from 1906 to the outbreak of the First World War. The reporting provided Berlin with a steady flow of information on the weaknesses of Austria-Hungary’s armed forces. These weaknesses stemmed from the character and structure of the Dual Monarchy, and were responsible for its chronically debilitated combat-effectiveness. The reporting contradicts claims of contemporary German memoirists, and the belief of historians since the war, that neither Austria’s military weaknesses nor their underlying causes were known at the highest levels of the German military prior to the war.