Franz Graf Conrad von Hötzendorf

For more information on Franz Xaver Josef Count Conrad von Hötzendorf, visit Britannica.com.

Conrad von Hotzendorf, FM Count Franz (1852-1925). Intelligent, well-educated, and a brilliant linguist, Conrad von Hotzendorf was the Austro-Hungarian CGS from 1906 until 1917, with a brief interlude in 1911-12. He argued vigorously in favour of preventive war against Serbia or Italy, with the aim of pulling the diverse and polyglot empire together, and claimed that failure to fight sooner had been the monarchy's fatal mistake. At the beginning of the July 1914 crisis he backed political demands for action against Serbia, though he had later to admit that the army was not fully prepared for war. The politically astute Conrad ought to have predicted that the Germans would insist that Austria should throw her main weight against Russia, rather than Serbia, and that one result of German emphasis on the western front might be a long, destructive, and inconclusive struggle against Russia. Italy's entry into the war encouraged Conrad to shift his attention to the Balkans and the Adriatic, areas of his pre-war preoccupation. Dismissed by the Emperor Karl in 1917, Conrad commanded an army group on the Italian front before being retired in the summer of 1918. He lived to see the empire he had striven to preserve destroyed by a war he had done much to promote.

— Richard Holmes