So i've been playing a lot of BF1 recently. I already knew

>>32613646
> was the state of the military going in to WW1

Average service rifle (Mannlichers), a decent machinegun (Schwarslose) mediocre at best fuckfest multi-cultural military.

> they were abysmally short on artillery and machineguns

Outdated nation with a forced shit internal economy and no real progress since the 1850s since literally everyone hated each other after the 1848 revolution wave.

>had shit leadership

Look up anything they did, yes. They were idiots.

>>A literal nigger in Imperial German Army in 1918

It is like a Detroit gang compared a Marine batallion in combat.

The Germans had thousands of African soldiers. Lettow-Vorbeck used them to savage the allies in Africa for the length of the war. One or two being in the Imperial Army in Europe is nothing more than a statistical certainty based in mass mobilization.

>>32613802
They didn't make it out of East Africa until the war ended.

>>32613646
>what was the state of the military going in to WW1?
laughable, incompetent, useless
we got rekt by fucking Serbs and their army was like 5 times smaller
same with Italy, but the Germans came to save us there
the fight with the Russians was fairly balanced since they were also useless fucks, it was like 2 blind guys fifgting each other lol
>I've heard people say they were abysmally short on artillery and machineguns while others say they were fairly well equipped but had shit leadership
the equipment...
well if it indicates something the A-H army did not issue hand grenades to the infantry until 1916 (I'm not sure of the exact year tho, but I know that the Serbs had a great advantage in this in the opening years), also we were the last to issue helmets (aside from Russia) and when we did they were german surplus
and yes the leadership was unimaginably corrupted and incompetent, there was a lot of nobility who got rank for their family name and the communication was horrible between the regiments who spoke a million different languages
>Did the army ever improve?
no it was a shitfest all along

>>32614187
you cheap fucks used ceramic grenades

>>32613646
Austria-Hungary had a lot of issues before even going into the war.
Short supply of artillery, inadequate training for soldiers, non-standardized railway sizes (Trains would have to go to the end point of that track size, be unloaded, and then reloaded onto the next train) this made mobilization a bitch.

Then once they were in the war, they were constantly hindered by idiotic leadership. Specifically the leadership of von Hötzendorf who was one of the biggest pushers of the war, then when he finally got it, he fucked up everything he was related to.
Directly fighting losing battles against the Italians, or dicking over their allies by saying "Don't worry we're sending you reinforcements" to the Germans fighting the Russians, but then diverting those troops to fight the Serbains. Leaving the Germans without the reinforcements they were expecting.

The Austro-Hungarians did have some successes and become better as the war went on. But they never recovered from their abysmal performance earlier on. The best they got was mitigating overall losses and to stop sending their men to certain death in various, frozen, mountain ranges.

>>32614187
>we got rekt by fucking Serbs and their army was like 5 times smaller
To be fair, Serbia just got out of a war 3 years prior, troops were already combat veterans.d

>>32613646
It was a multikulti military so shit was pretty fucked.

>Senior officers speak germany
>Junior officers speak hungarian
>Troops speak Czech/Polish/Romanian/whatever

So comms would sometimes completely break down just because interpreters died

They were fucking retarded, anon. Watch episodes of The Great War on youtube for specifics, but one sticks out in my mind.

>Battle with the Russians or some shit, late 1914
>Short on supplies
>Short on men
>Trying to cross a river and failing due to lack of equipment and training
>Men getting slaughtered left and right
laughingsluts.jpeg
>Moral takes a nosedrive, leadership doesn't know what to do
>Sends marching band to the front in order to play National Anthem and other patriotic songs to restore moral
>Wilhelm Screams everywhere

>>32616584
I need to catch up on the Great War. Been months since I've watched it.
Wish I could remember or find the name of that battle with the band. I've heard it mentioned before but cannot find it.

Also the Austro-Hungarians nearly got the Germans all killed as Galicia because they got engaged with the Russians and then quickly retreated. If not for a phone call, the entire German force would have been encircled because their allies abandoned their flank.

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>That one African Poilu

I know that the French had many African soldiers fighting in Africa, but how many did they bring to help the war effort in Europe?

>>32617703
$20 the frenchies in bf1 will be all white

>>32613646
Poor on paper, worse in the field. Part of the issue was the mixed nationalities many of whom actively wanted the destruction of the Empire. Luckily they were fighting Italy on one flank, the only major nation less competent than they were.

>>32617773
wut?

>>32617846
???

>>32617866
I didn't understand your post since BF1 has already been released.

>>32617842
Has Italy's military ever not been garbage?

>>32613646
The only reason they didn't lose against Italy at first was because they had the high ground and the Italians were led by an even bigger idiot.

>>32617929

He's probably talking about the planned DLC that will add France.

>>32617929
They didn't include frogs yet.

>>32617703
They brought whole regiments of them to fight on the Western Front.

The one specific battle I know they were involved in off the top of my head was the 2nd Battle of Ypres (also known for being the first use of chemical weapons by Germany, on the Western Front). They broke and ran when they were hit by the gas, and if not for the Canadian regiment spreading their troops out in the trenches to fill the gap they left, the Germans likely would have been able to break through, but were repulsed by the unexpected strength of the Canadian defence.

>>32613802
Out of tens of millions serving? In the middle of Europe? You are aware there are no battles in that game in Africa against the Germans, right? That's a whole lot of disbelief I've gotta suspend for that to not be a laughable attempt at being PC from out of nowhere that now looks downright silly and actually funny when there's not a single Frenchman in sight... But don't worry, some niggers were exploited by the Germans by the few thousands so front and center for them!

>>32618068
Not since the fall of Rome, no.

>>32620944
The Venetians and Genoese from the late middle ages had very high-quality, technologically advanced, professional armies and navies and the Italian free companies, albeit often full of foreigners, were forces to be reckoned with. It has only been since Italian unification that everything went to shit.

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>>32613646

>>32617842

The troops fighting on the Italian front were also very much more motivated than on other fronts. For instance Slavs on the Eastern front didn't want to fight against the Russians and surrendered in droves just to pick up weapons on the Russian side and fight against Austrio-Hungary. The Serbian front was full of volunteers from the Austro-Hungarian empire as well. While on the Italian front troops fought to the last because they viewed the Italians with more disdain than the Austro-Hungarians.

>>32618068
I heard that since the switch to a professional army in the '90 it started to improve. But on the other hand, according to pepole who served, most of the higher ranked officers are corrupt fucks that cut deals with the talibans back in afganistan to avoid fighting them .

>>32625444

> according to pepole who served, most of the higher ranked officers are corrupt fucks that cut deals with the talibans back in afganistan to avoid fighting them .
That was french media making shit up because they wouldnt admit their soldiers were caught in some taliban ambush and suffered casualties.

this is one of the very few (if not the only) footage of italians in afghanistan.
Italian combat footage is very rare because their army forbids them from taking pictures and/or shooting vids

>>32625912
forgot link

here it is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcZnukff7zI

>>32613646

Austria suffered from her political situation and that was reflected in its military.

Imagine giving orders in Austrian and then having your Hungarian Junior Officers give it in Hungarian to Croat NCOs who then give it to Bosnian enlisted.

It was amazing they even marched in formation, let alone invaded Italy.

>>32613646
>My question is what was the state of the military going in to WW1?
It was pretty horrific on a strategic scale. The nature of the government meant that there were three levels of mobilization that occurred - one for the empire as a whole, another for each half of the empire (Austrian and Hungarian), and then a third for individual sub-divisions (Czechs, Galicians, Croats, etc). All three occurred simultaneously and were competing against eachother. The result was a clusterfuck.

Many units ended up very diverse, so much so that there was no common language between the men. Although more homogenous units were formed by localities, the Hapsburgs were afaid of too much nationalist sentiment and thus went out of their way to squash this before it started, forbidding anything resembling national pride among such units. Often times, they even went as far as deploying these locally formed units as far as possible from their homes for fear of an uprising. The problem was, the units were often moved from regions of the front where they were more familiar with the area than those sent in to replace them. Thus, you had Galicians shipped south to Serbia, while Croats were shipped north to Galicia. When the Italian Front opened up, they did the same here. Although the local ethnic Italians were very pro-Hapsburg, local militias and any ethnic Italian soldiers were shut down and shipped elsewhere.

>Cont

>>32626045
In strategic decisionmaking, they were just as bad off. When war against Serbia was declared, a large force was mobilized against them and sent along the railways to Serbia. Soon after they departed, Russia declared war, and Austria was faced with a large concentration of Russian troops on their border. Rather than call the forces back, the forces were made to continue their route to the Serbian border, as they feared directly recalling them would spread fear among the populace. Instead, the army was to take a circuitous route right up to the Serbian border before turning round and making their way back to Galicia to fight the Russians.

Unfortunately, the commanders on the Serbian border had other plans. They held up half of the army that arrived for a campaign into Serbia while letting the other half continue on back to Galicia. The result was a force too small to handily defeat the Serbians as had been planned, and a force too small to make an impact arriving too late to prevent the Russians from overrunning Galicia. This would end up biting the Austrians for the rest of the war. A large amount of fighting took place in Galicia, and, even after it was liberated, the region had been so devastated that Austria was stuck with food shortages even worse than Germany for the remainder of the war.

Shortages ended up being so bad that Austria actually had to import food from Germany to make ends meet. Funny enough, thanks to the unique political situation in the Empire, the Hungarians were fairly well off this whole time - they refused to export food from Hungary, making sure that ethnic Magyars were given priority to prevent the kind of catastrophe that unfolded in Austria.