Franz Graf Conrad von Hötzendorf

Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf
1915 portrait, Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Vienna
Born	(1852-11-11)11 November 1852 Penzing (Vienna), Austrian Empire
Died	25 August 1925(1925-08-25) (aged 72) Mergentheim, Germany
Allegiance	Austria-Hungary
Service/branch	Austro-Hungarian Army
Years of service	1871–1918
Rank	Feldmarschall
Battles/wars	First World War
Awards	see below

K.u.k. Feldmarschall Franz Xaver Joseph Conrad Graf von Hötzendorf German: Franz Xaver Josef Graf Conrad von Hötzendorf (11 November 1852 – 25 August 1925), sometimes anglicised as Hoetzendorf, was an Austrian Field Marshal and Chief of the General Staff of the armed forces of the Austro-Hungarian Army and Navy 1906–1917. He was the Empire's leading military advisor during the 1914 July Crisis that led to the outbreak of World War I. He argued persuasively for preventive war against Serbia, saying it was needed to hold together his polyglot empire on the verge of breaking down. He later decided that Austria acted too late, and its failure to fight earlier was a fatal mistake. He admitted his army was not ready for war, and therefore emphasized the political necessity. He failed to realize that Germany would force him to put his chief assets on the Russian front, rather than Serbia. Conrad was reluctant to fight Russia, and when Italy entered the war in 1915, he shifted his attention away from Russia toward Italy, the Balkans and the Adriatic. From early 1915 his forces were increasingly dependent on German support and command. Without German support the Austrian army was a spent force. In 1917, Charles I of Austria dismissed him as Chief of Staff; he commanded an army group on the Italian front until he retired in 1918.

Titled Freiherr (usually translated as Baron) since 1910; from 1918 until April 1919 raised to the title of Graf, usually translated as Count; from April 1919 Conrad's official name was Franz Conrad-Hötzendorf, since the Republic of Austria abolished nobility for its citizens by law.

Conrad was born in Penzing, a suburb of Vienna, to an Austrian officers' family. His great-grandfather Franz Anton Conrad (1738–1827) had received the nobiliary particle von Hötzendorf as a predicate in 1815, referring to the surname of his first wife who descended from the Bavarian Upper Palatinate region. His father Franz Xaver Conrad (1793–1878) was a retired colonel of Hussars, originally from southern Moravia, who had fought in the Battle of Leipzig and took part in the suppression of the Vienna Uprising of 1848, whereby he was severely wounded.