Too clever

[besilarius]

Marshal Putnik Gets Home

July of 1914 found Radomir Putnik, the Vojvoda -- Commander-in-Chief -- of the Serbian Army at Bad Gleichenberg, a fashionable spa in Austria, hoping that the mineral waters would help ease his emphysema.  Although relations between Austria-Hungary and Serbia were rather sour due to the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand by the Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princep in Sarajevo on June 28th, the crisis seemed to have passed.  Then, almost out of the blue, on July 24th, Austria-Hungary issued a stern ultimatum to Serbia.  Quite naturally, Putnik decided to return home, and boarded a train on July 25th.  Now Field Marshal Count Franz Conrad von Hotzendorff, the Chief of the Imperial-and-Royal General Staff, a brilliant, if unstable character, had a clever idea.  Hoping to "decapitate" the Serbian Army at a single stroke, when Putnik's train reached Budapest, Conrad had the field marshal arrested.  The very next day, however, the I-and-R Foreign Ministry convinced Conrad that having the ailing and aged (67) Putnik commanding the Serb forces would be better than having a younger man in charge, and so, pretending to make a chivalrous gesture, the Vojvoda was released.  Due to the deepening crisis, Putnik had to travel home by way of Romania, and thus did not arrive until August 5th, by which time Austria-Hungary had initiated military operations against Serbia, sparking World War I.

Now, while Putnik was making his way back to Serbia, the War Ministry in Belgrade was in an uproar.  It seems that when he left for Bad Gleichenberg, Putnik had taken with him the key to his safe, in which lay the mobilization orders and defense plans in the event of war with the Hapsburg Empire.  Without the Vojvoda, no one knew what to do.  Fortunately, when Putnik's subordinates dithered, War Minister Dusan Stefanovic took matters into his own hands; although without any legal authority over mobilization orders or war planning, he had the safe dynamited, and by the time Putnik resumed command everything was in readiness.

And so, when the Imperial-and-Royal Army undertook a full scale invasion of Serbia on August 12th, Putnik, despite the delay in mobilization, despite his emphysema (which would kill him in 1917), and despite his age, promptly beat the pants off the invaders.
     - Al Nofi

Overthinking a problem is not unusual.

[endfire79]

 :) After the first year of war, Conrad must have really regretted letting the Vojvoda go like that