Gene and Stu,
both sides suffered terribly. The Austrian army had a standing army of 7.5 million men at the beginning of the war. At the end of the war they had a half a million. This country suffered the worst of all countries involved.
The real hero nation of that war was the Belgiums. They slowed down the German strict time table, forced Germany to tie up a large portion of their army protecting the supply lines and, finally, they fought very bravely like nobody expected them to. Strange thing is that at the beginning of the war, they had their weapons pointed at England and France as well as the Germans. They knew that someone was going to have to go through them. They just did not know who. All this and before the war everyone thought of them as nothing more than poorly equiped and trained "Chocolate Soldiers".
The big disappointment was the Russian army. Because of the corruption of the royalty that ran the army, it had only two ambulances at the start of the war. I won't even go into the shotages of everything else. Of course having the ill prepared Czar take over command of the army did not help matters either.
Big Norm
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