Zweibund — the Dual Alliance — Germany and Austria-Hungary united, were the core of the Central Powers, and here join hands. The bars of Germany's flag border the top left, and those of the Habsburg Austrian Empire and ruling house the bottom right.
Schulter an SchulterUntrennbar vereintin Freud und in Leid!'Shoulder to shoulderInseparably united in joy and in sorrow!
"The Austrians had their backs to the wall and were in danger of being flung through the Carpathians and into the Hungarian plain. They were now deployed in a thin gray line, a weak Second Army on the left, lying along the German border north of Cracow. . .To save Cracow, Austria's last foothold east of the Carpathians, Conrad ordered an attack across the Vistula. The Austrian Fourth Army and a German division beat the Russian Third Army to a standstill near Cracow at Limanowa in the first two weeks of December. Southeast of Cracow, facing west, the Russians had made themselves vulnerable to a flanking attack, which Archduke Joseph Ferdinand delivered."
Meeting on November 29 and 30, 1914, Grand Duke Nicholas, Commander of the Russian Army, had approved General Ivanov's plan to continue his successful offensive against Austria-Hungary, driving the enemy from Galicia and crossing the Carpathian Mountains to threaten the Hungarian capital of Budapest. As he would again, Austro-Hungarian commander Conrad von Hötzendorf requested and received German support in a counterattack that stopped the Russian advance and forced them to pull most of their forces from the battles for the mountain passes.
A Mad Catastrophe by Geoffrey Wawro, page 305, copyright © 2014 by Geoffrey Wawro, publisher: Basic Books
1914-12-04, December, 1914
