Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf

Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf served as Chief of the General Staff of the Austro-Hungarian military from 1906 to 1917, repeatedly calling for preemptive strikes against Serbia to hold together an empire he believed was disintegrating. When war came in 1914, his army was unprepared, and he'd miscalculated German support - most forces went east, not to the Balkans. Russian advances through the Carpathians brought them to Hungary's doorstep before Italy joined the Allies, and though the Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive cleared Galicia and Serbia fell in October 1915, his troops grew increasingly dependent on German command. Emperor Charles I dismissed him in March 1917 after the failed Trentino Offensive; he commanded an army group on the Italian Front until retiring in summer 1918, and died in 1925.