Supreme Commander of the Imperial and Royal Armed Forces


The Supreme Commander of the Imperial and Royal Armed Forces was the ultimate authority of the Austro-Hungarian Armed Forces – which comprised the Army, Navy and Aviation Troops of Austria-Hungary.

Highest Commander-in-Chief

The Supreme Commander was usually the Emperor of Austria as Highest Commander-in-Chief. The Emperor ran the armed forces through the Military Chancellery of His Imperial and Royal Majesty the Emperor-King that was established on 11 July 1867. Amongst its heads, who usually bore the title Adjutant General, were:
In his old age Franz Joseph I only rarely exercised the function of supreme commander in person. Instead, in 1905 after the death of Field marshal Archduke Albert - who had taken over the post in 1866 from General Benedek and held in until his death in 1895 - he appointed Archduke Friedrich of Austria-Teschen as his representative using the style: At the disposal of the Supreme Commander - His Imperial and Royal Highness General of Infantry and Inspector of the Army Archduke Friedrich.
Besides Friedrich, whose duties were mainly ceremonial, Archduke Heir Apparent Franz Ferdinand had a great influence on the armed forces in the last years of the monarchy, and worked hard to keep them united and to expand them. In 1898, after a career as an officer, he was appointed "at the disposal of the Supreme Commander", in order to oversee the army as a whole as well as the navy. To that end, from 1899, he maintained his own military chancellery, at Belvedere Palace, which was successively expanded by Brosch into a secondary government. In 1913 the heir to the Emperor was appointed as Inspector General of the Armed Forces ; at his request Franz Joseph I appointed General Conrad as Chief of the General Staff. The CGS, since the reform of 1895 called the CGS of the Armed Forces, had the right to a personal audience with the monarch, whereby the CGS was superior to the Defence Ministry as well as the Imperial Chancellery, and the Inspector General of Troops was subordinated to him - only the heir apparent outranked him.
At the onset of World War I, the Emperor appointed Friedrich as commander in chief, following the usual practice in times of crisis to appoint a serving officer to exercise high command of the army. Friedrich assumed this function until 2 Dec 1916, when the new Emperor, Charles I, took over supreme command himself.
Charles himself gave up the supreme command at the end of the war, in order not to have to sign the peace treaty and terms of surrender personally.

List of officeholders

Supreme commanders

Deputies

Literature