Weltkrieg, Erster#

World War I, 1914-1918: Its causes date back to the 19th century; Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy formed the Triple Alliance in 1882, which was opposed by the Entente, consisting of France, Great Britain and Russia from 1907. The conflicts between France and Germany (after the war of 1870/71) and between Great Britain and Germany (naval rivalry, issue of African colonies) became more serious and, at the same time, the political tensions between Serbia, Russia and Austria-Hungary increased after 1903. Pan-Slavism, Serbian territorial claims in the Balkans, the Austro-Hungarian annexation of the formerly Ottoman provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina (occupied in 1878) in 1908 as well as the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 aggravated European rivalries in the Balkans.

Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Austro-Hungarian successor to the throne, by a Serbian Nationalist group of students in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 Austria-Hungary presented an ultimatum to Serbia on July 23, 1914, demanding official Austrian participation in the investigation against the instigators. Although Serbia´s answer was moderate in tone and content, it was considered unsatisfactory and Austria declared war against Serbia on July 28, 1914, who had started mobilisation on July 25, 1914. Austria-Hungary and Russia ordered general mobilisation on July 31, 1914. Germany declared war against Russia on August 1, 1914 and against France on August 3, 1914 and invaded neutral Belgium. The next day Great Britain declared war on Germany. Austria-Hungary declared war against Russia on August 6, 1914; and by that time Montenegro had already declared war against Austria-Hungary on August 5, 1914. France declared war against Austria on August 11, followed by Great Britain the next day and by Belgium on August 28; Austria declared war against Japan on August 23. Italy remained neutral, referring to the statutes of the Triple Alliance contract, according to which it only formed part of a defensive alliance.

Around 1.3 million men had been called up to join the imperial army in a first wave of mobilisation by September 1914 (in addition to the peacetime strength of 415,000 people), another million soldiers were recruited by the end of the year. Count F. Conrad von Hoetzendorf, chief of the general staff, was responsible for military operations, A. Arz von Straussenburg) from March 1, 1917; commander-in-chief of the army was Archduke Friedrich (until December 1, 1916, from then until the armistice of November 3, 1918 Emperor Karl I).

Even though the Central Powers had not worked out a common war strategy, Germany started an offensive according to the "Schlieffen Plan", sending large parts of its troops via Belgium to northern France, with the aim of trapping Paris on the west in a pincer movement and encircling large parts of the French army and the British Expeditionary Forces; Germany subsequently tried to defeat the Russian army with the help of Austro-Hungarian troops. However, after the Allies´ success in the Battle of the Marne, the German advance came to a standstill from mid-September 1914. A continuous front line was set up stretching from the Flanders coast to the Swiss border from the end of October, which basically remained unchanged until the summer of 1918; on either side territorial gains were only made at the cost of an enormous number of victims (Verdun, Somme, Ypers, Cambrai). The fight against Russia was largely fought by Austro-Hungarian troops who, after only a few weeks, had to realise that Russia´s deployment had been organised much more quickly than expected. The Russian troops were not only superior in numbers, they also used excellent equipment. The battles in the autumn of 1914 in Galicia resulted in heavy casualties for the imperial army (with approximately 500,000 dead, missing and captured); despite some successful operations (Krasnik, Komarow, Limanowa) large parts of Galicia had to be given up (loss of Lemberg, confinement of Przemyśl), and the Austro-Hungarian troops had to retreat to the north-eastern range of the Carpathian mountains.

The Austro-Hungarian forces fighting in the Balkans also greatly underestimated the power of the Serbian army and in three offensives failed to conquer Serbia. At the end of 1914 the two enemies, exhausted from having suffered heavy losses (more than 220,000 people on either side), stood again in their initial positions of August 1914 with no end to the war in sight.

When Turkey declared war against Russia and France on October 29, 1914 and Great Britain against Turkey on November 5, 1914 all of the Near East turned into a theatre of war, with fighting also involving German and Austro-Hungarian troops. Even before that, in the summer of 1914, war had broken out in the Far East (Japan declared war against Germany on August 23, 1914) as well as in the German African colonies and hence had assumed world-wide proportions.

No major military fights took place at the Balkan front until the autumn of 1915, whereas the Central Powers reinforced their troops at the eastern front after the fierce winter battles in the Carpathian mountains (120,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers capitulated at Przemyśl on March 23, 1915) and conquered all of Galicia as well as large parts of Poland and Belorussia in their offensive of May 2, 1915 (break-through of Tarnów-Gorlice), inflicting heavy defeats on the Russian army.

Italy, whose claims to the Italian-populated territories of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy were becoming increasingly insistent, rejected an Austro-Hungarian compromise on the cession of parts of the Trentino. After the Treaty of London had been concluded on May 3, 1915, Italy withdrew from the Triple Alliance on May 4 and, issuing a declaration of war against Austro-Hungary on May 23, joined the Allies. Although the imperial navy prevented the vastly superior allied naval forces from launching a large-scale offensive in the Adriatic and from landing in Dalmatia until the summer of 1918, it failed to break through the barrier of the Strait of Otranto. The war at sea was fought with light units on both sides and with submarines (as in the Northern Sea) by the Central Powers. Unrestricted submarine warfare set in from 1917, at first inflicting heavy losses on the Allies´ merchant shipping, but the USA, who had by now entered the war, contributed eventually to the defeat of the Central Powers.

On land, after Italy´s entry into the war, a south-western front of around 600 km was built, along which trench warfare set in from the Swiss border (Stilfser Joch pass) in the high Alpine regions to the western territory before Trieste south of the Julian Alps. The war in the mountains was characterised by extreme topographical conditions, and the eleven battles of the Isonzo between June 1915 and September 1917, in which the Italian troops failed to break through to Trieste and into the Ljubljana Basin were as fierce as the battles at the western front. In the 12th battle of the Isonzo, from October 24, 1917 (break-through of Flitsch Tolmino) the Austro-Hungarian and German troops were able to conquer Venetia, but they held it only until Italian units, supported by British and French divisions, erected a new front along the River Piave in November.

An Austro-Hungarian and a German army together launched a major attack against Serbia in the Balkans on October 6, 1915 and succeeded in conquering Serbia with the help of two Bulgarian units (entry into war of Bulgaria on the side of the Central Powers on October 11, 1915). Although the allies landed troops near Salonika on October 5, violating the neutrality of Greece, they did not succeed in preventing Serbia and Montenegro being occupied until January 1916. The front in the Balkans remained the same in northern Albania and along the Bulgarian-Greek border until Romania joined the Allies on August 27, 1916 and its troops invaded Transylvania. In the following months, the Austro-Hungarian, German and Bulgarian troops decisively defeated the Romanian army and occupied almost all of the country. Greece entered the war on the side of the Allies on June 29, 1917.

The Russian Army was again very successful against the Central Powers at the eastern front in the summer of 1916 (Brusilov offensive from June 4-August 29, 1916), however the tremendous losses and the economic emergency in the hinterland gave rise to the outbreak of the Revolution on March 12, 1917 ("February Revolution"). A bourgeois government came into power, which enabled Russia to continue to fight on the side of the Allies until the Bolshevik Revolution of October (old style) in November 1917; on March 9, 1918 the new Russian government made peace with the Central Powers in Brest-Litovsk.

The years 1916 and 1917 saw a dramatic increase in supply problems in the Habsburg monarchy due to the ongoing war. Production in the armaments industry grew steadily, while first shortages of raw materials occurred and textile production increasingly lacked quality. From 1916 food supply was subject to strict control (food ration cards for bread and flour were issued from April 1915, for milk, fat and potatoes from 1916). The War Cereal Distribution Board was set up to provide central control over the distribution of cereals from February 1915. The problem of distributing agricultural products from the Hungarian part of the Empire was never satisfactorily solved during the war, and an alarmingly large number of civilians were suffering from malnutrition and diseases by the end of 1917.

The interior political situation was also aggravated in 1916. The assassination of Prime Minister Count Karl Stuergkh by Friedrich Adler on October 21, 1916 demonstrated the extent of resistance against the authoritarian government. Nationalist tensions grew and resulted in mass desertions, in particular in the Czech regiments at the eastern front, as well as in mass strikes for economic reasons in January 1918. After the death of Emperor Franz Joseph I on November 21, 1916 it soon became clear that once this symbolic figure had disappeared the ties between the people and the dynasty loosened, especially because his successor, Emperor Karl I, was unable to solve the domestic political and economic problems and, despite many efforts to achieve peace ( Sixtus Affair) to put an end to the war.

When the USA entered the war on April 6, 1917 (the declaration of war against Austria-Hungary did not follow until December 7, 1917) the Allies´ superiority was enhanced even further, which, however, did not become fully effective until the spring of 1918. US entry into the war also considerably influenced the Allies´ war objectives. The Habsburg monarchy was strongly affected by US President W. Wilson´s Fourteen Points for a just post-war order of the European states: They comprised readjustment of Italy´s frontiers on an ethnic basis, the prospect of autonomy for the peoples of Austria-Hungary and retreat from the occupied Balkan states. In a preliminary stage, the Czechoslovak National Council in exile in Paris was recognised by the Allies as the government of a friendly nation on June 29, 1918.

The hopes the Central Powers had pinned on the peace concluded in the east failed to materialise. Food supply from the Ukraine turned out to be much less than expected and was not sufficient for the needs of the troops and the people in the hinterland.

Both the offensive on the River Piave, started by the imperial army on June 15, 1918, and the last offensive by the German forces on the western front (March 21, 1918) failed. The Bulgarians in the Balkans were forced to surrender on September 26, 1918, the Turkish forces in the Near East were about to break apart. Since military and economic collapse seemed inevitable, Emperor Karl decided to send a peace note to the Allies on September 14, 1918. However, this was rejected and the monarchy soon began to fall apart. A "South Slav National Council" was already set up in Zagreb on October 6, 1918, the Provisional National Assembly for "German Austria" was constituted in Vienna on October 21, 1918, the Czechoslovak state was proclaimed in Prague on October 28, 1918 and the union of the South Slav territories with Serbia and Montenegro was announced on the following day; Emperor Karl´s manifesto of October 16, 1918, in which he granted autonomy to the peoples of the Austrian Empire, remained ineffective.

The offensive on the River Piave launched by the Allies on October 24, 1918 caused the imperial army to break apart, not least because, by that time, greater numbers of Hungarians had started to leave the front. Although the armistice signed at Villa Giusti (near Padua) on November 3, 1918 was not to enter into force until November 4, the imperial army's high command ordered immediate cessation of hostilities. Hence the Italian troops could still take 356,000 soldiers of the imperial army prisoner of war in the days up to November 11, 1918. Italian units advanced into northern Tirol until November 20, 1918, while Bavarian troops still tried to prevent the formation of a new south front against Germany, which was possible due to the Allies' right to move freely inside Austria-Hungary as demanded in the armistice; on the western front Germany had to agree to a cease-fire on November 11, 1918.

Emperor Karl I resigned as commander-in-chief of the army on November 4, 1918 (succeeded by H. von Koevess), renounced the right to participate in affairs of government on November 11 and dismissed the last imperial government from office. The "Republic of German Austria" was proclaimed in front of the parliament building in Vienna on November 12, 1918 ( First Republic).

World War I, which for Austria-Hungary lasted 1563 days, cost the imperial army more than one million persons dead and missing (around 400,000 of whom died in Russian captivity, around 50,000 in Serbian captivity and more than 30,000 in Italian captivity), 1,943,000 injured and 1.2 million prisoners of war, most of whom did not return for several years. War expenses are estimated to have amounted to around 90 billion Kronen, the public debt had risen from 13 to 72 billion Kronen between July 1914 and November 1918, the rate of inflation reached 1400 % from 1914-1924. Large parts of the population suffered from increasing poverty accompanied by deep-rooted social and economic problems ( First Republic).

Literature#