Page - 42 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

42 On the Eve providers’, as they were eloquently named, to military discipline and also military penal power if necessary. The act also served to ensure that the necessary work would be com- pleted to enable troop deployment, transportation and other services that were directly required by the troops behind the front. Since the war service providers were to have no combatant status, however, they were to be used only outside the narrow front area. Here, there was naturally also a lack of clarity in some cases, such as when Landsturm troops, who were part of the armed forces, were to be used for services covered by the Law on War Contributions, but were also classified as combatants. Then there was also a scandalous difference in wage levels, since a military worker received far less pay than his civilian counterpart. The Law on War Contributions was one of the key measures required to ensure not only that a war of longer duration and great intensity could be waged, but also to raise awareness among the civilian population, which had to be made conscious of the aims and necessities of waging war. In light of this approach, it is no longer relevant to ask whether a functioning Reichsrat in Vienna would have reacted differently during the July Crisis of 1914, and whether in a manner similar to the Ger- man Empire, the necessary loans would have been agreed or not. Since the end of 1912, it could be assumed that the Danube Monarchy was ready for war, and that this applied not only to the military, but also to civil society as a whole. If war were to be declared, all requirements had been met to ensure that the people would be bound by constraints and processes that would permit neither a general strike nor any activity that would correlate with the much-misused phrase by Brecht : ‘Just think of it, war breaks out and nobody turns up.’ Before the war, however, it was still possible to agitate in the parlia- ments, to call worker demonstrations and make use of the press. Once war had started, such measures would be obsolete in both the Austrian and Hungarian halves. From this moment onwards, only the socialisation of violence was in force. Emperor Franz Joseph appeared to have no trouble with the notion of ruling with a strong hand. In Austria, this course was pursued unwaveringly, and after Count Tisza was elected Prime Minister in Hungary on 10 June 1913, thus taking the office that had been due to him for a long time in light of his political influence, he also very quickly made it clear that he intended to assert his will and to play a role in all areas of politics. He was more successful in achieving this than he was in gaining a stable parliamentary majority that could act as a supporting base. By contrast, the Austrian prime minister, Count Stürgkh, regarded the suppression of parliament as the only way of surviving in power, and he was clearly not of the mind to allow parliament to convene again during his period in office. To a far greater extent, a list of materials was produced to which the emergency decree paragraph could be more or less applied, resulting in rule by imperial decree.77 While there was some resistance to this development, it ultimately appeared as though all parties and all the Landtage (local diets) in the Austrian half of the Em- pire were not so concerned about this authoritarian style. Involuntarily and unwittingly,