Page - 54 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

54 Two Million Men for the War however, one cannot just look at the army. The navy should likewise be considered. The navy had enjoyed particular support over the course of decades by Crown Prince Rudolf and then the heir to the throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand and had therefore repeatedly received disproportionately large amounts of funds from the military budget. At the same time, the expansion of the fleet also consumed enormous sums. Compared with the arming of the British and German fleets, Austro-Hungarian efforts remained modest. From an organisational point of view, the navy belonged to the joint Impe- rial and Royal armed forces, and thus possessed no territorial component. The central authority was the Naval Section, which belonged to the Imperial and Royal Ministry of War. Its leadership was relocated to Pula (Pola) in 1913. In the navy, the period of service was four years. This was followed by five years in the reserves and three years in the Seewehr (territorial navy). A direct incorporation into the Seewehr did not take place. The size during peacetime of around 20,000 men was covered by the three naval replacement districts Trieste, Rijeka (Fiume) and Sebenico (Šibenik). Croats, Hun- garians and Italians thus easily dominated the crew. It was in this way possible to man fifteen battleships, two armoured cruisers, four armed cruisers, 48 torpedo boats and six submarines, only some of which, however, were modern constructions. A further 10,000 sailors operated the harbour installations and the shipyards.102 A special type of flotilla belonging to the inventory of the Imperial and Royal Navy was stationed on the Danube. With its six monitors (this number was reached shortly after the war began) and numerous other motor vessels, the Danube Flotilla was in a position above the Iron Gates to control the main river of Central and South-Eastern Europe.103 There was nothing comparable on this river in other armies. This ‘military review’ can be concluded with a few numbers and comparisons : with a general mobilisation the Habsburg Monarchy should have been able to place 1.8 to 2 million men under arms. The German Empire could count on 2.4 million and Russia 3.4 million. Of course, the Common Army, just like the two territorial armies, was the subject of numerous political processes. This began with the authorisation of the necessary funds and the question of their allocation, and continued with the arming and equipment, whereby only the authorisation of the funds for the navy aroused relatively little resist- ance in parliamentary representations, whilst the acquisition of a new type of artillery unleashed very lively debates. And, for example, if in 1912 the only briefly incumbent War Minister Baronet Moritz von Auffenberg had not used the failure of the Reichsrat (Imperial Assembly) and Reichstag (Imperial Diet) delegations  – who decided on the authorisation of necessary financial loans  – to meet by ordering on his own authority a new type of mortar from the Škoda firm in Pilsen, Austria-Hungary would have gone to war without its famous 30.5 cm mortar. It was not just the parliaments of the two halves of the Empire, however, who impeded efforts to arm. Within the army itself,