Page - 61 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The ‘entire armed force’ 61 missible, even if it proves nothing in itself. For the resignation encountered in the ranks of the armed forces of Austria-Hungary was much stronger than the militarism that presupposed a fundamentally dynamic attitude. Everywhere, people were greeted by hopelessness : the nationalities problem, the barely controllable difficulties of domestic policy, a lagging behind in military matters and finally the dramatically deteriorating economic situation scarcely allowed any room for great hopes. The German ambassa- dor in Vienna, Heinrich von Tschirschky, mentioned above, summarised it all on 22 May 1914 in the following succinct sentence : ‘Austria-Hungary is coming apart at the seams.’118 With one exception, as we have seen above : ‘The army is in great health’. Professors, deputies and diplomats such as Josef Redlich, Josef Maria Baernreither or the Austrian ambassador in St. Petersburg, Friedrich von Szápáry, made similar assess- ments of the domestic situation in the Habsburg Monarchy. In 1912, Szápáry also said that the domestic difficulties of Austria-Hungary would ‘easily and happily be reme- died’ by means of a victorious war.119 And barely two weeks before the assassination in Sarajevo, an anonymous writer in the Österreichische Rundschau newspaper noted : ‘Our domestic situation forces us to emphasise our strength to the outside world.’ The logical conclusion from these and similar statements was that the Austrian situation, which was very different in comparison with the other European great powers, was under- scored : foreign policy was decisively influenced by domestic policy. Any demonstration of power had its origins in the fact that it was designed to put a stop to a further dest- abilisation of the domestic conditions within the Dual Monarchy.120 However, the kind of shape this strength was in, which should if necessary be di- rected ‘outwardly’, was the great unknown. For in any assessment, it is important to know from whom the strength emanated and at which point in time this occurred. Too much was then overlaid by those weaknesses that became clear during the war and, ultimately, literary and filmic portrayals have repeatedly contributed to distorting the picture. It can generally be said that the army was admittedly smaller than it might have been and exhibited many gaps in its weaponry. Yet the Imperial and Royal Army could doubtlessly do more than just issue threats. With a mobilisation and deployment time of 16 days to three weeks, the Austro-Hungarian army was certainly considerably slower, for example, than its German or French counterparts, but it was still just as rapid as the Russians and the Serbs, and perhaps somewhat more so. If there was some- thing that constituted not just a quirk but rather a definite weakness of the Imperial and Royal Army, then it was a certain overaging and above all a too limited capability and mental flexibility on the part of the senior officers. In the absence of war, the gen- erals evolved perforce into specialists in manoeuvres. Having said that, one might have thought that after the extensive changes that Con- rad von Hötzendorf undertook within the officer corps, it would not only have kept pace with the times but would even evince a certain superiority. The tactical and operative