Page - 151 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

An Empire Mobilises 151 and the Civil Service Ministry (Beamtenministerium) were given free rein to implement the state of emergency exactly in accordance with the earlier blueprints.’357 On 26 July, together with the decree on mobilisation against Serbia the imperial res- olutions on the suspension of citizens’ rights were also signed. And on the same day by means of an imperial edict the autonomous states, districts and municipalities not ruled directly by the state were incorporated into the centralised war administration. Every municipality was thereafter obliged to contribute to implementing the emergency laws and all other laws and ordinances relating to the prosecution of the war. Every civil servant working for a business involved in prosecuting the Dual Monarchy’s war had to continue his work until he was discharged from his duties by his superior authority. In this way, retirement ages ceased to apply. A special regulation existed for the railway administrations, which not only had to make all material installations available to the war administration but also their entire personnel. The management of the entire rail- ways of the Dual Monarchy was militarised from the first day of mobilisation onwards. Some measures applied in the actual war zone that were understandable and vital to the war effort, such as the abolition of the jury courts, were extended to the entire Dual Monarchy. For the territory regarded in the broadest sense as the war zone and its rear areas, a special imperial edict came into effect with which the civil administration was transformed into a military one. On 25 July the extension of the powers of the regional military commanders-in-chief was mandated for Bosnia-Herzegovina, Dalmatia and the Banat.358 Six days later, the Army High Command was issued with the authority to enforce ordinances for the protection of military interests ‘within the official juris- diction of the political state governor’ within the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria including the Grand Duchy of Kraków (Krakau), furthermore in the Duchy of Buk- ovina, the territory of the District Commissions Bielsko (Bielitz), Fryštát (Freistadt), Frydek (Friedeck),and Cieszyn (Teschen), in the city municipalities of Bielsko and Frydek in the Duchy of Silesia as well as in the territory of the District Commissions Mistek, Nový Jičín (Neutitschein), Ostrava (Mährisch-Ostrau) and Hranice na Moravě (Mährisch-Weißkirchen).359 The power of the Army High Command thus extended far beyond Silesia and Moravia. All of the absolutist measures only hinted at here were designed to ensure that the Austrian and the Hungarian wartime governments could maintain inner order across the entire state territory, suppress all political and nationalist expressions and help to make the work of the War Administration, including the entire war economy, supplying and equipping of the army, a success.360 Redlich claimed that no state had ever gone so far with militarisation as Austria, above all in order to ruthlessly recruit especially the non-German population for the Monarchy with all means at its disposal. A quantified comparison with other countries  – with the exception of Russia  – very probably turns out to the detriment of Austria-Hungary.