Page - 152 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

152 Unleashing the War The measures that were designed to  – and in large part did  – lead to the absolute rule of the military authorities were only limited when they were met with determined re- sistance  – above all in Hungary. The Hungarian Prime Minister successfully defied the endeavours of the War Surveillance Office to be recognised as a central authority that was also responsible for the Hungarian half of the Empire. The justification for this being a department of the joint Imperial and Royal War Ministry was formally correct, but Tisza did not help the War Surveillance Office to establish its practical effective- ness. Admittedly, this did not mean that the measures applied in the Hungarian half of the Empire were not in the final analysis identical with those applied in the Austrian half. It was only the joint authority that was rejected and not the measures themselves. Hungary established its own form of regulation and control over civil administration through military organs. In Cisleithania, however, Prime Minister Count Stürgkh regarded the subordination of the civil administration to the military authorities and, above all, the Army High Command as a quite natural measure. In a circular letter that he sent at the end of July 1914 to the state governors in Austria subordinated to him, he wrote : ‘For the actual area of the civil service, which has a particular relationship of duty and loyalty to the state, it will be your task to encourage the population, without distinction of class, na- tion or confession, in the spirit of the concentration of the efforts of all well-disposed, patriotic elements to demonstrate their love for their fatherland by word and deed and to spur it on to willing and eager collaboration in all measures that are designed to serve to secure the evolvement and effective application of the armed forces. With similarly purposeful vigour, however, those elements will be opposed and their sub- versive influence destroyed that assume an indifferent or hostile attitude towards the armed forces and the state for political or whatever other reasons in such decisive and fateful times for the fatherland as these. […] In this respect and altogether in the entire territory controlled by the state administration, all principles and considerations that, under normal circumstances, would have their independent legitimacy recede entirely into the background compared with the great ends, the achieving of which is now to be attempted with the strength of arms, and thus also the interests of the armed forces, who are deployed to execute the will of the state.’361 Stürgkh held the view that it was imperative that the government and administra- tion were at the disposal of the Supreme Commander in this war, and he deeply re- gretted the fact that Emperor Franz Joseph was not in a position to personally exercise his command.362 The Monarch was physically simply unable to do so. Even before the annexation crisis, Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been lined up as the Army Supreme Commander. In July 1914, a new commander had to be found. Archduke Friedrich was then selected. He was called to the Emperor on 6 July in order to prepare him for the assumption of his duties. On the evening of 25 July the handwritten imperial letter was