Page - 178 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918
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178 ‘Thank God, this is the Great War!’
deficiencies became evident. As a result, 27,000 workers were brought in within a
very short space of time to complete the preparations. The lines of fortifications were
reinforced, ditches, entrenchments, battery positions and obstacles were erected, and
depots, barracks and storage facilities were built. 1,000 hectares of forest were cleared,
above all by sawing down the trees, since the heavy rainfall made it impossible to
burn them down. 21 villages were razed to provide an open glacis. Within the fortress
itself a massive army camp was established. Around 22 battalions of the Landsturm
infantry, the cavalry, 35 companies of fortress artillery, sappers, Landsturm artillery,
etc., which made up the original garrison, were joined by the troop formations that
arrived in stages, and which increased the number of men occupying the fortress to
over 80,000.423 However, they were not to remain in the fortress, but instead depart
when the advance began. The Army High Command, however, was to be permanently
established in the fortress.
For Archduke Friedrich, additional headquarters, the royal military quarters, were
established, which would later be relocated to Galicia. They were to be installed not
at the site of the actual high command, but in Chyrów, about 35 km away. The court
boarded its train during the night of 20 August. The Army Supreme Commander was
to lack no comfort. The train travelled very slowly. On 21 August, an eclipse of the sun
could be seen. In Jarosław (Jaroslau), a dragoon gave news of a battle ‘somewhere up
there on the border, rather confused stuff’, as Count Herbert Herberstein, Lord Cham-
berlain of his Imperial and Royal Majesty, the Army Supreme Commander, noted. In
Przemyśl, where they arrived after two days’ train journey, there were already war-like
scenes. Hundreds of Landsturm men were digging trenches, field bakeries were being
erected, and troops were marching. The ‘cleansing of the theatre of war’ was also already
fully underway. People were seized on a daily basis on suspicion of spying, and anyone
who appeared to be unreliable was removed from the deployment zones. In one of the
cleansing operations conducted by the police in the deployment zone of Galicia, in
Poronin near Zakopane, a certain Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, who called himself Lenin,
was seized.424 However, after Victor Adler, the Social Democrat member of the Re-
ichsrat intervened, saying the Lenin was an emigrant and an enemy of Tsarist Russia,
who ‘would serve Austria well’, he was released and was able to travel to Zürich via
Vienna.425 One can only guess what might have happened if Lenin had been hanged
or at least interned like hundreds, or possibly thousands, of others who were convicted
or suspected of spying. However, the hope that Lenin might one day be useful carried
more weight than the initial mistrust.
Suddenly, the mood changed. Bad news arrived from the Balkans. General Frank’s
army, the Imperial and Royal 5th Army, had been beaten on the Drina. In the north,
a Honvéd (Hungarian standing army) cavalry division had suffered a defeat after in-
itial successes. Well-known people were named as having been wounded or killed.
THE FIRST WORLD WAR
and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918
- Title
- THE FIRST WORLD WAR
- Subtitle
- and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918
- Author
- Manfried Rauchensteiner
- Publisher
- Böhlau Verlag
- Location
- Wien
- Date
- 2014
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-3-205-79588-9
- Size
- 17.0 x 24.0 cm
- Pages
- 1192
- Categories
- Geschichte Vor 1918
Table of contents
- 1 On the Eve 11
- 2 Two Million Men for the War 49
- 3 Bloody Sundays 81
- 4 Unleashing the War 117
- 5 ‘Thank God, this is the Great War!’ 157
- 6 Adjusting to a Longer War 197
- 7 The End of the Euphoria 239
- 8 The First Winter of the War 283
- 9 Under Surveillance 317
- 10 ‘The King of Italy has declared war on Me’ 355
- 11 The Third Front 383
- 12 Factory War and Domestic Front, 1915 413
- 13 Summer Battle and ‘Autumn Swine’ 441
- 14 War Aims and Central Europe 469
- 15 South Tyrol : The End of an Illusion (I) 497
- 16 Lutsk :The End of an Illusion (II) 521
- 17 How is a War Financed ? 555
- 18 The Nameless 583
- 19 The Death of the Old Emperor 607
- 20 Emperor Karl 641
- 21 The Writing on the Wall 657
- 22 The Consequences of the Russian February Revolution 691
- 23 Summer 1917 713
- 24 Kerensky Offensive and Peace Efforts 743
- 25 The Pyrrhic Victory : The Breakthrough Battle of Flitsch-Tolmein 769
- 26 Camps 803
- 27 Peace Feelers in the Shadow of Brest-Litovsk 845
- 28 The Inner Front 869
- 29 The June Battle in Veneto 895
- 30 An Empire Resigns 927
- 31 The Twilight Empire 955
- 32 The War becomes History 983
- Epilogue 1011
- Afterword 1013
- Acknowledgements and Dedication 1019
- Notes 1023
- Selected Printed Sources and Literature 1115
- Index of People and Places 1155