Page - 200 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

200 Adjusting to a Longer War him, for they also felt compelled to help enforce certain operational procedures at all costs, even if the cost comprised tens of thousands of dead, wounded and mutilated. In 1914, people appeared to be in abundance. Hardly anyone concerned himself that the reservoir of so-called ‘human material’ might dry out. The ‘human factor’ in the form of the male soldier was in any case regarded as a resource that could be opti- mised and whose usefulness in a conflict should be examined.469 The ideal warrior type was taken for granted and then the shock came in increments when there were short- comings. The ideal type should, of course, excel not only in his strength and military capability but also demonstrate stability in respect of his mental characteristics. A man was expected to march and fight even with little or, occasionally, no food. Horses could also be spurred on to the point of exhaustion. Machines, on the other hand, could not be operated without coal and fuel, cannons could not be fired without ammunition and the consumption of million-man armies was enormous. The War Economy Dominates Everyday Life The demands on the defence economy could not have come unexpectedly, for the Rus- so-Japanese War had already demonstrated the importance of the industry for waging war as a matter of urgency. And the ‘factory war’, as André Beaufre called it, was subject to completely different laws than the ‘primitive war’, again to quote to Beaufre.470 One Russian, the aforementioned State Councillor Ivan S. Bloch, had envisaged this and written it down in 1898 in his six-volume work The War of the Future. A war, argued Bloch, would deprive the powers that had instigated it the opportunity to profit from the goods of those states against whom they fought. The soldier succumbs, whilst the people’s economists ascend. He continued : ‘In the next war, there will be no glorious marches and campaigns along the lines of Napoleon, but an increasing carnage of such terrible proportions that it will no longer be possible for the troops to decide the battle in their favour. […] Therein lies the future of the war : not in the killing of people but in the bankruptcy of states and in the decay of the entire social fabric.’471 Clearly, no-one had believed Bloch. As described by Bloch, in all armies the corresponding technical innovations had been introduced. There were certainly differences, but they were not so eminent that the armies were not comparable in terms of their weaponry and their level of technological advancement. One side was superior in one detailed respect, the other in another. But the problem that then arose was completely different, namely one of logistics. After the initial battles it was a question of who was better able to wage the ‘factory war’ and who was better able to solve the immense supply problem. An average army corps of 40,000 to 60,000 men required on a daily basis approximately 130 tons of food and feed for