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The War Economy Dominates Everyday Life 211
for these branches of industry ; the men joined up. But shortly afterwards, when the
war economy took effect, there were too few menial workers and labourers available,
which resulted in shortages and delivery delays. But also in other key industries, where
one might have thought that any trained worker was needed, there were substantial
departures of personnel at the end of July and in August 1914, because the men had
to join up. The largest ammunition factory in the Dual Monarchy, in Wöllersdorf near
Wiener Neustadt, was a most eloquent testimony to this ill-conceived approach.498 The
lost workers could only be replaced with difficulty. Then new buildings and extensions
had to be hastily built before production could be begun in earnest. All in all, however,
the armaments industry succeeded comparatively quickly in offsetting losses caused by
the war, above all the major loss of guns and heavy military equipment in the Russian
theatre of war. The initiation of a modernisation in weaponry was just as rapid ; the
manufacture of new types of guns and their high-volume production was begun.499 As
a result, it can be said that the low personnel strengths and weaknesses certainly played
their part in the Austrian failures in both the Serbian and the Russian theatres of war,
and that in the case of the failed offensives and retreats a tremendous amount was lost,
but that ultimately the errors in leadership weighed much more heavily than the ab-
sence of armaments, weapons or ammunition.
Industry was of course not prepared for war, which is why its capacities were insuf-
ficient. The production of weapons was concentrated primarily in the Škoda Works in
Pilsen, the artillery arsenal in Vienna, the Austrian Arms Manufacturing Company in
Steyr, die Manfred Weiß Works in Budapest-Csepel as well as the factories in Bra-
tislava (Preßburg), Pest-Szentlörincz and several smaller locations. Ammunition was
produced in Enzesfeld, Pilsen, Wöllersdorf and also in Hungary. After the war began,
however, the War Ministry converted many factories to purely armaments industries :
Böhler in Kapfenberg, Arthur Krupp in Berndorf, the Hirtenberg Cartridge Cases and
Metalwork Factory and others. Ultimately, hundreds of businesses were incorporated
into the weapons and ammunition production, and this does not even include the sup-
pliers. Since many businesses belonged to corporations, the number of major army
suppliers amounted initially only to a few dozen and reached seventy only in 1915. The
firms listed among the army suppliers were obligated on the basis of the Law on War
Contributions to work almost exclusively for the Imperial and Royal Army Adminis-
tration and had to obtain special permission for any other delivery. This militarisation
of the businesses very quickly had an impact.
In August 1914 there were 2.5 million rifles in Austria-Hungary. The annual pro-
duction of almost 150,000 could by no means offset the first losses, as a result of which
a severe shortage emerged.500 But then there was a surge in production, which reached
more than 60,000 rifles a month by the beginning of 1915. The reason for this could
be found for one thing in that the factories for this existed and that they produced in
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