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230 Adjusting to a Longer War
withdrawals degenerated into a desperate flight ; artillery and weapons were abandoned,
East Galicia was lost, the Galician capital Lviv was surrounded and Brudermann was
blamed for the loss of substantial parts of the crown lands. Sentence had already been
passed on him well before, however : he was regarded as an imposter who had only
advanced to a higher post due to his elegant appearance on horseback. The Army High
Command sent staff officers time and again to the headquarters of the 3rd Army and
demanded reports on the conduct of the troops and the commanders. Brudermann
was eventually summoned to the Army High Command in Przemyśl. He reported
and travelled back to his army feeling safe in the knowledge that his presentation had
been convincing, evidently because the Army Supreme Commander did not have the
courage to inform him immediately of his removal to his face. Instead, he promptly
sent a letter after him, which stated : ‘To my sincere regret I received the impression
today
– on the occasion of your personal report
– that the grave strokes of fate that have
impacted so heavily of late on the 3rd Army and in turn on Your Excellency have also
shaken your health. […] Knowing the high sense of duty of Your Excellency, I under-
stand that you do not want to leave the Army of your own accord, even if your need for
rest could be met to a greater extent.’551 Brudermann was taken completely by surprise,
but he did exactly what Archduke Friedrich had advised.552 Brudermann described to
the director of the Imperial Military Chancellery, General of Artillery Baron Artur von
Bolfras, the – in his view – injustice that had befallen him, and at some length : ‘After I
had finally brought the 3rd Army behind the Wereszczyca in an orderly fashion on the
3rd of this month after 10 days of resistance against a superior enemy east of Lviv, I re-
ported personally to His Imperial Highness the Army Supreme Commander that now
the very tired 3rd Army required 1 or 2 days of complete rest in order to be able with
enthusiasm and full effectiveness to launch the offensive anew with the expected 4th
Army. What a terrible surprise when I was informed early on the 5th by a letter from
His Imperial Highness, in which he personally stated that he found that the strokes
of fate of the 3rd Army had shaken my health and I should take this opportunity to
re-establish the same.
I assure Your Excellency that I was physically and psychologically quite normally
unshaken and with my head held high faced further challenges with a clear and tranquil
mind.’553
The causes of the withdrawal, continued Brudermann, had been the not yet com-
plete gathering of the Army and the spatial moving forward of the deployment from
Sambor to Lviv. The Russians had come together sooner than expect, so that the Im-
perial and Royal VII and XII Corps had to swing in and the 23rd Honvéd Division
(Major General Daempf), which had been pushed across from the Balkan theatre
of war, had been seized by panic for no reason. Order was lost and a withdrawal was
unavoidable.
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