Page - 231 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Death of General Wodniansky 231 The fate of General Brudermann, to whom Emperor Franz Joseph passed on words of comfort, should not just be left uncommented. Not only had Major General Paukert served under Brudermann as a divisional commander, but also Major General Daempf, commander of the 23rd Honvéd Division, which had been ‘seized by panic’, according to Brudermann. Thus, Major General Heinrich Daempf was also removed. The next on the ‘hit list’ of the Commander of the 3rd Army was the army’s chief of staff, Brigadier Pfeffer. Differences of opinion had already arisen between Pfeffer and Brudermann during the General Staff trip in spring 1914. Pfeffer remained and Brudermann became reconciled to him. Subsequently, he could only spare reproachful words for his former chief of staff. Pfeffer’s hour came without the assistance of Bru- dermann. Five days after the removal of the army commander, the chief of staff was also dismissed. For the Imperial and Royal War Ministry, the matter was gradually reduced to a simple administrative act. ‘Reallocations’, as they were called in army jargon, were an everyday occurrence. If dismissals were ordered by the Army High Command, there was a standard letter into which the respective name was then inserted. At the end of September 1914 a whole batch was sent out, with which generals, some of whom were already dismissed, such as Brudermann, were instructed to submit their pension applications. On this day alone, this touched Generals Lothar Edler von Hortstein and Count Karl Huyn as well as Major General Count Alfred Zedtwitz, about whom it was initially claimed that he had shot himself. When the rumour proved to be untrue, those in the entourage of Archduke Friedrich said it would have been better, had he done so. Then it was the turn of Brigadiers Joseph Karres and Karl Wojtěchowský Edler von Boddenritt.554 It was not just in the case of the 3rd Army, however, that the failure of the opening battles had been reflected in large numbers of dismissals. It was a similar situation with the 4th Army. First of all, the army commander, General Auffenberg, dismissed a very prominent general indeed, namely the former Chief of the General Staff of the entire armed force and direct predecessor of Conrad von Hötzendorf, Blasius Schemua, from his com- mand of the II Corps. Auffenberg justified this in that Schemua had suddenly and without motivation ordered the withdrawal of his corps at the height of the Battle of Komarów. According to Auffenberg, this was the ‘gravest error in the details of lead- ership during the entire period of the campaign’. Schemua, who in turn badmouthed Auffenberg,555 had to report sick and the Surgeon-General of the corps, Professor Alois Pick, wrote that Schemua suffered from ‘nervousness and circulatory disorders’. This led to dizziness, swaying and a feeling of numbness in the right upper extremity.556 The next man under Auffenberg’s command to be dismissed was the Commander of the XVII Corps, General Count Huyn, who lost his post on 9 September,557 for health considerations, of course. It probably escaped Count Huyn’s attention, however, that it