Page - 252 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

252 Adjusting to a Longer War only be replenished for six days. Trains arrived every forty minutes, bringing with them what was absolutely necessary. Finally, the Army High Command felt that the fortress was once again fully stocked. Bread and rusks were provided for six months, vegetables for seven, meat for five and oats for 17 months. Anything that could not be brought into the fortress was burned. However, in part, the calculations made by the Army High Command were based on the assumption of a significantly smaller garrison than had in reality remained in Przemyśl, which leads one to conclude that there was a serious problem in communications. On top of this, the civilian population, which had again reached over 30,000, was not included. Roughly speaking, there was double the number of people in Przemyśl than the Army High Command had thought. Instead of the assumed 85,000 men, the fortress garrison alone amounted to 130,000 men, and in- stead of 3,000 horses, there were over 21,000 in the fortress. The soldiers were also still equipped for the summer, since they had entered the war in August. Now, however, it was November. And the Imperial and Royal armies were retreating farther and farther back. The German comments on this turn of events were anything other than moderate, and were certainly not intended for Austrian eyes and ears. The future Prussian war minister Adolf Wild von Hohenborn summarised the situation very simply by stating that ‘in the east, it looks very precarious thanks to the wretched attitude taken by the Austrians’.603 ‘They are no better than a militia ! This has been our error, that no-one has realised what a hopeless army this is. We are successfully grappling with double the number of Russians, while the Austrians bolt when faced with an equal Russian force.’604 A short time later, Erich Ludendorff, the Chief of the German General Staff for the Eastern High Command, expressed himself in a very similar manner when he wrote to General von Moltke : ‘The Austrian soldiers are bad. They have heard so much about the ‘overwhelming enemy’ that they believe they have a right to leave when a stronger foe approaches.’605 Now, only radical measures could be of any use. The transportation of additional German troops to Poland was conducted at the last possible moment, since the Russians were just beginning to advance from the Warsaw area towards Silesia, in other words, against Germany, and in so doing to outflank the Austro-Hungarian front in the north. The German 9th Army was installed to the north of the Austro-Hungarian 1st Army with the aim of attacking the flank of the Rus- sians who were pushing forward towards the west. The Imperial and Royal 2nd Army was to be withdrawn from the Carpathians and used in conjunction with the German Woyrsch Landwehr (standing army) corps between Bytom (Beuthen) and Kluczbork (Kreuzburg). This was the first time that German and Austro-Hungarian brigades and divisions were combined, which naturally led to a substantial leadership problem. In this connection, the creation of a joint high command was proposed. However, this touched on a fundamental problem that refused to disappear right through to the end