Page - 257 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Fortress on the San 257 that there was a lack of officers, that infantry platoons were being commanded by older gendarmes and that five different types of hand weapons were being used within a sin- gle brigade, then this certainly did not support the fact that the body of troops was by all means intact.614 However, as I have remarked above, by and large, the assessment of Count Liechtenstein regarding ‘the body of troops’ was correct. Of far greater concern were his comments relating to the General Staff. And a ‘lack of confidence’ was only part of the problem. A sense of despondency was becoming widespread. One consequence was that in the light of the difficult war situation and its fur- ther deterioration, increasingly stringent measures were being demanded, and the militarisation of the home front steadily continued. Despite the pessimistic mood, there was a will within the Army High Command to persevere, while at the same time, it was isolating itself to an increasing extent. Conrad however acted with such thoughtlessness that his behaviour was in some cases no longer understood even by those around him. The Army Supreme Commander, Archduke Friedrich, was almost never involved in the decisions, and he was increasingly also only informed briefly and in some cases in a downright insulting manner. Yet he allowed himself to be treated in this manner. Conrad was due to arrive to make a presentation from around 12 to 12.30 p.m., but in most cases, he failed to turn up before 1 or 2. Then he would report for half an hour. The evening presentation ran in the same way. It was planned for 8 p.m., yet Conrad usually arrived at around 11 p.m. Until then, Friedrich was frequently kept awake by playing cards. However, in some cases, he fell asleep. After having been woken up, he was perhaps not in a condition to follow the presentations with the necessary degree of concentration. In the interim, Archduke Friedrich spent the day keeping himself up to date on the military dispositions on the basis of order sheets and the lists of casualties. All this was naturally more than detrimental to the function and reputation of the Army Supreme Commander. As his lord chamberlain, Major General Herberstein, also claimed : ‘A Supreme Commander who at the most spends between half an hour and an hour of his time working on the supreme command, and only then plays the listener, but who otherwise does nothing the whole day except for correcting the schematism is surely no Supreme Commander !’615 The Army Supreme Command was also assigned to the heir to the throne, Arch- duke Karl Franz Josef. Since Conrad clearly feared that he would interfere and was concerned about the consequences of detailed reporting to Vienna, he sought in an already highly obvious manner not only to keep him from decisions, but also to conceal information from him. He ignored him, gave him no updates on the situation, and was not pleased when higher-ranking officers spent time with him.616 The side-lining of the Archduke was made all the easier since it was said of him even by people who were by all means well-disposed towards him that he had no particular ability and no appropri-