Page - 295 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

On the War’s Objectives 295 The extent of potential territorial cessions can hardly be foreseen, and, in view of the barbaric modern way of waging war, great swathes of the Monarchy would be devas- tated by our enemies during their advance as far as Vienna and Budapest and exposed to great misery and famine. […] It is also an open question on which basis the rest of the Monarchy could be reorganised if the Russians were to penetrate to Moravia and Bohemia and be welcomed with open arms by the Czechs. Similar consequences in the case of the advance of the Romanians against Budapest and the Serbs against Sarajevo and Zagreb would have less significance, since in the event of a complete defeat the regions inhabited by southern Slavs and Romanians would in any case be lost.’ Forgách shared his thoughts with only a few people, above all the Hungarian Prime Minister, from whom he promptly encountered dissent and rejection. Ultimately, the position paper was not required, since following Berchtold’s departure there was no longer an addressee ; it was retained and kept on file. Forgách saw the foreign policy and political-strategic components with considerable clarity, but he thought exclusively in diplomatic terms and those of cabinets at war, and as correct as his demand for an immediate peace was, his depiction of the possibilities of a peace of self-denial or a negotiated peace on the basis of the status quo was not re- alistic. He was chasing shadows, just as much as Conrad von Hötzendorf, who regarded the status quo in December 1914 as the ‘most acceptable terms’.704 The new aspect of this war, however, was that it was not only waged as a people’s war  – other, earlier wars had been waged in such a way  – or that it was a ‘world war’. Examples of this also already existed. The exceptional thing about it was its almost relentless progression towards totality, the enormous losses and the militarisation of all home fronts, so that the possibilities of a partial peace, of a truce and parallel negotia- tions began to be precluded. The progression of a war to totality  – one could have read this in Clausewitz’s works  – not only rules out the waging of a limited war but also the conclusion of a peace that is not characterised by its totality. In spite of the circumstance that Forgách did not really understand the nature of the war and that he proceeded from assumptions that were simply not the case, his exposé sets itself apart from those position papers that had, in part, emerged in December 1914 and portrayed in a minimalistic and maximalistic style the objectives of the Dual Monarchy in wartime and after the conclusion of peace.705 The minimum aims, as could be read in another position paper from Baron Andrian that was widely circulated by the Foreign Ministry, would be territorial cessions from Serbia, the handing over of Serbian heavy weapons and war reparations of half a million kronen. Andrian was modest in his treatment of Russia. Italy should be indemnified in Albania. The maximum aims, which would have been pursued only after a German victory in the west, would have resulted in an even larger territorial expansion of the Dual Monarchy in the Balkans and in Russian Poland, substantial war reparations, and perhaps even colonies from the British