Page - 297 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Death in the Carpathians 297 of an immediate peace in order to counter the decline of the Monarchy. Yet his paper had been restricted to a small circle. Those who engaged with Andrian’s position paper believed, however, that they could only get closer to the aim of maintaining the Mon- archy by continuing the war. It was beyond doubt that this view dominated. In this way, the war had actually turned into the war it had been regarded as in the long term : as a substitute for poli- tics and, to some extent, the inversion of the famous axiom from Clausewitz. Politics were to be the logical continuation of war. Within the foreign policy of the Danube Monarchy and above all in its domestic policy, the hoped-for military successes were supposed to be the starting-point for a reorganisation of the Empire and the solution of the nationalities question. In the process, the politicians’ understanding for the con- duct of war went entirely astray, just as  – conversely  – the military leadership no longer understood the possibilities of politics, or the situation and requirements of the home front. There, it was not the debate over a particular war aim and the respective situation on the different fronts that dominated people’s thoughts, but rather the necessity of coping with daily life. Only the great events and symbolical occurrences could evoke widespread attention. Death in the Carpathians The word ‘desolate’ would perhaps be too strong, but ‘remote’ or ‘unattractive’ would cer- tainly be adequate descriptions for the town of Medzilaborce in north-eastern Slova- kia. For centuries, glass had been produced here, the basic raw material for the Jablonec (Gablonz) glass factories. That is now over. Yet the traces of two world wars have also been lastingly obliterated. Five cemeteries date back to the time of the First World War. They are abandoned and unrecognisable ; all inscription-bearing plaques made of metal have been stolen. And the railway line through the Laborc Valley ends for part of the year on the now oversized train station. Only during the summer months does a train pass over the mountain route of the Beskids and traverse the tunnel to Poland. It was very different in 1914 and 1915. Mezőlaborcz, as the town located in northern Hungary was known back then, became the most important railway station for the arrival of people and war material in order to establish a front in south-western Galicia that was able to withstand resistance, and was being used entirely for this purpose in January 1915, when the Imperial and Royal Army Supreme Command conceived of the plan to press forward from the Carpathians to Przemyśl and relieve the fortress trapped by the Russians. It was to be one of the most costly and dubious undertakings of the First World War. 100 kilometres in front of the Austrian lines was Przemyśl, which was surrounded by the Russians and in which around 130,000 soldiers under the command of Major