Page - 300 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

300 The First Winter of the War both the Emperor and the Kaiser. Away from the optimally functioning brotherhood in arms that was exhibited outwardly, the Army High Command and the commanders of the Imperial and Royal armies and corps heard German criticism on a mass scale, a great deal of which was characterised by a lack of objectivity. At the end of December, for example, an evaluation of the German Eastern Front High Command submitted to the Army Command stated : ‘The Austro-Hungarian Army Command sways back and forth in its decisions and eschews fighting. […] Repeated demands to attack ener- getically had so far no resounding success. The Austro-Hungarian troops, whose fabric has been loosened, have lost the confidence of the leadership. The troops only seem to accomplish something when most closely following German troops or under German command.’709 And precisely, that was the whole point. On 19 December, Falkenhayn and Conrad had met at the railway station in Opole (Oppeln).710 It should be added here that it was one of the idiosyncrasies of the joint waging of war on the part of the Central Powers that telephone conversations practi- cally never took place between Cieszyn (Teschen), the headquarters of the Imperial and Royal Army High Command, and Poznań, the headquarters of the German High Command East, or later Pszczyna (Pleß), which was 80 kilometres away and where the German Supreme Army Command had established itself. Conrad and Falkenhayn never spoke to each other on the telephone. They only met for face-to-face talks. In Opole, the Chief of the German General Staff confided to Conrad that he intended to begin a new offensive in France in February 1915. Until then, the German Army Reserve should be set up. In this way, Falkenhayn rejected Conrad’s concept of aiming a crushing blow to Russia, which was supposed to decide the outcome of the war. The Chief of the German General Staff wanted instead to build a ‘Great Wall of China’ on the Vistula River.711 This constituted a return to Moltke’s planning, and the opposing positions of the different operational ideas appeared to be irreconcilable. The Chief of the German General Staff wanted first of all to vanquish the most dangerous and powerful opponent, namely France. And Conrad wanted to decisively weaken and de- feat an opponent that he regarded as still dangerous but, in terms of its power, already considerably diminished : Russia. Falkenhayn and Conrad did not reach a compromise in Opole. Conrad now resorted to cajoling Falkenhayn and engaged the help of others. He first of all won over Berchtold to intercede in Berlin for German troop increases in the east. Conrad did not even shy away from threatening the withdrawal of the Impe- rial and Royal 2nd Army, which was deployed opposite the Province of Silesia, in order to relocate it to the Carpathians, if German troops were not sent precisely there. He furthermore raised generally the problem of the mixing of German and Austro-Hun- garian troops, since this had in the meantime become the popular subject of a running battle. Last but not least, Conrad argued vis-à-vis the Imperial and Royal ambassa- dor in Berlin, Prince Hohenlohe, who had come to Cieszyn, by remarking that it was