Page - 302 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

302 The First Winter of the War lurch, even if Falkenhayn were to remain. Hindenburg obliged. The Eastern Front High Command received four corps and General Ludendorff, who had already been drafted to the Linsingen Army, was recalled to the German Eastern Front High Command as Chief of Staff. What had begun as comparatively harmless, namely Conrad’s desire for additional German troops, came within an inch of bringing about the complete reshuffle of the German supreme command. Ultimately, however, Conrad had come out on top, and it was not understandable why he lamented only a few weeks later : ‘I am not pleased about the collaboration with the Germans ; it requires a colossal self-de- nial  – and one must constantly be aware that one must make sacrifices for the greater cause. They always bite off more than they can chew, are brutally egoistic and work with purposeful, relentless hype. […] The fact that these people have wrecked the entire basis for our collective war with their major defeat in France ; the fact that they ruined the success of our victories at Kraśnik, Tomaszów [and] Komarów by means of their eccentric operations in the east, which evidently only aimed at protecting East Prussia ; the fact that they then led our 1st Army into disaster and forced us to abandon the San Line through their downright crazy operations to the Vistula, in the direction of which they just followed their nose  – these gentlemen appear to have forgotten [all these things], and likewise the selflessness with which we, in merely serving the collective cause, threw our 2nd Army towards the Province of Silesia.’716 Conrad was evidently unaware, however, of the consequences of the turbulence within the German Supreme Army Command on his own plans, and he reacted to the German request for a meet- ing at the highest level on 14 January 1915 with a flat denial. He telegraphed to the Military Chancellery in Vienna : ‘[I] deem the present meeting with Kaiser Wilhelm or his coming here to Cieszyn as highly undesirable for myself, because [it would be] damaging to our cause. […] With esteem, Conrad.’ The Chief of the Military Chancel- lery, General Bolfras, communicated half an hour later the reaction of Emperor Franz Joseph : ‘very correct’.717 The Army High Command could begin to implement its own ideas without potentially having to first listen again to proposals for a reordering of the chain of command or even reproaches from Kaiser Wilhelm on errors of leadership and poor “soldier material”. At the beginning of January, the Imperial and Royal divisions that were to be with- drawn from the Balkans were loaded on to carriages. They did not know where they were going. In Hungary they crossed paths with German troops travelling to the south- east. “They do not know the destination of their journey, either”, noted the Commander of the 29th Infantry Division, Major General Zanantoni. Only when the troops were disembarking from the carriages did the officers and soldiers learn to which armies they would be subordinated and where they were going : to Przemyśl.718 Now, the winter war in the Carpathians began. On 23 January 1915, the offensive commenced. If one looks at the distribution of troops in the theatre of war, the contro-