Page - 417 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Factory War and Domestic Front, 1915 417 Whilst a consolidation and increase in production was recorded in 1915 for ores and metals, this was not the case with fuels, above all coal. In 1915, the extraction of black coal admittedly reached almost the pre-war level, despite a reduction of the workforce by around a quarter. The loss of imports made itself felt strongly, however, for which reason the total amount of available black coal in 1915 remained four million tons below the pre-war amount. The drop in brown coal was felt even more strongly, since the miners were recruited above all for the extraction of black coal. This also sheds light on why, for example, the district of Sosnowice in the Austro-Hungarian part of Poland was made use of so terribly urgently. There was another shortage, however, that was felt far more, namely in means of transport. The number of railway carriages, which were needed especially for the transport of coal, decreased steadily. Thus, not even a much greater increase in extraction would have helped, since the coal could not be transported from the pitheads.988 Coal-mining required, for example, over 750,000 carriages in the first quarter of 1915, but received only 570,000. Thus, the number of carriages provided in 1915 remained thirty per cent below the demand. This meant problems for industry, the railways and above all for everyone who heated with coal. One thing could be said for sure already : it would become cold in Austria-Hungary. Initially, the Imperial and Royal Finance Minister resisted pressure from the Austrian and Hungarian lobbies to buy locomotives and rolling stock from abroad. Even when it was already evident that locomotives could no longer be obtained domestically in the required number and that the carriages had suffered tremendous wear and tear, which could no longer be even remotely offset because the carriages were in constant use (unlike in peacetime), Min- ister Biliński and his successor Ernest von Koerber did not digress from their restrictive stance, since the Hungarian locomotive industry intervened on a massive scale.989 Later, there was no-one left from whom locomotives and carriages could be purchased in order to be imported. Crude oil, which had begun to play an ever greater role during the course of the war, constituted a further shortage, which was felt as early as 1915. The main deposits in the Dual Monarchy were located in Galicia and were soon lost as a result of the with- drawal in 1914. When the Russians were thrown back during the Gorlice-Tarnów-Of- fensive in spring 1915, they quickly destroyed three-quarters of the oil wells. Thus, in spite of the re-establishment of the extraction sites of Boryslav (Borysław) and the founding of a military refinery in Limanowa, the production of oil in 1915 reached only a little more than half of the pre-war annual capacity of three million tons. In the meantime, the loss of Galician crude oil was offset by the Austrian deposits in Hohenau an der March, Rabensburg and other places, but since the demand increased in leaps and bounds, production always lagged behind. Petrol was generally reserved for the army and a small number of industrial enterprises. Small contingents were also released for agriculture. As a rule, there was no petrol for automobiles or for the busi-