Page - 422 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

422 Factory War and Domestic Front, 1915 artillery (120 cannons and howitzers) as well as 1,500 rounds of ammunition per gun. The Turks also ordered 30.5 cm mortars and 480 machine guns.1002 For this, a credit limit of 47 million kronen was initially granted to them. At the beginning of 1916, Em- peror Franz Joseph agreed to send a mountain howitzer division to Palestine, though he remarked with respect to the guns and personnel : ‘Well, I don’t think we’ll ever see them.’ Further artillery sections, four automobile convoys, two reserve infirmaries for Constantinople and Jerusalem, replacement sections and repair workshops followed. Specialists and skilled workers were supposed to help in mining, forestry and hydraulic engineering. In short, within a few months, the Austrian contribution to supporting the Ottoman Empire grew to an appreciable size.1003 Turkey, for its part, delivered ores, wool, skins and other raw materials. All this worked itself out relatively quickly. Still, despite quite a few attempts at cooperation, at standardising weaponry, at joint use of industrial and commercial pro- duction, at intense cooperation on the financial market and in other areas, further steps towards creating a mutual war economy space of the Central Powers failed. The solu- tion to the existing problems was postponed ; only the issues that were immediately pending were taken care of. Yet, it was precisely the cooperation of the Central Powers in the economic sphere and the possibilities for creating a new, large economic space and a completely new European empire that stimulated the discussion on Central Eu- rope, which was soon to become the dominant topic in intellectual circles. Soldiers and workers were at most indirectly affected by this. Being a Soldier and the Burden of Work Just as it is impossible to paint a uniform picture of the fronts, where officers and en- listed men did not share identical fates and picking out any one would inevitably be arbitrary, it is also impossible to paint a uniform picture of the much larger area of the home front. There, the parts of the Empire and the crown lands differed, and it played an enormous role whether a territory was very close to the front or remote from it, or whether it was an agricultural or an industrial region, a city or a village. They all had only one thing in common : the numbers of men of military service age dwindled. In the villages and small localities, this was certainly more noticeable than in the large cities of the Dual Monarchy. Yet the age group 20-40 years had already become very thin. In the barracks, march formations were formed month after month. If someone then  – and this was generally the case only after a year or more  – received home leave for a week or two, then those on the home front thought they could better understand what daily life had become for the soldiers. The most detailed account could not paint a complete picture, however. Conversely, those on leave, but also those who had come