Page - 510 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

510 South Tyrol : The End of an Illusion (I) General Alfred Krauß, wanted to travel to Cieszyn in order to discuss details of the plan, he was told that his visit was not felt to be of any benefit. Conversely, neither the Italy specialist, nor the Chief of the Operations Division, and certainly not the Chief of the General Staff for the entire armed force, Conrad, came to South Tyrol. There was surely no starker case than the South Tyrol offensive of leadership from behind the desk. There was also a clearly obvious contrast between the significance given to the un- dertaking and the way the campaign was handled in Cieszyn. Conrad was occupied to a far greater extent by issues relating to the conduct of war in the Balkans, to the future of Poland and to personnel matters than would have allowed him to become extensively involved with the offensive in South Tyrol. And even when he was, his focus of concern was not logistics and the operation, but issues of rank, prestige and dynastic problems. The question that absorbed him most was how to employ the heir to the throne. Following his assignment at the Army High Command, which had been everything but frictionless, and following months during which he had made visits to the troops, Archduke Karl Franz Joseph was to be given the command of an army corps in order to rush him through his military career. And even though the Emperor wished him to be deployed in this way and had already given his approval, Conrad made objections. In a somewhat rosier version of this sequence of events, Conrad would have already recommended in February 1916 that the Archduke be given the command of the XX Corps for the forthcoming offensive, which was to consist primarily of rifle regiments, with troops from Salzburg and Upper Austria. The Chief of the Military Chancellery, Bolfras, apparently reacted to this idea by saying : ‘Just think, if anything were to hap- pen, the successor [Otto] is still a child !’1200 However, the Emperor would have given his agreement, and the heir to the throne would have commanded the corps. The reality was different. Conrad’s first reaction was to brusquely reject the assump- tion of a corps command by the heir to the throne. There were also others who were against using Karl for a front command. Archduke Karl then departed from Cieszyn in an ‘angry’ mood, as Conrad’s Adjutant General noted in his diary.1201 The heir to the throne chose the only path that might yield a positive result : he went to the Emperor  – and did so for five consecutive days. Promptly, his efforts paid off : Conrad was ordered to attend an audience with Franz Joseph. However, even before the audience, the Chief of the General Staff arranged for the heir to the throne to be given the command of a corps formed from the 3rd and 8th Infantry Divisions. Karl agreed to the proposal. Therefore, Conrad was able to report to the Emperor during the audience that the matter had already been resolved.1202 However, Conrad had not been prepared of his own accord to grant the heir to the throne an important front command. It therefore again fell to the Chief of the Military Chancellery of the Emperor, Arthur Bolfras, to explain to the Chief of the General Staff that here, other issues were at stake than purely military ones. Since the purpose