Page - 561 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Search for the Nervus Rerum 561 captive, but also specifically in weapons and items of equipment. By the end of 1914, around half a million rifles had been lost. The armies forfeited up to a quarter of their artillery guns. And even if it would never be possible to assess the losses of weapons and equipment in detail, one thing was clear : the material losses were on an enormous scale, and the costs for procuring replacements were correspondingly high, quite apart from the fact that the weaponry, which was insufficient and in some cases outdated, had to be modernised as quickly as possible if there were to be any chance at all of surviving the war. The Imperial and Royal Army also had a ‘colourfulness’ that was by no means wel- come. Among the old, pike grey uniforms, which were almost blue in appearance, the ‘field grey’ uniforms that had been introduced later were intermixed, and for Army Group Pflanzer-Baltin, the solution found for the soldiers provided to protect the Car- pathians was to supplement their merely makeshift uniforms with black and yellow armbands. What therefore looked like the last dregs from the barrel was in fact the best that could be offered. Replacement troop bodies were clothed in thin, drill, dark blue peacetime uniforms or ones that had not yet been withdrawn. Here, too, more purchases were needed. And during the first year of the war, 875 million kronen were spent on Imperial and Royal Army uniforms alone.1316 However, the largest item of expenditure throughout was the estimate for ‘rations in kind and food for personnel’. After all, two, three, and finally four million men had to be fed, provided with medical care and be given their wages. Hundreds of thousands fell or were no longer fit to con- tinue fighting. Their relatives had the right to claim maintenance support. During the second year of the war, expenditure soared, since the output of weapons and ammuni- tion  – as mentioned above  – could be significantly increased. The armaments industry needed extraordinary loans in order to do so, however. War bonds were designed to help them intensify production. The entry of Italy into the war made further efforts necessary. More money was needed. Again, the central bank played a role. Events began to spin out of control. Month after month, the War Ministry issued reports on what was needed for the war. Although they varied slightly, during the first two years of the war, the average sum was 1.3 billion kronen every month. Here, the military was inter- ested least of all in how the money was to be raised. In Hungary, unrest began to spread, and the Hungarian Council of Ministers de- manded on 5 June 1915 that the Finance Ministers meet, with the inclusion of the prime ministers, the Foreign Minister, the governor of the central bank and also the Chief of the General Staff. Finance Minister Teleszky had made a long, dramatic pres- entation to the Hungarian ministers. His core message was : Hungary was no longer able to satisfy the requirements of the credit operations that had been implemented until then. Since the beginning of the war, Hungary had spent 3.8 billion kronen on waging the war, of which 3.2 billion had been raised through loans. Austria, he said,