Page - 570 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

570 How is a War Financed ? Viktualien (Vienna) with 72 million, and then the large weapons factories : Škoda (Pilsen) with 61 million, the Österreichische Waffenfabriksgesellschaft AG (Steyr, Vi- enna) with 67 million, the Hirtenberger Patronen- und Zündhütchenfabrik (Hirten- berg) with 44.5 million and the Manfred Weiss Works in Budapest with 44.9 million kronen, and so on. Ranking the contributors is difficult, since for example in the period up to 1917, the Austrian Linen and Cotton Industrial Corporation for Army Supplies (Österre- ichische Leinen- und Baumwoll-Industriegesellschaft für Heeresausrüstung Marbach & Konsorten) in Vienna subscribed around half of the delivery value of 150.4 million kronen in total back into war bonds, while the Wetzler company, which with a delivery value of around 1.2 billion kronen was right up at the top among the war suppliers, may have repeatedly subscribed high sums, but returned no more than six per cent of the delivery value in the form of bonds. Wetzler & Co’s actions clearly reflect another fact : the big business with the war was conducted not by the armaments companies, but by the food trade ! In Austria, according to a survey conducted by the Imperial and Royal War Minis- try1334 that was classified as ‘confidential’, for the war years up to and including 1917, 6,900 war suppliers were counted that fell into a type of first category, and whose deliveries in terms of quantity and value were on a larger scale than those of the 4,770 suppliers in the second category. For the first group, figures were gathered relating to the value of supplies to the army and the fleet on the one hand, and the amounts sub- scribed to the war bonds on the other. At the end of 1917, companies and consortia with contributions of over 100 million kronen were immortalised in this War Ministry ‘best list’, although the bond subscriptions were not made dependent on the level of the delivery values. By the end of 1917, 457 companies in the Austrian half of the Empire had subscribed over one million kronen. Around half of the major and larger suppliers were, however, unable to provide evidence during the survey of having subscribed to bonds. It is therefore likely that even companies who without doubt made signifi- cant profits from the war felt in no way obliged to subscribe to bonds. This applied to Austrian and Hungarian companies in equal measure. While they did not finance the downfall, they did initially profit from the orders received. However, companies such as Gerngroß, Herzmansky and others, which frequently subscribed sums to bonds that were many times the value of their deliveries and, equally, those who not only made their money from supplying the army and fleet, showed all the more willingness to subscribe. The fact that in 1918, the institutional investors, in other words, the banks, savings banks and insurance companies, were already subscribing over 60 per cent of the bonds, makes it clear, however, that not only the share of private subscribers fell significantly, but also that of the companies. The Austrian war suppliers were ‘ranked’ as follows :