Page - 586 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

586 The Nameless turning point. The point now reached signalised something. Let us call it the ‘point of no return’. If it were crossed, there could be no turning back ; the war would have to run its course, which could no longer be disrupted. This point signified several things, and it cannot, of course, be characterised as a single day. Within the space of a few weeks, however, decisive events took place. Aus- tria-Hungary found its way into an unprecedented state of dependence on the German Empire. In Austria, the Prime Minister was murdered. And, finally, there was a change of monarch. It would be tempting to test out the trio of polarisation, radicalisation and totalisation against these events. But this trio is only applicable  – if at all  – in the opposite order : with the submission to the German Supreme Army Command, those measures being implemented in the area of military and armaments policy that signal- ised a totalisation also become effective for Austria-Hungary. It was above all the so- called Hindenburg Programme for the total utilisation of the armaments economy that aimed in this direction. In its radicality, it also decided on who would be cut off from food supplies even more so than before. This created a special type of symmetry. The murder of Count Stürgkh can be easily recognised as an act of radicalisation. The death of Emperor Franz Joseph and the accession to the throne of his great-nephew Karl, however, cleared the way to a change with unforeseeable consequences. This suggests, however, that until the end of November 1916 a unity of the Empire and above all that of ruler and subjects had existed. From the end of November 1916, a rapid polarisation occurred, and it was not only the last degree of unity that crumbled but also the country and the regime. Let us leave it for the time being at this outline, which anticipates the processes of the years 1917 and 1918 and is obligated to the search for the location of the historical events. The situation of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy at this ‘point of no return’ can also be described in a different way. The most significant decision in the strategic area was the creation of the Joint Su- preme War Command of the Central Powers. From a military point of view, it appeared sensible. Measured against the military and power political possibilities of the Danube Monarchy, a considerable accommodation on the part of the German Empire was still contained above all in the secret supplementary clause. For without German help, the Imperial and Royal armies would by this time have no longer been capable of acting and would perhaps no longer have even existed. The original shape of the front in the north- east, in Poland and in Russia, cannot tell us very much about this, but the story of the Brusilov Offensive of summer 1916 does. One glance at the maps illustrates fully how German troops had been slid into the Imperial and Royal armies like stays into a corset. Austro-Hungarian and German armies were situated east of Kovel, at Brody and scattered across Bukovina as far as the Carpathian forests. They had occupation troops in Poland, Serbia and Montenegro ; and there was only one theatre of war where the