Page - 685 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Conrad Crisis 685 It could no longer be expected that Austria-Hungary would take important decisions on its own initiative. However, it was quite possible that the day would come when the Imperial and Royal Army would be involved as the last stabilising factor on the home front. This was one reason why Emperor Karl was keen to play a stronger role in the army leadership, and to redesign the Army High Command to make it more his own personal instrument. His goal was to take over the political and military leadership of the Monarchy himself. This tendency was so obvious that even at the turn of the year, in other words, after around a month on the throne, the autocratic inclinations of the Monarch were criticised.1560 Josef Maria Baernreither called it ‘suddenness’ and he wrote that Emperor Karl reminded him of Kaiser Wilhelm.1561 In turn, Redlich felt that Karl’s inclination to bring the absolutist ruler to the fore was also influenced by the subservient nature of all the classes in Austria, which is why in 1917 the ideas of 1850 were coming into effect. And as was the case with neo-absolutism, the role of the army was paramount. For this reason, it was important to bring it firmly under control. Karl had the Prime Minister of Austria that he wanted, he had the Minister of For- eign Affairs that he wanted, he was the Army Supreme Commander and had relegated Archduke Friedrich to the role of representative and mediator. For this reason, it is hardly necessary to stress that the time had passed in which the Army High Command wrote extensive memoranda on domestic and foreign policy issues. And the Emperor had issued instructions that the Army High Command was to be transferred to Baden near Vienna. There was one man who had put up resistance, and who continued to do so, and that was Conrad von Hötzendorf. The Field Marshal had his reasons for doing so. To a certain degree, they were purely of a personal nature. He had no liking for the new Emperor  – and this was well-known. What had been forgotten was that in the context of his conflict with Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which had broken out in 1913, he had spoken quite differently of Karl, and claimed that : ‘He is a prince whom I […] would serve with great pleasure.’1562 However, he then came to regard him as an overseer ordered to monitor the work of the Army High Command and as an informer, viewed him as being utterly useless militarily and was, as a result, unwilling to offer him a higher level of command. What made matters even worse was that for religious reasons, Empress Zita nurtured a heartfelt dislike of Conrad’s second wife Gina, and also felt that her presence in Cieszyn (Teschen) was a scandal. Conrad therefore understood Emperor Karl’s instruction that wives and rela- tives of the Army High Command had nothing to lose from moving to Baden, as being directed quite openly against him personally. The Chief of the General Staff had put forward every argument possible against transferring the High Command to Baden, even the most banal. For example, he had let the Emperor know that a move away from Cieszyn would mean that all the telegraph connections would have to be re-established. In order to obtain the wire necessary for the purpose, he claimed, the production of the