Page - 700 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

700 The Consequences of the Russian February Revolution had been possible to completely consolidate their situation. Weapons were available in entirely sufficient numbers, the Entente powers delivered war materials that were lack- ing, and the resumption of the offensive under the popular Brusilov had been planned for spring 1917. The purely military state of affairs in the war was thus not the cause of the revolution. And this was precisely the special thing about the situation.1595 It should now not only be asked why the February Revolution could not initially be accurately appraised by those who evidently became its beneficiaries. It should also be asked why these revolutionary discharges were not also communicated to the people in Austria-Hungary and, above all, the soldiers at the front in such a way that they were also carried away by the revolution. Not even a tightening of military discipline or other special disciplinary measures were necessary. The troops remained in the hands of their superiors and there was no desertion movement. There was a ‘wait and see’ at- titude. The answer to the question as to why in the aftermath of the Russian February Revolution there were no notable effects on the troops of the Central Powers proba- bly cannot be answered with a single sentence. A less inhumane leadership than the Russian one, a comparatively better supply with essential items, stronger confidence in victory and, above all, incomparably better conditions within the political struc- tures of the hinterland all played a role. At least for Hungarian and German-Austrian troop bodies, neither the war aims nor the prerequisites for the respective personal contribution to the war had so decisively changed that the troops were a priori ready to be revolutionised. And it was precisely they who regarded the army as undefeated ; indeed, the army had been able to report extraordinary victories in Romania. Further- more, both for the field army and for the hinterland, the effects of the revolution were not foreseeable and they were thus primarily linked to the hope for a separate peace with Russia or to a general peace. Therefore, it was more or less with astonishment that people monitored what was taking place in an army with which they had been familiar for almost three years, or so they thought. It would be appropriate at this point to insert an observation from Viktor Frankl, who  – in a psychological extension of Werner Heisenberg’s theses  – argued that the mere observation of a process leads to this process being influenced.1596 This applied all the more in the case of a process in which one actively intervened. Peace without Annexations and Contributions In view of the ongoing unclear situation, the Central Powers left it at the cessation of hostilities and only wanted to encourage in every way the decomposition of the Rus- sian Army by means of propaganda measures, though at the same time to isolate their own troops as far as possible in order that they were not infected by the spirit of the