Page - 730 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

730 Summer 1917 while the south came under the control of the Austrians. Subordinate to the Governor General, who was first Brigadier Baron Erich von Diller, and then from May 1916 to April 1917 General of Artillery Karl Kuk, were regional commands, base station com- mands and Gendarmerie post commands. Their task was to ensure that an ‘appropriate exploitation’ occurred, that calm and order ruled and that the requirements at the front were met. However, the image that they repeatedly attempted to portray of the ‘good and informed occupiers’ developed numerous cracks.1672 Ultimately, the occupation was essentially rule by force, which while being formally oriented to the Hague Conven- tion on Land Warfare, repeatedly inclined towards arbitrariness. This was exacerbated to no small degree by the disastrous competition between the Army High Command and the civilian posts. For the military, the repression could not go far enough, while the civilian authorities were far more concerned with what would happen ‘afterwards’. An economic section had been established to oversee the economic exploitation of the occupied territory. However, and this was clearly a particular wish of the Austro-Hun- garian authorities, schools were set up and the medical services for the population were intensified, with everything possible being done to improve care in this area. While this was not least intended to stem the epidemics that were spreading in the hinterland behind the front through inoculations and the establishment of cordons, but it also benefitted the population that measures were taken against typhus, smallpox and chol- era. In the autumn of 1915, civilian worker divisions began to be created, who were to play a role in the roads and railways in particular.1673 For this purpose, volunteers could be used, since unemployment in Poland was so high that there was certainly no lack of available manpower. In 1915, there was not yet much profit to be made from the harvests in Poland, since the modalities for delivery and sequestering were still not functioning sufficiently well. Potatoes, which would have been available, could to a large extent not be transported due to a lack of personnel and carts, and the only option was to wait for the next harvest. However, the Government General had more to offer than just crop yields. In August 1915, the demand for coal had already increased to 555 wagons daily.1674 And during 1916, thousands of wagons in total were transported from the mining regions, filled with zinc, lead, sulphur, copper and iron. During the summer of 1917, this section of the war economy was reflected by the following figures : from Russian Poland, during one year, 6,000 wagons of grain, 14,000 wagons of potatoes, 2,000 wagons of solid feed, 19,000 horses, millions of eggs, 1.7 million solid cubic metres of wood and above all, 300,000 wagons of coal could be ‘shunted off’ to the Danube Monarchy. The coalfield at Dąbrowa Górnicza covered a substantial part of the coal needed for the railways, and the entire coal requirements of the Imperial and Royal armies in the north-east.1675 Despite the indisputable achievements and successes of the Austro-Hungarian mil- itary administration in Poland, the troops and government officials from the Danube