Page - 733 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Military Administration in the Occupied Territories 733 regional commissioner, the former head of department von Thallóczy, was to prepare the collection of taxes. Then, statistics were prepared, a population census was con- ducted and, since there was neither a land register nor cadastre records, the potential revenues were calculated and cattle were counted. Since the beginning of the war, the population losses in Serbia, which it was possible to assess on the basis of this cen- sus, totalled around 360,000 people. As a result of the war, epidemics and, finally, the flight of the Serbian Army to Albania and on to Corfu, in some regions almost 80 per cent of the men had disappeared.1680 Even so, thanks to the hard work by the women, Serbia managed to produce agricultural surpluses, which could then be used by the Austro-Hungarian occupying power not only to feed the troopsbut also to transport the produce out of the country. There was no doubt that Serbia had something special to offer. The Muslims in the southern regions of the Government General very soon came to accept the presence of the Austro-Hungarian troops, and were even willing to continue to cooperate with them. An additional reason for this was probably that the Sultan Caliph had pro- claimed a jihad and, as a result, the Orthodox Serbs were considered to be enemies of Islam. The allied armed forces of the Caliph, he claimed, were fighting a just ‘holy war’.1681 They were joined by the Albanians living in Serbia, who were equally willing to support Austria-Hungary. After Romania’s entry into the war, the Albanian notabili- ties proposed that in the southern regions of Serbia and in the Albanian territories, vol- unteers should be recruited ; Muslim dignitaries from other regions, particular in Novi Pazar, also declared their support and offered to establish volunteer formations with the assistance of former Turkish officers and NCOs. In this way, over 8,000 volunteers were recruited in the territory of the Government General. However, any further use of Serbian volunteers was evidently blocked by the Foreign Ministry. In Montenegro, too, there were over 2,000 new Muslim volunteers, while in the Military Government of Lublin, for example, only 273 volunteers could be recruited for the Polish National Army under Austrian leadership.1682 Prisoner of war labour companies were used in the forests, for road and railway con- struction, for unloading work and in Serbia’s mines. They were joined by internee labour companies, which were recruited from the section of the male population that was fit for military service, so that the total number of labourers provided by the military ad- ministration in Serbia came to almost 20,000 men. The sight of the Imperial and Royal soldiers and the Serbian cadres at work, and watching them cultivate the fields, mow the meadows, bale the hay, thresh the grain, feed the pigs and guard the sheep, was a reminder of the times when this was military frontier. From January 1916, all Serbian railway lines were back in operation and, subsequently, an intensive development of new narrow-gauge tracks began, in order to create a complete network throughout oc- cupied Serbia.1683 Now, in October 1915, the Serbs had not succeeded in repairing the