Page - 745 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

S ummer 1917 was a summer of the century, ‘a summer of fierce sun’, as Josef Redlich wrote, ‘which simply roasted the vegetable plants, potatoes [and] corn to death. […] We face the terrible prospect of a complete destruction of the entire potato, turnip, cabbage and vegetable harvest in the fourth winter of the war in addition to this dreadful inflation. […] All markets in Vienna are empty, [whilst] the central office for vegetables and fruit prevents by buying up and requisitioning  – evidently to the benefit of the army commissariat, the jam factories and other bulk buyers  – anything in the way of fruit and vegetables from reaching Vienna. […] our poor people, and incidentally also the workers in the Xth and XIth districts of Vienna, live off cucumbers, which cause many illnesses of the intestines. The situation becomes ever more threatening [and] terrible !’1721 Hungary, which had since 1914 successfully struggled against req- uisitioning with the aid of the military, had to make a 180-degree about-turn at the end of June 1917. In Prague and in Brno (Brünn) the workforce was seething, whilst in Pilsen martial law was proclaimed, likewise in Vitkovice (Witkowitz). In Salzburg, ‘an organisation of the middle class is raging against tourism ! Berlin only recommends one remedy against this and related symptoms : “Keep going !”’1722 The message was that, if they had already held out for so long, it would be possible to hold on a little longer : until the next harvest, until the moment that the unrestricted submarine war forced England to make peace, until a separate peace was concluded with Russia, and so on. Since everyone clung to specific hopes and indefinite dead- lines, and dates were repeatedly cited, it was believed that the slogan of keeping going could fight the war weariness. The question was only for how long. There were constant changes that made it difficult to say that one had reached this or that point. It was precisely the constant fluctuation between reports of victory and catastrophes, and even more so the emergence and disappearance of people, that made orientation difficult and generated confusion. Only when there was hopelessness, however, would the slo- gans of holding out lose their effectiveness. The Naval Victory in the Strait of Otranto Among those things that repeatedly gave reason to hope was, to a special degree, the naval war, and if something was still capable of provoking excitement and enthusiasm in Austria-Hungary, then it was reports of events at sea. In spite of some undeniable