Page - 753 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Czech Legion 753 been issued out of consideration for the parliamentary situation, namely the army in the field and at the front. There, the dubiousness of the measure taken by the Emperor was felt very strongly and, in a sense, at first hand. The Czech Legion The situation on the Eastern Front had been characterised for months by the attempts to achieve a partial ceasefire and a general armistice with the Russians. Vigilance could not be allowed to wane and the troops were routinely engaged, but otherwise the sol- diers enjoyed unaccustomed calm. It had been observed in April that the spirit of the troops was consistently satisfactory. Then, supplies had been taken care of and it had been proposed to give the soldiers more leave and more often. The regiments and di- visions continued to feel normal and did not appear to have been infected by the rev- olution. In the meantime, they were also informed about the events in the interior of their own country and on the, at least hinted at, renunciation of the entire state by some nationalities. Whether this would have an impact on the conduct of the soldiers could not yet be known. Vis-à-vis the Russians, homage was paid by and large to the principle of live and let live. This is illustrated, for example, by the following passage from a letter : ‘The Russians sit on the parapet in broad daylight, remove their shirts and search for lice. There are no shots from our side […].’ Only the Russian artillery fired occasionally : ‘The artillery command over there is a Frenchman. The Russians have sent word to us that they want to kill him.’1760 The Chief of Staff of Army Group ‘Erzherzog Joseph’, the German General Hans von Seeckt, was requested by the German Supreme Army Command in May 1917 to put together a report on the Imperial and Royal troops, which was then submitted on 1 June.1761 The report was connected to the persistent rumours about a war between the German Empire and Austria-Hungary, as were many other reports composed at this time and requested by the German Supreme Army Command or the imperial government in Berlin.1762 Seeckt’s report paid attention primarily to the contrast be- tween Hungary and the rest of the Empire, but this singling out of Hungary alone was distinctive. The Hungarians had also not been left unaffected by events. The resent- ment manifested itself in many different ways. The Hungarian officers and soldiers no longer wanted to be ordered around by Germans, Czechs and Poles. The army, Seeckt wrote, was in some places a thoroughly foreign body. Especially in Hungary, it was anything but enraptured by the political conflict, but rather the subject of national ownership and an ‘object of trade within domestic politics’. Decisive in the army was the Austrian influence, which was exerted by the purely German lands. But ‘German- ism has recruiting power neither in the state apparatus of the Monarchy nor in the