Page - 797 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Operation ‘Loyalty to Arms’ 797 gave way ‘willingly and obligingly’. There is no doubt that the population suffered heav- ily from the requisitions. ‘In the streets [of Majano, north-west of Udine] all types of goods possible had been trodden in the dirt’, wrote Franz Arneitz in his diary. ‘Ma- terials, clothes, porcelain, clocks, etc. are all testimony to the lovely manners of our military […]. The people stand most despondently in the streets and see their goods being ruined, but are not permitted to say a word […]. The Imperial German military loots particularly heavily […]. After three days, what had been such a pretty little town now bears sad images of looting. The poor civilian folk, from whom everything is being taken.’1863 Austria also demanded levies and customs duties. And since Austria had always been an orderly country, everything was recorded according to the most stringent standards. Only when it came to the food and goods carried off that were needed for everyday use did the Austrian military authorities remain strangely imprecise. It was sufficient, as Hermann Leidl then wrote, to supply not only the ‘armies during the operations and for a substantial period of time thereafter’, but also to deliver ‘significant quantities to Austria-Hungary and Germany’.1864 As a result, food supplies to the local Italian pop- ulation were set at Austrian standard levels, and decreased rapidly. The data was certainly more precise in relation to proud achievements : 300 wag- onloads of technical equipment were acquired, 7,000 supply convoy and special carts, 900 wagonloads of different types of kit and equipment, 100 wagonloads of medical materials, and so on.1865 From September 1917 onwards, all available locomotives and wagons in the Habsburg Monarchy had been pooled in order to secure and implement the deploy- ment of the troops for the offensive. German locomotives also travelled with them. It had however been conceived and planned that all rolling stock would soon become available again, since supplies to the hinterland also had to be secured. Yet as it turned out, the wagons and locomotives were needed for far longer in order to continue to transport war equipment and troops. And the distances became increasingly longer, while breakages to the rolling stock occurred more frequently. When the trains did return to the hinterland, and ceased to be used only for important military transport operations, starvation had already begun to spread ; there were no potatoes, and no coal. The huge number of prisoners of war was regarded as a clear symbol of the success, and the fact was ignored that these prisoners of war not only had to be accommodated, but also provided for, fed and clothed, and that in winter, they could also not be used as a replacement for the shortage of manpower. No-one was aware that this victory, which in military terms was no doubt on an enormous scale, and the largest to date with regard to the number of prisoners that any of the belligerent powers had been able to achieve during the course of the war, was consummately a Pyrrhic victory. Although the offensive had been well thought through in political and strategic-operational terms, it