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Siberian
Clarity 833
Empire (5.3 per cent) and above all in Great Britain (3.9 per cent), proportionately
fewer prisoners apparently died. In France, 6.1 dead were counted for every 100 pris-
oners of war, in Italy 6.6, in Turkey 13 and in Russia 9.9 (though a figure of 20 dead per
100 prisoners of war is arguably more accurate). Ranked at the bottom of the statistics
were Romania with 23 and Serbia with 26.8 dead per 100.1981 The Second World War
was to completely dwarf all these figures.
Siberian Clarity
From the first day of the war on, Austria-Hungary was confronted not only with the
question of accommodating Serbian and, above all, Russian prisoners of war. For their
part, the Imperial and Royal armies suffered enormous losses as a result of the capture
of countless soldiers and officers. Initially, the numbers were very vague, but then the
Casualty Lists Group in the Imperial and Royal War Ministry began to gather the
numbers to be delivered to the War Statistics Bureau more accurately and to revise
them upwards. The approximate figures were ultimately retained, however, since above
all the category ‘Missing and taken prisoner’ did not undergo a differentiation, and in-
deed could not. Calculations went back and forth, the ‘Information Office for Prisoners
of War’ made appeals for clarification and finally, at the end of June 1915, after such
and such a number of corrections, the decision was taken to divide the missing among
the lists of those fallen in battle and those taken prisoner. ‘The majority of the “missing”
must be counted among the “prisoners”’, as the War Statistics Bureau concluded.1982
The numbers suddenly jumped upwards.
It had initially been assumed that in the Serbian theatre of war and almost exclu-
sively during the course of 1914, 66 officers and 1,980 men had fallen into Serbian
or Montenegrin prisoner of war captivity. 656 officers and around 74,000 men were
regarded as missing. After the statistics had been adjusted, 902 officers and 58,705 men
were counted as prisoners.1983 Since, during the course of Potiorek’s third offensive
alone, around 70,000 members of the Imperial and Royal Army were said to have been
taken prisoner, there was still a huge discrepancy.
It was a similar story in the case of the figures for the Russian theatre of war. Again,
tens of thousands of missing were alleged. Only at the beginning of June 1915 was it
calculated that up to that point 6,470 officers and 457,800 men had been taken captive
by the Russians. Until the end of the war, these figures increased to between around
1.5 million (lowest estimate) and 2.1 million (highest estimate). These are only two ex-
amples, however, from a wealth of partially unverifiable data that is based on the most
varied sources, and in the case of which it must be kept in mind that the figures have
been repeatedly used to support certain claims and emphasise arguments. Statistical
THE FIRST WORLD WAR
and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918
- Title
- THE FIRST WORLD WAR
- Subtitle
- and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918
- Author
- Manfried Rauchensteiner
- Publisher
- Böhlau Verlag
- Location
- Wien
- Date
- 2014
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-3-205-79588-9
- Size
- 17.0 x 24.0 cm
- Pages
- 1192
- Categories
- Geschichte Vor 1918
Table of contents
- 1 On the Eve 11
- 2 Two Million Men for the War 49
- 3 Bloody Sundays 81
- 4 Unleashing the War 117
- 5 ‘Thank God, this is the Great War!’ 157
- 6 Adjusting to a Longer War 197
- 7 The End of the Euphoria 239
- 8 The First Winter of the War 283
- 9 Under Surveillance 317
- 10 ‘The King of Italy has declared war on Me’ 355
- 11 The Third Front 383
- 12 Factory War and Domestic Front, 1915 413
- 13 Summer Battle and ‘Autumn Swine’ 441
- 14 War Aims and Central Europe 469
- 15 South Tyrol : The End of an Illusion (I) 497
- 16 Lutsk :The End of an Illusion (II) 521
- 17 How is a War Financed ? 555
- 18 The Nameless 583
- 19 The Death of the Old Emperor 607
- 20 Emperor Karl 641
- 21 The Writing on the Wall 657
- 22 The Consequences of the Russian February Revolution 691
- 23 Summer 1917 713
- 24 Kerensky Offensive and Peace Efforts 743
- 25 The Pyrrhic Victory : The Breakthrough Battle of Flitsch-Tolmein 769
- 26 Camps 803
- 27 Peace Feelers in the Shadow of Brest-Litovsk 845
- 28 The Inner Front 869
- 29 The June Battle in Veneto 895
- 30 An Empire Resigns 927
- 31 The Twilight Empire 955
- 32 The War becomes History 983
- Epilogue 1011
- Afterword 1013
- Acknowledgements and Dedication 1019
- Notes 1023
- Selected Printed Sources and Literature 1115
- Index of People and Places 1155