Page - 833 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

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