Page - 837 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Siberian Clarity 837 It must have been especially satisfying for the Russians that with the occupation of Austria-Hungary’s largest fortress they were also able to capture nine generals, since the seizure of the highest military ranks underlined the victory in a special way. Con- versely, only three Russian generals fell into Austro-Hungarian captivity during the course of the entire war. Only two of the Przemyśl garrison, one of which was the fortress commander General Kusmanek, were interned in the Moscow military district. All the others were sent to central Asia, like most of the soldiers. Kusmanek himself was transported via Kiev and Kovel to Nizhny Novgorod and was subjected to increas- ingly uncompromising treatment. The opportunity to send and receive correspondence was restricted, the accommodation deteriorated, every Russian officer, even the young- est ensign, had to be greeted first, and the general was then increasingly persecuted. The reason he was given for this was that it was believed that the high-ranking Russian officers who had fallen into Austro-Hungarian hands were treated poorly and not in accordance with the Geneva Convention. Hence, the Russians wanted to resort to re- taliatory measures. When the rumours proved to be false, Kusmanek was again treated somewhat better. Overall, however, the generals had much less cause for complaint than the enlisted men. The soldiers from Przemyśl were poorly housed, suffered from undernourishment, were decimated by epidemics and were subjected to retaliation all the more when an in- cident became known such as the shooting of Russian prisoners of war in Colle Isarco (Gossensaß) at the Brenner Pass who, in June 1915, had encouraged their co-prisoners to refuse to carry out the work of digging trenches demanded of them.1996 Kusmanek hoped to be exchanged for a Russian general. But this was denied him, unlike Major General Wilhelm Nickl von Oppavár, who was exchanged due to sick- ness and by virtue of his age, and likewise Brigadier Wilhelm Raft von Marwil, who had fallen into Russian hands on the occasion of the capture of Lviv whilst in the gar- rison hospital there, became increasingly sick during the course of the war and then, in July 1916, was permitted to return home. This was granted to Kusmanek only in Febru- ary 1918, after the armistice of Brest-Litovsk. By then, the flood of Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war had risen into the millions. Surprising the Austrian command authorities, and probably also for the Russians, was the fact that the latter took masses of prisoners at the time of the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive, namely more than 62,000 men, of which only 2,000 soldiers were from the German 11th Army. The Russians were evidently able to hastily withdraw and still take tens of thousands of prisoners. The cases of desertion in the Imperial and Royal Infantry Regiment No. 36 (‘Jungbunzlau’) made a significant difference, but the mass of the prisoners of war came from other formations. It had to be asked again and again why members of the Imperial and Royal Army fell far more often into prisoner of war captivity than those of their German ally. The assumption that the troops were poorly