Page - 857 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Turn of the Year, 1918 857 engineers, doctors, lawyers and civil servants, as well as almost all mayors, had fled ; only the priests had stayed on. The population in the towns and villages along the new front on the Piave River and to the north-west of Bassano was evacuated and had to be distributed among other localities. There were also ‘retorsion measures’, or retalia- tion, since wherever the Italian occupation of Austrian territory had left its scars, and particularly when houses had been looted and furniture and other domestic items re- moved, attempts were made at compensation by offering the returning Austrian popu- lation such furniture and household objects as had been requisitioned by the Italians.2032 However, the most long-lasting effects of the Austro-Hungarian occupation in Italy were felt in the livestock-breeding, agriculture- and fruit-growing industries. The num- ber of cattle was drastically reduced, and a type of egalitarianism was attempted by also applying the food rations that were in place in broad sections of the Austrian half of the Empire to the Italian population in these areas. Since Italy had until that point been far better supplied, however, the setting of the flour ration at 150 grams per head and per day, for example, must have appeared catastrophic. However, not even these portions were available for issue everywhere, and in the mountainous regions of the occupied territory, hunger very quickly spread. In the factories, workshops, shops and apartments, all raw materials were seized that could be got hold of. Domestic items made of copper and tin had to be surrendered, as had been the case in Austria for a long time already. Four bell removal detachments brought the bells down on ropes, and the pipes were removed from the church organs.2033 A particular type of retorsion measure was applied to the art treasures. In general, the removal of precious works of art from the occupied territory of Italy was strictly forbidden. Particularly valuable objects were securely stored in an art group especially created for the purpose in Udine. However, since during the Italian occupation of Aus- trian territory, works of art had been taken away, a part of the valuable objects found in Italy was brought to the Military Museum in Vienna, and kept there as collateral.2034 It had been clear from the start that the Austro-Hungarian occupying troops would not be particularly popular. However, unlike the fighting troops, the presence of hun- dreds of thousands of soldiers in the new base area was not explained by military neces- sity ; instead, it was the occupying power that was primarily regarded as the enemy. And this resulted not only in rejection, but in hatred, in some cases very long-lasting hatred, which became intermingled with the other problems. While the troops at the front remained largely unaffected by the events in the hin- terland, after the reserve supplies had been used up and the food had been eaten, they too returned to everyday life. The successes in the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo had fatal consequences to the extent that  – if one disregards the effects on the hinterland described above  – there had been a significant over-estimation of their own strength. When therefore in the spring of 1918, the Chief of the General Staff Arz requested