Page - 891 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Mutiny 891 The reintroduction of military coercion, the delayed holiday, the prospect of returning to the front and having to continue the war in the south-west against Italy, but above all the poor rations, gave rise to an explosive mood among the re-drafted home-comers.2138 When the German Plenipotentiary General attached to the Army High Command, August von Cramon, then claimed that officers and enlisted men were downright eager to return to the Italian front, as they had been in 1915,2139 then he confused some- thing to the extent that the desire to be sent to the Italian front meant for many only the hope of better rations, booty and, under certain circumstances, the opportunity to desert. Even if an attempt was made by Austro-Hungarian propaganda intelligence departments to re-educate the home-comers, the indoctrination of the Russian Revo- lution was generally enough not only to make the people rebellious but also to put the actual slogans in their mouths. One did not have to have come into noteworthy contact with the Bolsheviks to understand slogans such as ‘peace’ and ‘bread’. Revolts flared up in Żurawica in Galicia on 25 April, then in Sambor on 2 May. A march company of Infantry Regiment No. 40 had been used as an auxiliary unit in order to collect food- stuffs. The civilian population had put up a sustained fight and there had been shocking scenes. Under such circumstances, no trained demagogues were needed in order for the replacement troop bodies and the re-drafted home-comers to revolt. It was a similar story in Lublin. Repatriates revolted. During the obligatory four- week holiday, they had often searched in vain for their relatives. Their houses were de- stroyed and their families were living in part in indescribable misery in the abandoned trenches. They were fading fast, and the administrative authorities did hardly anything to ease the people’s lot. The unsettled future of the Polish Government General delayed any effective measure for reconstruction. Ruthenian-Polish antagonisms did the rest. Generally, a ridiculously insignificant incident was then sufficent to break the spell.2140 In garrisons around Litoměřice (Leitmeritz), repatriates rebelled, as they did in Trenčín (Trentschin). Ruthenians mutinied in the east of Slovakia. In countless places, unrest flared up simultaneously. Everywhere, however, the unrest was at first relatively small and limited, even if there were some deaths. But when a series of factors then intensi- fied, the explosion occurred. In retrospect, it was observed what elements had to come together : soldiers who came from the territories with a strongly nationalist movement, whose replacement troop bodies were moved to industrial territories near to their own homelands, in which strikes among the workers and food demonstrations repeatedly took place, were predestined for a military revolt. If some agitation was then added, a spark was nor- mally enough.2141 The explosion occurred in Styria. In the late evening of 12 May, replacement per- sonnel from Infantry Regiment No. 17 mutinied in Judenburg. The reduction of the rations and the distribution of new uniforms, from which an imminent deployment