Page - 892 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

892 The Inner Front on the front could easily be deduced, had been enough. In the night of 12/13 May, several home-comers aroused the primarily Slovenian replacement personnel from their sleep and announced that they wanted to break out in order to return home. The war was over, they said. They stormed the Jesuit barracks, plundered supply magazines and ammunition depots, and then beat their way through to the railway station. The communications installations were destroyed. Civilians joined the plunderers. How- ever, the military command in Graz had already been alarmed and it sent auxiliary units to Judenburg. The mutiny collapsed. Almost all of the approximately 1,200 sol- diers who had attempted to force their way through to Slovakia were captured. But a rebellion in Murau followed and then on 23 May another in Radkersburg. It was again above all Slovenes who were involved, this time from the Imperial and Royal Infantry Regiment No. 97. There were also disturbances in Pécs and Kragujevac, in Rumburk (Rumburg) and again in Litoměřice. The pictures resembled each other everywhere : hatred for the war, hatred for those who were waging it  – though with a clear sparing of the Emperor, who was generally still regarded as untouchable  – poor rations and a lot of alcohol. A few revolutionary slogans and an appeal to national sentiment were enough to induce the outbreak of a mutiny among the home-comers and replacement personnel. The upshot was also the same : auxiliary troops, which were consciously selected be- cause they had a different national composition to the mutineers, moved in. The rebel- lions collapsed, summary courts-martial and ordinary military courts began to officiate, and a few days later executions of the ringleaders, or those who were regarded as such, followed. Czechs were shot by natives of Salzburg, Slovaks by Bosniaks. The national fragmentation went so far that the members of one people then gunned down the mu- tineers from another nationality.2142 As a result of the mutinies during the course of the first months of 1918, the number of trials before military courts almost doubled. Most of them dealt with offences of withdrawal and non-compliance. In May alone, 133,040 soldiers offended. The cases were dealt with by 3,000 justice officers.2143 Attempts were made to find out who was guilty for the incidents and the results were generally correct. The officers in particular were not relieved of their responsibility. They had often contributed to triggering the mutinies, and during the riots they proved themselves to be militarily and personally inadequate. It had generally been reserve and not career officers, with little or no experience at the front, who had failed and often reacted in completely the wrong way. They were called to account, whilst the enlisted men of the rebelling troop bodies rapidly swore the oath again and were sent either to the front or to garrisons as quickly as possible, where they were nationally isolated. If they were placed on the troop transports rolling south-west, they were given patriotic texts to read in order to re-arm them morally and ideologically.2144 The ‘editorial group’ of the War Press Bureau undertook last-ditch attempts to coordinate and systemati-