Page - 931 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Brigadier von Bolzano is Missing 931 2nd Infantry Division, Major General Lipošćak, was then relieved of his command. In May 1915, Boroević had been sent to the Italian front, Lipošćak was rehabilitated and became once more, as before his dismissal, Commander of the 2nd Infantry Division. Generals were accused of intervening too little and of merely passing on orders, without issuing their own. Others were dismissed due to ‘physical depression’  – an odd ailment. In September 1915 alone, the Presidium of the War Ministry had invited 14 generals to submit a request for their retirement.2243 The Commander of the 2nd Army, Böhm-Ermolli, applied for the dismissal of the Commander of the 34th Infantry Division, Brigadier Baronet Julius von Birkenhain and his Chief of Staff, Major Karl Möller, because they had not been energetic enough. In December, General of Infantry Karg had been informed that he should submit his resignation ; he was ‘unsuitable to lead a senior command’. No-one was relieved for too much severity or even for the senseless sacrifice of human life. The designation of a general in soldiers’ jargon as the ‘death of the Imperial Rifles’ (Kaiserjägertod), however, spoke for itself.2244 The army subsequently repeatedly turned out to be the opposite of the attribute it was commonly assigned, above all in Germany : it was anything but ‘cosy’ (gemütlich)! Some incidents would certainly have been punished in other armies. For example, the Commander of the 29th Infantry Brigade, Brigadier Baronet Franz Weiss-Tihany, had written a letter to the Army Supreme Commander Archduke Friedrich, which was evidently teeming with insults. The War Ministry then ordered the Brigadier to be examined in respect of his state of mental health.2245 For his part, the Army Supreme Commander was inclined to reprimand generals, as he had already done during the first months of the war, even if there was only a suspi- cion of them not measuring up. This was often possible by means of short notifications, such as that of 10 April 1915, when Archduke Friedrich briefly reported to the Impe- rial Military Chancellery : the war ‘has minimised the energy, resilience and hardiness to such an extent that I felt compelled recently to Most Supremely commission the relief of Generals of Infantry Hugo von Meixner and Colerus, [and] after that Briga- dier Letovsky from their commands’.2246 Sometimes, the notification was even briefer. In August 1915, General Böhm-Ermolli applied for the dismissal of Major General Zanantoni from the command of the 29th Infantry Division very simply by writing : ‘I am convinced that Major General Zanantoni’s nerves will no longer recover in such a way that he can lead a command against the enemy.  – Böhm.’2247 With that, everything seemed to have been said. People had to be substituted, sent to the base zone for age and health reasons, placed on leave of absence or retired with waiting charges, commanders and staff officers re- placed because they had not resonated with their superiors. In winter 1915/16, four generals and a chief of staff were dismissed from the 7th Army alone because they ‘had not measured up to the challenges’.2248 This was a type of normality, which had