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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
THE FIRST WORLD WAR
and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918
- Title
- THE FIRST WORLD WAR
- Subtitle
- and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918
- Author
- Manfried Rauchensteiner
- Publisher
- Böhlau Verlag
- Location
- Wien
- Date
- 2014
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-3-205-79588-9
- Size
- 17.0 x 24.0 cm
- Pages
- 1192
- Categories
- Geschichte Vor 1918
Table of contents
- 1 On the Eve 11
- 2 Two Million Men for the War 49
- 3 Bloody Sundays 81
- 4 Unleashing the War 117
- 5 ‘Thank God, this is the Great War!’ 157
- 6 Adjusting to a Longer War 197
- 7 The End of the Euphoria 239
- 8 The First Winter of the War 283
- 9 Under Surveillance 317
- 10 ‘The King of Italy has declared war on Me’ 355
- 11 The Third Front 383
- 12 Factory War and Domestic Front, 1915 413
- 13 Summer Battle and ‘Autumn Swine’ 441
- 14 War Aims and Central Europe 469
- 15 South Tyrol : The End of an Illusion (I) 497
- 16 Lutsk :The End of an Illusion (II) 521
- 17 How is a War Financed ? 555
- 18 The Nameless 583
- 19 The Death of the Old Emperor 607
- 20 Emperor Karl 641
- 21 The Writing on the Wall 657
- 22 The Consequences of the Russian February Revolution 691
- 23 Summer 1917 713
- 24 Kerensky Offensive and Peace Efforts 743
- 25 The Pyrrhic Victory : The Breakthrough Battle of Flitsch-Tolmein 769
- 26 Camps 803
- 27 Peace Feelers in the Shadow of Brest-Litovsk 845
- 28 The Inner Front 869
- 29 The June Battle in Veneto 895
- 30 An Empire Resigns 927
- 31 The Twilight Empire 955
- 32 The War becomes History 983
- Epilogue 1011
- Afterword 1013
- Acknowledgements and Dedication 1019
- Notes 1023
- Selected Printed Sources and Literature 1115
- Index of People and Places 1155