Page - 965 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Radicals Set the Agenda 965 units of the Common Army and the Landwehr (Austrian standing army) went over to the POW with increasing frequency and went underground. During the first half of 1918, over 35,000 deserters were arrested in Galicia, which indicated that many times more this number had remained undetected. In the military command areas of Kraków and Przemyśl, the deserters became a scourge.2338 Officers from the former Polish Legion acted as agitators within the Austro-Hungarian Army and sought to persuade Polish soldiers to desert.2339 The Polish underground transported the soldiers to Russian territory, where they could clearly organise and operate particularly safely, and began to form Polish corps there. This was regarded as a matter of consistency, since Austria-Hungary had after all announced Polish sovereignty in the Two Em- perors’ Proclamation. The Poles were aware of their relatively fortunate situation, since in August 1918 the German Empire had made a type of counter-offer to the Aus- tro-Polish solution : Germany was willing to grant Poland the Chełm region, which was also claimed by Ukraine, and offered a military convention, free access to the sea, and much more.2340 Poland therefore had to decide between the German Empire and Austria. If it chose to play the German card, it would receive Chełm, larger sections of the coast and Germany’s ‘shimmering defence’. If Poland agreed to a personal un- ion with Austria-Hungary, it would likely be given Galicia. But was it at all realistic to wait for an Austro-Polish solution ? When the Germans increased their offer and, finally, in September 1918, also offered Poland Lithuania, the Poles lost interest in the Austro-Polish solution. Austria-Hungary would no longer have the power to push through any kind of solution. However, while the Austrian Poles negotiated through to the last and at least out- wardly indicated their partial support for the Austrian government, this was no longer the case for the Czechs. They had already set out on a path of rejection in 1917, and had become increasingly radicalised. A week before Hussarek’s entry into government, the ‘Czech National Committee’ was formed, with the aim of preparing to take over the government in an independent Czecho-Slovak state. The way for this had already been paved by the émigrés abroad, whilst the Pittsburgh Agreement regulated the re- lationship between Czechs and Slovaks. The radical Czech leader, Karel Kramář, who in 1915 had been put on trial and sentenced, and pardoned in 1917, set himself at the head of this national committee. Although the Czechs refrained from dealing the final blow that would lead to the Austrian parliament being dissolved once again, they consistently refused to cooperate. When beginning in June 1918, the Entente powers recognised Czecho-Slovakia as a belligerent power, followed by the USA at the be- ginning of September, there was almost no further need to maintain the façade. And even if not all conditions were provided for recognising the country under interna- tional law, a territory could be delineated over which such a recognition should extend. Not least, Czechs and Slovaks and both Austria and Hungary could claim that the