Page - 972 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

972 The Twilight Empire 2,000 metres. Only after the Italians had released leaflets instead of the bombs that had perhaps been expected and were already en route back to Italy did their identity become known. However, they could not be fired at, nor did the Austro-Hungarian aeroplanes reach the Italians on their return flight. Immediately after leaflets had been scattered, an operation was begun to collect them. By the evening, 500 kronen were already being offered for a single leaflet. The bills read : ‘Citizens of Vienna ! Acquaint yourselves with the Italians. If we had wanted to, we could have released whole tons of bombs on to your city […]. Do you want to continue the war ? Do so, if you wish to commit suicide. What are you hoping for ? The decisive victory that the Prussian generals have promised you ? Their decisive victory is like the bread from Ukraine : one waits for it and dies before it arrives […]. Long live freedom ! Long live Italy ! Long live the Entente !’2366 A rigorous investigation began as to how D’Annunzio could have flown all the way to Vienna without encountering resistance, but no direct blame could be assigned. At any rate, Vienna had come into contact with a facet of the war that at the front and the other war zones had already become an aspect of everyday life, namely the leaflet propaganda. However, in the eyes of the western specialists in psychological warfare, D’Annunzio’s method was outdated, since as one of the most important members of staff at ‘Crew House’, the headquarters of the British ‘Enemy Propaganda Department’, Henry Wickham-Steed pointed out : ‘It makes no sense to discharge propaganda documents in various parts of the world, in which it is declared what a noble people we are. […] This is of no interest to people ‘2367 It would be far more important, in the case of Austria-Hungary in particular, to tune the propaganda to the nationalities conflict and to accelerate the disintegration. Wickham-Steed had therefore recommended adjusting the propaganda entirely to the radical wishes of the nationalities and holding out the prospect of the breakup of the Habsburg Monarchy. Dissatisfaction was to be fomented, and the nationalities were to be set against each other in order to provoke uprisings. This would be the way to bring down Austria and, with it, Germany. Even if the Allied propaganda only played a small part in the internal dissolution of Austria-Hungary, its content corresponded to an increasing extent to Steed’s guidelines. The result was that among the army in the field, petty jealousies, aversions and national- ist agitation escalated. The German troop bodies suspected that they were always being deployed in the hot spots, and that they had to bear the consequences of the mistakes of others. For the Magyars, the accusations already made by Count Tisza two years earlier rang true, when he turned against the apparently anti-Hungarian tendencies in the army and curiously traced them back to the large number of Czech officers in the General Imperial and Royal Staff.2368 Now, Hungarian soldiers accused the Czech and Polish artillery that had been assigned to them of firing at too short range, causing the grenades to fall on to their own positions. Conversely, Hungarian artillery troops were