Page - 975 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Sinking of the Szent István 975 eral Staff not already long since borne the consequences ? Waldstätten explained that Arz had most certainly tendered his resignation to the Emperor, but had been refused. The reaction among the colonels and generals was that this was not enough. He should have resigned, even if the Emperor had not wished it. Any of Arz’ successors should have resigned in just the same way or, even better, not even have taken up the post until Karl had been made to see reason.2384 The Navy was not represented in Belluno. Still, the picture that Admiral Horthy would have painted of the fleet would have differed only incrementally from that of the Imperial and Royal Army. The Sinking of the Szent István The Navy, too, had suffered a consistent decline and severe setbacks. Since 1917, the Allies had begun to use large convoys in the Mediterranean and the Adriatic in order to maintain their supplies to the Middle East, as well as to Italy and the Salonika front, in a similar way as in the Atlantic. While escorting these convoys took up a large capacity of the naval forces, the effort was worth it. Following the entry into the war by the USA, American destroyers were incorporated into these escort operations, alongside the Brit- ish, French and Italian naval forces. However, the Allies were aware that this protection was only a conditional one and that, ultimately, it came down to hitting the German and Austro-Hungarian surface and submarine vessels in such a damaging way that the threat to Allied shipping would be reduced. Attempts were made at improving the fight against the naval forces of the Central Powers in that  – in the second half of 1917 in particular  – everything possible was done in order to precisely monitor the radio traffic and to decipher the code words whenever expedient. Germans, Austrians and Hungarians had long ago become dissatisfied with the de- velopment of the naval war in the Mediterranean, despite sporadic successes. German statisticians had calculated that the tonnage figures of the ships sunk by the submarines were decreasing constantly per boat and per day. Even the numbers of Austro-Hungar- ian sinkings since the autumn of 1917 alone were cause for concern. In October 1917, an outstanding 12,000 tons of shipping space had still been destroyed, but in November only 4,000, and in December 1917 not a single sinking. The Germans were also be- coming increasingly concerned due to the Allied aerial threat to Pula (Pola) and Kotor. On 12 November 1917, Kaiser Wilhelm had visited Pula and had made a vain at- tempt to convince the Commander of the Fleet, Admiral Njegovan, to decommission the capital ships and to use the crew for other purposes.2385 The visit by Kaiser Wilhelm took place at a time when the breakthrough Battle of Flitsch–Tolmein had been fought, and Austro-Hungarian and German troops had crossed the Tagliamento River and advanced to the Piave.