Page - 993 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Dissolution Begins 993 could trigger the dissolution were unmistakeable. General Weber warned not to com- mence the removal without simultaneously negotiating an armistice. But he had to remain in Trento. The next day, on 15 October, the Army High Command announced via open radio that the Monarchy was ready for its troops to withdraw to the pre-war borders in or- der to await there the results of the negotiations of a peace conference. Furthermore, the Italian prisoners of war who were still in the territories to be evacuated were to be immediately released. What appeared to be a gesture of accommodation, however, was likewise a necessary measure in order to not have to feed the captive Italians or transport them.2450 With this, the military operation appeared to have been initiated. Now, the political action had to take effect. The Emperor had intended to issue a manifesto that was conceived as a pledge to his peoples for the period when the war would be definitively over. The reactions to the Manifesto to the Peoples, however, left no doubt that no-one wanted to wait any longer. The manifesto was interpreted as a signal for the dissolution. Tisza announced : ‘We have lost the war.’ When a member of the Hungarian Reichstag (Imperial Diet) said : ‘The homeland is in danger. The Hungarian soldier must return to defend his fatherland’, he reaped furious applause.2451 The nations of the Austrian half of the Empire reacted by commencing with the final disengagement. Since no-one knew, however, how the new states would be constituted, or which borders and conflicts they would have, they all wanted to call their soldiers home. Suddenly, what had been long practised out of earlier necessity and, after the revolts of the spring, also consist- ently, now had a negative impact : in order to not territorially relocate the troops, they had been distributed as far as possible so that locals and troops did not have the same nationality. Moreover, the regiments had been more strongly mixed. Now, however, sol- diers of the same nation were needed, and the call to return home was thus directed at them. The moment a battalion or a regiment responded to such a call, entire divisional sections collapsed. For some soldiers and above all for the officers, the oath they had sworn constituted a final impediment to following the call of their homeland. They had sworn an oath to the Monarch, and the Emperor had no intention of releasing the soldiers and officers from this oath. This was done by the newly emerging states. They presumed the right to rescind the oath to the Emperor and the Empire and to make the soldiers discharge their duties for a new state. On 20 October, Wilson’s response to the Austrian armistice offer from 4 October, which had scarcely been expected any more, finally arrived. Wilson disclosed that he could no longer agree to the proposal for peace on the basis of the Fourteen Points, since so much had happened since the announcement of these in January 1918 that consequences had also resulted for the USA. The USA had acknowledged that ‘a state of war exists between the Czecho-Slovakians and the empires of Germany and Aus-