Page - 1008 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

1008 The War becomes History facilities in order to maintain contact with the delegation, and that finally issued its directives prematurely and imprudently  – this Army High Command must ultimately be described as the main culprit of the disaster at Vittorio Veneto. It is without doubt inaccurate to claim that this had been intentional and done in order to saddle the Italians with the problem of a few hundred thousand peo- ple, and above all the trouble of feeding these people.2515 This might have been a side-effect, but it was really not deliberate. However, the immediate consequences of the armistice were in any case remarkable : since the armistice treaty stated that the frontline resulted from the connecting line between the most advanced British and Italian troops, the Allies allowed armed patrols to push forward as far as possible. The Imperial and Royal Army High Command had attempted to inform the troops that the armistice would only come into force on 4 November at 3 p.m., but the soldiers generally allowed the Allies to pass unhindered. They did attempt, however, to make it clear to them that the armistice was already in place. Italians and British did not appear to be very quick on the uptake and pushed on.2516 They travelled to Trieste, to the Val Canale and in the direction of the Brenner. Perhaps they also saw how, on the highest mountain of the decomposed Habsburg Monarchy, the Ortler, a black and yellow flag was flying at half mast, before the garrison of Carinthians and Styrians evacuated their positions on the peak.2517 Protests against the capture of all the Im- perial and Royal troops outstripped by the Italians were simply answered by pointing to the fact that the treaty had been signed by plenipotentiaries of the Army High Command. This was difficult to dispute. During the course of the Allied advance, 108,000 soldiers were captured from the German lands of the Dual Monarchy, including around 30,000 from the territory that was to become German-Austria. In addition, 83,000 Czechs and Slovaks, 61,000 southern Slavs, 40,000 Poles, 32,000 Ruthenians, 25,000 Romanians and 7,000 Italians were captured. The Hungarians had, for the most part, already withdrawn. Thus, the Italians, British and French had captured masses of soldiers from their new allies as well as a few new compatriots ; this fact was not without piquancy. On 4 November, Colonel Karl Schneller left Padua in order to bring the signed copy of the armistice treaty to Vienna. He believed that he could accomplish the journey quickest via Vorarlberg, but he did not arrive in Vienna until 8 November.2518 Te Deum Laudamus The armistice also extended, as mentioned above, to all the other fronts on which Austro-Hungarian troops stood, namely the Balkans and the German western front. Understandably, there was confusion in those places. The German Empire had not