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22 On the Eve
Empire. Even so, the real power was held by the civic and military governor, who was
a general.
The evident risk of war into which the Foreign Minister had entered was subject to
criticism. However, there were also those who expressed regret that the annexation had
been achieved peacefully, and that no war with Serbia had resulted. One exponent of
this group was General Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, the Chief of the General Staff
of the entire armed force of Austria-Hungary. He made no secret of the fact that he
would have liked to have used the annexation as a reason for waging a pre-emptive
war against Serbia. Russia, he claimed, was not ready for war any more than Italy and
France. England would not want a war, and Romania was an ally. This would therefore
have been a perfect opportunity. However, Aehrenthal had emphatically stressed several
times that there was no question of waging an offensive war and, on this matter, he was
certain that the Emperor and the heir to the throne would agree. In fact, on 10 March
1909, Serbia formally declared that it had abandoned its objections to the annexation
of Bosnia-Herzegovina, would harbour no hostile feelings towards Austria-Hungary,
and would make every effort to foster good neighbourly relations. In so doing, it denied
Austria in a very public manner all reason to initiate a war.
The relationship between Conrad and Aehrenthal worsened almost immediately.
During the years that followed, Conrad simply refused to accept that those responsible
for foreign policy were opposed to his urgent call for war. And in retrospect, notwith-
standing the moral implications of this approach, he appeared to have been right : the
defeat of Serbia would have changed everything.
Aside from politicians, diplomats and several parties, there was one other group that
was vehemently opposed to the annexation : the Austrian peace movement, which under
the leadership of Bertha von Suttner had become a highly influential body. Member-
ship of the movement swelled when entire organisations such as teachers’ associations
and church societies joined en masse. However, in terms of their argumentation, they
were performing a balancing act, since in the movement’s magazine, the Friedenswarte,
differentiations began to be made between cultured nations and backward peoples. The
peoples of the Balkans, and also Russia, were unambiguously classified in the second
category.18 For the moment, however, von Suttner and her followers could applaud the
fact that war had been avoided.
However, although a dangerous escalation of the crisis had been prevented, across
Europe, reactions to matters related to the Balkans had become sensitised. Since the
question of whether there would be war or peace so evidently appeared to hang on de-
velopments in the Balkans, any event or change in the status quo that occurred on the
Balkan Peninsula was a trigger for alarm bells in the state chancelleries.
However, the conflict between Conrad and Aehrenthal only reached its point of cul-
mination during the years that followed, when Serbia and Bulgaria took the surprising
THE FIRST WORLD WAR
and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918
- Titel
- THE FIRST WORLD WAR
- Untertitel
- and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918
- Autor
- Manfried Rauchensteiner
- Verlag
- Böhlau Verlag
- Ort
- Wien
- Datum
- 2014
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-3-205-79588-9
- Abmessungen
- 17.0 x 24.0 cm
- Seiten
- 1192
- Kategorien
- Geschichte Vor 1918
Inhaltsverzeichnis
- 1 On the Eve 11
- 2 Two Million Men for the War 49
- 3 Bloody Sundays 81
- 4 Unleashing the War 117
- 5 ‘Thank God, this is the Great War!’ 157
- 6 Adjusting to a Longer War 197
- 7 The End of the Euphoria 239
- 8 The First Winter of the War 283
- 9 Under Surveillance 317
- 10 ‘The King of Italy has declared war on Me’ 355
- 11 The Third Front 383
- 12 Factory War and Domestic Front, 1915 413
- 13 Summer Battle and ‘Autumn Swine’ 441
- 14 War Aims and Central Europe 469
- 15 South Tyrol : The End of an Illusion (I) 497
- 16 Lutsk :The End of an Illusion (II) 521
- 17 How is a War Financed ? 555
- 18 The Nameless 583
- 19 The Death of the Old Emperor 607
- 20 Emperor Karl 641
- 21 The Writing on the Wall 657
- 22 The Consequences of the Russian February Revolution 691
- 23 Summer 1917 713
- 24 Kerensky Offensive and Peace Efforts 743
- 25 The Pyrrhic Victory : The Breakthrough Battle of Flitsch-Tolmein 769
- 26 Camps 803
- 27 Peace Feelers in the Shadow of Brest-Litovsk 845
- 28 The Inner Front 869
- 29 The June Battle in Veneto 895
- 30 An Empire Resigns 927
- 31 The Twilight Empire 955
- 32 The War becomes History 983
- Epilogue 1011
- Afterword 1013
- Acknowledgements and Dedication 1019
- Notes 1023
- Selected Printed Sources and Literature 1115
- Index of People and Places 1155