Seite - 149 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

An Empire Mobilises 149 quence of this was the obligation to work because it theoretically included all men not liable for military service who had not yet completed their fiftieth year. Equipment and animals, above all horses, were confiscated as state property. Automobiles, wagons,and buildings of all types at the front and in the rear areas were rented or removed, whilst companies vital to the war effort, including major industrial enterprises, were mili- tarised. Violations of the Law on War Contributions were prosecuted in accordance with the Military Criminal Code. The state secured for itself such dictatorial rights and ensured that the rights of its citizens were as good as abolished in the event of having to enforce military necessity. Some may have regarded it as a comfort that debt claims under private law were deferred for the duration of the emergency decree. The overreaction and the almost daily encroachments that began with the first day of mobilisation can be explained by the fact that there was almost no experience of such things, even if the Imperial and Royal Army had engaged in a series of partial mobili- sations and lived through a warlike operation in 1878. But it was clear to everyone that they had entered into a very different war and that no-one was able to gauge its dimen- sions. In re-assessing the administrative provisions, consideration was made above all for the fact that the deployment of a large army could only take place under the condi- tion that the transport connections remained secured and the means of communication such as telephone lines were kept intact. Sabotage was expected and, of course, the resistance of individual nationalist groups or entire nationalities. But the exceptional thing about the Austrian half of the Empire was, to quote Redlich once more, ‘[…] that here the notion of a dictatorship extended from the outset beyond the technical factor of merely ensuring mobilisation and was understood from the beginning by the decisive elements within not only the army but also the civilian government and the bureaucracy as a political measure in the highest sense of the word’.355 If one is searching here for a particular culpability, one would then have to cite all Austrian and Hungarian governments since the beginning of the constitutional era, or at least since 1867, for each of them at least adhered to the emergency legislation or even supplemented it here and there. Yet it was also up to the current governments to serve and to apply the entire apparatus at their disposal. In the process, however, each and every one of them must have been aware that the measures to be applied would necessarily bring with them a clear reduction in the already limited freedoms of the state’s citizenry, as well as a period of reaction for the non-German and non-Hungarian nationalities. The death of Franz Ferdinand meant that endeavours to find a trialistic solution in the framework of the constitution of the entire Monarchy became obsolete. Negotiations for a settlement, as had been cultivated with the Ruthenians, could no longer come into operation, and throughout the Dual Monarchy mistrust and spying emerged. This was the difference between the Habsburg Monarchy and other states : the state of affairs did not end with the establishment of readiness and enthusiasm