Seite - 162 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

162 ‘Thank God, this is the Great War!’ The Imperial and Royal 1st Army was assigned the region to the south of the river San and to the west of Jarosław (Jaroslau) as a detraining and mustering area. The Impe- rial and Royal 4th Army, which was adjacent to its right flank, was to deploy on both sides of the city and fortress of Przemyśl, and the Imperial and Royal 3rd Army was deployed in the Sambir (Sambor) area, with its front sections near Lviv. The troops were then to march in the direction of the border, covering a daily distance of 30 kilometres and, if possible, to reach the originally planned destinations at Rawa Ruska, Kamian- ka-Strumiłowa (Kamianka-Buska) and Sboriv (Zborów). The sections of the Imperial and Royal 2nd Army that were immediately available, in other words, the divisions that were not being deployed against Serbia, were to be detrained to the south of the river Dniester at Stryj and Ivano Frankivsk (Stanislau). Smaller formations, mainly of the cavalry, were distributed in such a way as to be able to secure the remaining border sections. One imponderability, however, was the extent to which the divulgence of the Im- perial and General Royal Staff plans to the Russians by Colonel Alfred Redl between 1907 and 1913 would affect the Russian deployment and the start of the war. In ac- tual fact, the ‘fundamental considerations for the deployment of our armed force in a war against the Triple Alliance’ approved by Tsar Nicholas II were in part based on this information.376 However, the Russians drew up their measures on the basis of the Austrian deployment plans produced in 1909 that Redl had sold to them. And these plans were no longer valid. Aside from all the other elements that had been altered, the Russians could also not know about the ‘relocation to the rear’. However, it is unlikely that the ‘blinding’ of the intelligence service, which to some degree had led to a setback following the exposure of Alfred Redl’s activities, would have continued for long. The Evidenzbüro of the Imperial and Royal General Staff certainly knew for its part about establishments of military relevance in western Russia, correctly interpreted the Rus- sian test mobilisation in the spring of 1914 as a preparation for war, and was also clear about the strength and troop distribution of the Russians.377 Also, the fact that the overall strength of the Imperial and Royal Army was inferior to that of the Russians was general knowledge, and certainly didn’t need to be disclosed. Furthermore, it was by no means true that 75 Russian divisions remained undetected, as Count Adalbert Sternberg misguidedly claimed in the Austrian Reichsrat (Imperial Assembly).378 A far more serious effect of Redl’s activities was that he betrayed people who were operating for the Austrian intelligence service in Russia, and that for many years, he was able to prevent further knowledge from being obtained. In this way, detailed knowledge about the Tsarist Army was reduced at least to the extent that for a time, it was not possible to acquire it through Austria-Hungary’s own intelligence activities. Clearly, in 1913 and 1914, the Evidenzbüro of the Imperial and Royal General Staff was not only working to limit the damage, but also to expand its knowledge indirectly