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166 ‘Thank God, this is the Great War!’
The transportation of people, weapons and materials was initially interesting for quite
another reason, however, since during this process, the de facto decision regarding the
military start of the war was made. The fact that the railway office of the General Staff
was faced with a not insignificant task is made evident by the sober figures. For the de-
ployment of the Austro-Hungarian Army, which was divided into three echelons – re-
gardless of the focus
– around one-and-a-half million men, one million horses, 200,000
tonnes of supplies and, furthermore, all the necessary weaponry had to be transported.
What Conrad had not sufficiently taken into account in his ‘relocation to the rear’ of
the deployment zones in Galicia, which had been agreed with the railway office, was
the fact that suddenly, new detraining stations had to be found, the smaller of which
presented a trivial problem : their platforms were too short for the military trains with
their standard length of fifty carriages, making it necessary to shunt back and forth.
The speed of travel would also prove to be a problem. Due to the lack of uniformity
of the existing rolling stock, and the fact that most of the carriages were not equipped
with continuous brakes, it could be assumed that the trains could only travel at around
25 km per hour.385 Even in cases where they would certainly have been capable of trav-
elling faster, they were unable to do so, since this would have brought the timetables
into disarray.
However, the problem of the condition of the railways and the logistics was in many
ways superimposed by the problems presented by time deadlines. It was not enough to
simply send the soldiers to the station and have them driven away. Locomotives and
carriages had to be provided, only very few of which were in storage in sheds. They all
had to be removed from normal passenger and goods transport. Here, every date had
to be precisely calculated, since from that day onwards, civilian passenger and goods
transport would have to be reduced or even discontinued. It was therefore not only the
timetable that determined the deployment, but also the special features of ‘Kakania’ (an
ironic name for the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy) described above.
One could be forgiven for assuming that with the initiation of mobilisation, ef-
forts would have been made to increase the number of personnel to the level required,
provide additional equipment and then to muster and depart. Yet nothing of the kind
happened ! The order for mobilisation for the war against Serbia was issued on 25 July,
although mobilisation was not officially due to begin until 28 July. The reason for this
was that a weekend fell in between. Also, prior to the conscription of the reservists, in-
tensified monitoring of the borders and above all transport had to be introduced within
what was known as an ‘alarm period’. According to the regulations, such an alarm must
be activated at least 24 hours before the mobilisation itself.386 Instead of opting only for
the briefest period of time, however, this period was in fact extended. This was exacer-
bated by a further factor : the first day of mobilisation was regarded as a free day, during
which all soldiers to be mobilised had the opportunity of putting their private affairs in
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