Seite - 212 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

212 Adjusting to a Longer War high volume, although  – as we know from the prehistory of the World War  – this had primarily been for export, and there were differences in the system and the calibre. Af- ter the conversion to Austrian models, the capacity could be used fully for the Imperial and Royal armies. For another thing, these factories were of course the first to be placed under military management and whose requirements always had priority. The largest backlog was in the case of machine guns, of which there had only been 2,761 at the beginning of the war. In 1914, almost 1,200 were manufactured. From then on, there was a strong increase.501 From mid-September 1914 onwards, 3.5 to 4 million rifle cartridges and 9,500 rounds of artillery ammunition could be delivered on a daily basis to the armies in the field. One week later, almost 15,000 rounds of artillery ammunition were produced each day, and even this curve showed a steep upward trend. The Army High Command was initially satisfied with the supply and only criticised the fact that the armies under the Balkan High Command were equipped consider- ably better with ammunition than the armies of the north-eastern front. In Conrad’s remarks on this subject, not only the conflict with Potiorek was reflected but also the circumstance that before the war it had been assumed that the troops in Bosnia, Her- zegovina and Dalmatia would have to be equipped more generously with ammunition than the others from the outset due to poor railway connections. The War Ministry openly admitted that it had not expected a long war. (This concession came after the first month of the war !) The War Ministry furthermore pointed out that a series of guns were ‘discontinued models’ and above all the 7 cm mountain artillery and the 10 cm field howitzer should be replaced with more modern guns. Thus, the ammunition production for these guns had already been strongly cut back. The serial production of new guns had been delayed by a year, however, since in one case Potiorek and in another case Conrad had raised objections. But that is war : it breaks out unexpectedly. Even in this case, however, the production was high-volume and the simultaneous development of new artillery models proceeded very rapidly. The constructions existed and the tests had generally been completed. Thus, everything took place almost overnight. The 10 cm field howitzer type 1914 could go into production just as quickly as the 15 cm heavy field howitzer, the 10.4 cm cannon for the heavy artillery of the field army, the 7.5 cm mountain cannon type 1915 and the 15, 24 and 30.5 cm mortars.502 Trucks and traction engines were manufactured in part in new factories, of which the Daimler Works in Wiener Neustadt, which belonged to the Škoda Corporation, was the most important. Here Ferdinand Porsche constructed mortar haulers, which were designed to transport the 30.5 cm mortar but also the subsequently produced 38 cm howitzer over long distances on roads and tracks. The twelve automobile factories in Austria-Hungary likewise produced in a very short space of time almost exclusively for military needs. Finally, shipbuilding should also be expedited and the underdeveloped aviation indus- try expanded. At the beginning of the war the Austro-Hungarian Army had only 39