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The Death of General Wodniansky 229
cate and wrote : ‘His Excellency Franz Paukert, commander 16th ITD [Infantry Troop
Division], is suffering from chronic stomach catarrh and stomach cramps and it is not
expected that he will be fit for duty in the foreseeable future.’ In this way, everything
happened as General Brudermann had requested. Paukert packed his belongings, per-
haps also put his personal affairs in order and boarded the train. He travelled as far as
Tápiósüly, east of Budapest. That evening he left the train, allegedly to stretch his legs.
What then happened is illustrated by a communication from the station commander,
which
– in translation
– went as follows : ‘I report that on the 8th of this month, at 8 :15
p.m., Major General Franz Paukert, commander of the […] Troop Division
– en route
to the railway station here – laid himself on the tracks, probably with suicidal intent,
whereupon his throat was severed by the wheels of the train.’
The fate of one or the other of these generals became known only later and it gen-
erally was not greatly pursued. The first general to fall into captivity was Brigadier
Cornelius Blaim, Commander of the Hermannstadt March Brigade, who already fell
into the hands of the Russians at the end of August 1914 near Rohatyn. In mid-May
1915 he committed suicide with an overdose of barbitone, evidently not
– as the official
version later claimed
– due to the demeaning treatment he received at the hands of the
Russians, but because he regarded captivity as a humiliation.549
It was not just generals, however, who were not equal to the shock of the first battles
and, above all, the sight of the dead, and who regarded themselves, moreover, as being
to blame for, or at least complicitous in, the losses. Subalterns and staff officers also
took their own life. Members of the Landsturm Regiment 3 were woken one night at
the end of August 1914 by two shots nearby. An NCO went to check : ‘Our battalion
commander, Major Greisser, had shot himself. One shot through the mouth, the other
through the head. […] We buried him early in the morning.’550 This was also no iso-
lated incident.
Emperor Franz Joseph was informed. It was less the suicides that bothered him,
however, than the by now numerous dismissals of generals. He wanted to put a stop to
this. He informed the Army High Command that he was concerned about the number
of dismissals. There had in fact not been so many and Franz Joseph was probably not
informed about every single case. The most spectacular was certainly the dismissal of
the Commander of the 3rd Army, General Brudermann, on the same 4 September on
which Brudermann instructed Major General Paukert to resign his command. This
was the first removal of an army commander, not even three weeks after the war in
the north-eastern theatre had become a war of shooting. Brudermann, before the war
a cavalry troop inspector, had the task of containing the main bulk of the Russians in
their advance over Broday and Ternopil (Tarnopol). The Imperial and Royal 3rd Army
was swiftly forced back, however, and decimated in heavy encounters. Bringing up the
2nd Army from the Serbian theatre of war initially also failed to have an impact. The
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