Seite - 334 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

334 Under Surveillance ginning of the war, there had also been a huge wave of anti-Serbian resentment. One only had to look at the rampaging of the Bosnians and Croats to have corresponding fears about the will to fight and the reliability of those troop bodies that contained a significant share of Serbs. And how a petition was to be judged in which Serbs true to the Habsburg Monarchy requested that ‘they be sent to the front and allowed to fight against Serbia in order to prove to their Emperor that they have nothing to do with the murder’ remained to be seen.780 Given the situation, it did in reality appear to be an imperative of the hour not to deploy the Serbs in the Balkan theatre of war. However, things turned out differently, and later the high-ranking Imperial and Royal officers would still be constantly surprised that the ‘Croatian-Serbian heroes, despite all temptations offered by the enemy, not only stood their ground, but also performed acts of heroism of ancient classical proportions’.781 The Serbs represented 79 per cent of the troops of Infantry Regiment No. 70 (‘Peterwaradein’). The regiment was divided into three infantry divisions : the 7th, 18th and 32nd, which in turn belonged to three different corps, although all three were initially used in the Balkan theatre of war. For Infantry Regiments No. 6, 29 and 86, the share of Serbs was low, and the officers had already vouched for the reliability of their troops before the war. There was also a higher proportion of Serbs among the Honvéd Infantry Regiment No. 8. For the Imperial-Royal Landwehr, however  – as was the case with the Romanians  – there was not a single regiment that had any significant share of Serbs. Equally, there was not one cavalry regiment with Serbian troops. The Serbs deployed in the XIII Corps were said to be behaving courageously.782 It then emerged, however, that the Serbs did not remain immune to developments. And the concerns about their reliability increased to the same degree as the number of atroc- ities in this theatre of war on both sides. The Balkan High Command reacted to reports claiming that Imperial and Royal Army troops who were taken prisoner had their noses, ears, and even arms and legs cut off, and that they had been bestially murdered, with drastic reprisals, hostage-taking and executions. If shots were fired from a house, the inhabitants were driven together and shot, and the house was set on fire.783 Actions such as those witnessed during the brief Serbian invasion in Semlin in Sep- tember 1914 also added to the mistrust of the Serbian population within Austria-Hun- gary. In Semlin, the Serbian troops had been greeted with flowers and flags, and already on the day before the rapid clearance of the town, the main street had been renamed after King Petar and a Serbian mayor had been installed. On 13 September, the Ser- bophiles fled across the Sava River together with the retreating Royal Serbian soldiers. The second offensive of the Imperial and Royal troops then put an end to the invasion. However, the mistrust remained and appeared to be vindicated when  – according to a description given by Alfred Krauß, then commander of the ‘Combined Corps’  – two companies of a Landsturm brigade crossed over to the Royal Serbian troops during the