Seite - 343 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Of Heroes and Cowards 343 hensible to some Germans that anyone with a ‘Moses confession’, as it was known at the time, could as a Jew reach the rank of general in the Imperial and Royal Army with- out any further complications. The Honvéd Minister of many years who then became chief of the replacement administration for the entire armed force of Austria-Hungary, Baron Samuel von Hazai, was Jewish. Anti-Semitism, which was also frequently to be found in Austria-Hungary, was however far less targeted at the members of the Impe- rial and Royal Army than the Jewish refugees of Galicia, who were accused of coward- ice and of profiting from the war. In this way, they were met with far greater aversion than the refugees from the east in general (see Chapter 26). The German Austrians had no cause for concern regarding their acceptance and the recognition of their role in the war,805 who perhaps even more than the Hungarians felt themselves to be the underpinning nation and, with a share of the population of around 25 per cent, made up most of the troops and above all most of the officers. Their death toll was therefore also enormous, and was disproportionately high in some regiments and in some theatres of war. However, from the beginning, they were somewhat more widely distributed than the troops of other nationalities. This had nothing to do with the fact that they were perhaps not entirely reliable, however, but that they were oc- casionally installed to bolster less reliable troop bodies and entire sections of the front. The Imperial and Royal Infantry Regiments No. 1, 4, 7, 27, 47, 49, 59, 73, 84 and 99, and ‘Kaiserjäger’ Imperial Rifle Regiments No. 1, 2, 3 and 4 were considered to be German, although the latter had a share of Italians of around forty per cent. Further German regiments were the Landwehr Infantry Regiments No. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 15, 21, 24 and 26, ‘Feldjäger’ Light Infantry Battalions No. 9 and 10 and the Tyrolean Standing Infantry Regiments I, II and III. There were also the Imperial and Royal Dragoon Regiments 3, 4 and 15, six of 42 field artillery regiments, three of 14 field howitzer regiments, tele- graph, technical and pioneer troops, as well as numerous troop bodies from all branches of the military, half or more of which were recruited from German-speaking members of the Habsburg Monarchy. Their reliability and bravery were almost never doubted. A comment made somewhat in passing, such as that relating to the battle to the north of Kraków (16–26 November 1914)  – ‘At that time, there was a clear difference in the fighting strength between our Slav and German regiments’ (Zeynek)  – does perhaps serve as an example. Except for smaller sections of some troop bodies and army components, most infan- try regiments came from the German-speaking regions of Austria-Hungary into the northern theatre of war. There, they were distributed mainly among the III Corps (2nd Army), II Corps (3rd Army) and the XIV Corps (4th Army). This clearly reflected the battles and engagements to which they were assigned. However, it was not only the German Austrian soldiers at the front who presented no cause for concern. On the home front, it could also be assumed that the people