Seite - 374 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

374 ‘The King of Italy has declared war on Me was thus to be deferred. A study had been presented by one Professor Brückner that provided information on the ethnic situation. The Italy specialist in the Army High Command, Lieutenant Colonel Schneller, was brought to Vienna in order to allow mil- itary considerations to also flow into a new demarcation.883 Conrad even instructed that care be taken to talk only of Trentino and not South Tyrol. He furthermore expressed a widespread view, especially in the military, when he said that it should be possible ‘to divest the enemy of the ceded land as soon as possible’.884 How deeply Conrad was stung by the concession and how much the Austrian pro- tagonists were dominated by an element of impotence became evident from a lengthy letter to Foreign Minister Burián from 2 April, in which Conrad regarded a special peace with Russia to be more feasible than the prevention of an Italian entry into the war. He wanted, however, that an armistice be concluded with Russia only with the aim of giving the Imperial and Royal armies a free hand for the war against Italy.885 Here revenge was in play again and the perfidy should be punished. It was as though Vienna knew that Italy was receiving simultaneous assurances from the Allies not to conclude a separate peace. Conrad said it was out of the question to wage war simultaneously with Russia, Serbia and Italy. A peaceful settlement thus had to be reached immediately with one of the opponents. Russia could be accommodated in the question of the Turkish Straits and even the cession of East Galicia would be a far smaller sacrifice to make than the cession of Tyrol and the Austrian Littoral to Italy. Such arguments, however, were already illusory. And the dilemma could not be any more complete : at the beginning of April, Russia was still at the peak of its military successes and did not intend to conclude a separate peace. Then came Gorlice–Tarnów. Russia had defeat in sight, but knew that Italy’s entry into the war was imminent and thus did nothing to conclude a peace. On the Austrian side, moreover, no attempt was made to actually enter into talks with the Russians. All these considerations only existed on paper, likewise the demand made shortly thereafter by Conrad that an agreement be reached with Serbia, which he imagined would not be easy, but at least possible : ‘I have’, he wrote to Bolfras, ‘identi- fied the solution of the southern Slav question as the most important problem of the Monarchy and emphasised that the merging of the southern Slavs is an inevitable fact that, if it does not take place within the Monarchy, will resolve itself outwardly to the detriment of the latter. Back then, it was neglected to achieve the peaceful annexation of Serbia ; in 1909 we [then] failed to bring this about by force, as I urgently advised. Perhaps the opportunity poses itself now to achieve our objective by peaceful means, since Serbia does not look to Italy with great trust. […] I think that we must make it clear to Serbia that it can only achieve its dreams of unity and access to the Adriatic Sea in close association with the Monarchy, in other words via its annexation by the latter as a federal state, just like Bavaria in the German Empire […].’886