Seite - 437 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Attempt to Topple Stürgkh 437 properties by foreigners and the residence of foreigners in militarily important border regions. Ultimately, it was the government that gave most attention to this application ; in view of the resistance of Hungary, however, which had also pursued the dissolution of the old Croatian military border, there was little real chance of it being realised. The Attempt to Topple Stürgkh Given the multitude of proposals, applications, position papers and intrigues that both of the most senior commands brought into circulation, one must ask whether it re- ally fell within the jurisdiction of the Army High Command and the Command of the South-Western Front, or whether at all events excess capacity for thought could not have been redirected more effectively into other areas, or the staffs reduced over- all. Evidently, those considerations that more intensively addressed the army itself, its structures and its problems, which became more obvious on a daily basis, fell short. For example, it must be asked why the number of complaints to the military courts in the rear areas, i.e. not at the front, could rise between 1914 and 1916 from 2,058 to 22,954, whereby the numbers doubled from 1915 to 1916. It would also have been worth con- sidering why in Vienna, for example, the number of officers charged by military courts exceeded that of the enlisted men proportionately by a quarter or, in Zagreb (Agram), by a third.1047 Yet Cieszyn and Maribor were evidently less concerned about the worry- ing developments in the Imperial and Royal Army and Navy. It was more comfortable to blame social ills on the hinterland and on politics. In spite of numerous applications on the part of the Army High Command for domestic political changes, the result was rather modest. Proposals such as those for school reform, the forfeiture of assets, changes in the political division, the creation of a border protection zone, as well as others, were repeatedly taken up by the Austrian and Hungarian governments and partially realised. Most of the applications, however, ulti- mately remained unfulfilled. The criticism of individual ministers, but also of the entire cabinet and, above all, the Austrian Prime Minister, rose. Archduke Friedrich and Con- rad were not prepared, however, to support an initiative by members of the Austrian House of Representatives, namely Gustav Marchet and Josef Maria Baernreither as well as the prominent historian Heinrich Friedjung, for toppling Stürgkh. The three men went to Cieszyn at the end of July 1915, evidently fully aware of the possibilities of this power centre for influencing policy. Yet they departed without having achieved anything. Perhaps it was merely the case that the wrong people had gone to work. Two months later, there was another constellation and the initiative was taken  – at least formally  – by the Army High Command itself. The steps taken by the Army High Command to overthrow the Austrian Prime Minister, however, were also in this case