Seite - 533 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918
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The Hindenburg Front 533
word had already been spoken. Karl Franz Josef became Commander of the 12th Army,
to which the Imperial and Royal 7th Army and the German South Army were then
subordinated. He thus led de facto three armies, i.e. an army group. Seeckt became
his chief of staff and Colonel von Waldstätten, who had already accompanied Karl to
South Tyrol, where he had been his chief of staff with the XX Corps, became his Gen-
eral Staff Officer ‘for special purposes’ (‘zur besonderen Verwendung’). One of the corps
commanders, and indeed the Commander of the Imperial and Royal VI Corps, soon
made a name for himself as well, namely General of Infantry Arz von Straußenburg.
Waldstätten and Arz soon became indispensable to the heir to the throne.
The Hindenburg Front
The Germans had not automatically succeeded in appearing as saviour and military
miracle worker, since the attacks of the Army Group Linsingen and, finally, attempts to
push Pflanzer’s 7th Army forward again, both failed. The German divisions and corps
transferred to Bukovina were also unable to force their way through. This may have
comforted the Austrians. Nevertheless, there were increased tensions, since as usual
one side shifted the blame to the other : there had been too little support, the troops
had failed, they were led poorly or ‘the Prussians’ could not win the trust of the troops,
which frequently consisted of Landsturm (reserve forces) and newly arrived march
battalions. But it was the Imperial and Royal troops who repeatedly suffered severe
setbacks. Brody was lost, the 4th Army suffered new defeats, and Böhm-Ermolli’s 2nd
Army plunged into a crisis. The arrival of the divisions rolling in from South Tyrol
was delayed, so that German divisions once more had to be relocated and deployed
in emergency actions. Pflanzer, whose dismissal had been pursued for weeks by Falk-
enhayn and who was not popular with the heir to the throne, was driven back to the
Carpathians. Now things seemed to revolve around Hungary.
But it was a completely different section of the eastern front where something deci-
sive was being prepared, namely the region north of the Pripyat Marshes around Bar-
anovichi. There, the Russian 4th Army (Evert) had gone on the offensive, but – unlike
Brusilov – had been massively reinforced and failed in the initial stages, although the
main weight had again and not coincidentally been directed against an Imperial and
Royal Corps, the XII Corps (General of Infantry Henriquez). This was of course grist
for the mill of those who claimed that the same could not happen with Hindenburg,
Ludendorff, Woyrsch, etc. as had happened with Friedrich, Conrad, Pflanzer and the
other ‘Comrades Lace-Up’.
With this, those who demanded that the entire Imperial and Royal north-eastern
front be placed under a German commander received a new impetus. And this demand
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