Seite - 536 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

536 Lutsk : The End of an Illusion (II) Four commissions had the task of scouring the garrisons in the corps command areas on the look-out for able-bodied men for service at the front. The commissions were empowered to order anyone on leave to report for duty, to ascertain the medical con- dition of the person in question and to oblige the suitable men to return to service before the expiry of their leave.1261 Shirkers had been searched for previously, but now the required fitness levels were lowered and those who had been returned to civilian life previously or classified as ‘less fit’ were now drafted. Authorities and departments were inspected unannounced and in this way tens of thousands were called up by a single commission.1262 The most well-known general officer to spread such disquiet was Brigadier Josef Teisinger. ‘Teisinger is coming !’ became an alarm and sayings associated with the General were repeatedly quoted : ‘The trench air will strengthen your weak heart’, or ‘You don’t need to lift the arm that hurts you ; you only need to shoot with it’.1263 The ‘Teisinger Action’ was ultimately only a drop in the ocean. It could not be prevented that there were repeatedly sections with too few, unreliable, poorly trained or physically and mentally unfit troops. If they got into difficulties, then they tended all too quickly to drop everything, so that during retreats huge amounts of weapons and armaments were also lost. This could also not completely and not immediately be offset, although the Austro-Hungarian armaments industry achieved its highest levels of output at precisely this time. From raw iron and steel, via practically all weapons, to the ammunition for infantry and artillery, in 1916 the highest manufacturing figures of the entire war were recorded. Complaints about a lack of war material could only have a palliative effect, for what did they amount to in view of reports that positions were evacuated so quickly, that artil- lery could no longer be withdrawn and instead fell into Russian hands, or considering the number of prisoners of war, which reached the tens of thousands and, ultimately, the hundreds of thousands ? From a total loss of 475,000 men among the Imperial and Royal troops as a result of the Brusilov Offensive, 226,000 prisoners of war were counted. With figures like this, rifles and guns really could get scarce. The causes of the signs of disintegration were in fact far more deep-seated, and the reports of a tremendous war weariness in Hungary and elsewhere, which appeared as early as the beginning of July 1916, allow the conclusion that the willingness to continue fighting had slackened in general and that civilians and soldiers were not only tired of the war but also that no-one any longer saw any sense in the fight against the Russians. The soldiers did not want to go on, they had to some extent lost faith in their officers, leadership was failing, and the operational ability of the staffs was in many cases unconvincing. The result was a hasty evacuation of sections and, even more noticeable, surrenders on a mass scale. Faith in Conrad had been successively damaged, and this faith had dwindled dra- matically in particular in the Foreign Ministry. Thus, it was the political leadership,