Seite - 537 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Hindenburg Front 537 Minister Burián, the Austrian ambassador in Berlin, Prince Gottfried Hohenlohe, and other representatives of the Foreign Ministry, who involved themselves increasingly in the question as to whether the command in the east should not be transferred to the Germans. This was all overlaid by the dramatic development that was looming in Romania : the country that had waited even more than Italy for the most favourable moment to enter the war was evidently on the verge of taking this step. In Conrad’s eyes, the moment had therefore come in which the Central Powers would collapse. He saw one possibility to still prevent this, namely if the Germans and the Austrians jointly aimed a major strike against the southern flank of the Russian front. Conrad was prepared to do everything to bring this about : he even accepted Falkenhayn’s sug- gestion of transferring a Turkish corps to the Galician front. Finally, he beseeched the Foreign Minister to emphatically make a request to Berlin to assist the threatened eastern front, and for the first time he was prepared to back down on the question of the supreme command.1264 Hohenlohe intervened with Bethmann-Hollweg. Thus, it was no longer the case that questions of operational command were discussed purely at the military level be- tween Conrad and Falkenhayn ; they now became the subject of foreign policy. In this way, something quite positive in itself had happened, namely the return of the conduct of war to the political arena, but this was not in fact quite the case, since to be precise it was in fact foreign policy that had been placed in the service of the war. What had been achieved by this step manifested itself immediately. Bethmann Hollweg, who assured Hohenlohe that he would champion Vienna’s cause, promptly recommended to Falkenhayn that he ‘buy’ the strengthening of the eastern front from the Imperial and Royal Army High Command by expanding Hindenburg’s command. The problem, however, was that it was precisely this that Falkenhayn did not want to do, since the creation of the Hindenburg front would inevitably directly affect him. He rejected the proposal. Burián did not give up. He knew  – or believed he knew, as did others in Vi- enna  – that Conrad’s standing with Emperor Franz Joseph had suffered enormously.1265 He joined forces with the Permanent Secretary in the German Foreign Ministry, Got- tfried von Jagow, who was for his part working on the German Emperor, just like Beth- mann-Hollweg. The war weariness of Hungary, the potential Romanian entry into the war, and the necessity to retain Bulgaria as an active ally  – which was impossible for Austria-Hungary, though perhaps still possible for Germany  – also persuaded Kaiser Wilhelm to see the Hindenburg problem in a new light. Conrad was once more invited to a conference in Berlin on 18 July. Alone the frequency of the meetings at the highest level in Berlin, for which there was nothing comparable in Vienna, could be understood as a signal. But no tangible results were achieved this time either. Conrad reported to the Military Chancellery  – at its request  – at considerable length on the course of the conference, and emphasised his main arguments : even a Hindenburg was unable to