Seite - 835 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918
Bild der Seite - 835 -
Text der Seite - 835 -
Siberian
Clarity 835
them were brought to Niš and accommodated in the Turkish-built fortress there. Then
a period began that one of the captive officers, Robert Salomon, described as the ‘bore-
dom of a bleak life in captivity’. ‘It was not the Serbian rulers who particularly soured
our lives here, either’, but the Czechs had a bad reputation, above all when they had
devoted themselves ‘to the Russian or the Yugoslav cause’.1985
In October 1915, there was an abrupt change. With the progression of the Ger-
man-Austro-Hungarian-Bulgarian offensive in autumn 1915, not only the Serbian
King, the government and the remains of the army set off for Montenegro and Albania.
They also took the prisoners of war with them. As many as 110,000 members of the
Imperial and Royal Army had fallen into Serbian captivity in 1914 until the evacua-
tion marches. Fewer than 100,000 of them were still alive, since typhus had also raged
among the prisoners of war in winter 1914/15. Some of the prisoners, above all most
of the 5,840 imperial Germans and 8,000 Bulgarians, were left behind, but the Serbs
wanted to take the larger part of the Austrians with them. Thus began the great mor-
tality. It can no longer be ascertained how many prisoners of war died. Figures fluctuate
between around thirty per cent and half of those who set out on the evacuation marches.
Their journey lasted 58 days, of which 29 days were spent marching. Around 7,000
kilometres were walked. Some of the soldiers no longer wore any shoes. Their uniforms
were in tatters. The supply system collapsed, whilst diseases, especially typhus and chol-
era, raged.1986 When the Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war reached the coast in Alba-
nia and were transferred to the Italians, fewer than 20,000 prisoners were brought on to
the ships of the evacuation fleet. That was only twenty per cent of those who had set out
from former Serbian territory. But the odyssey was still not over. The Austrian prisoners
of war were brought to the Italian prison island Asinara off the coast of Sicily. Those
who were suffering from cholera were herded together with all the others. In addition,
dysentery broke out. On one transport of the Duca di Genova alone, around 500 of
the more than 3,000 prisoners contracted dysentery, of which 200 died.1987 After their
arrival on Asinara, the dying continued on a massive scale. The Italian doctors were
powerless. A Vatican dignitary, however, who visited the Austro-Hungarian prisoners
of war, found no fault with the conditions and sent a reassuring letter back to Rome.1988
Finally, in summer 1916, around 12,000 survivors were brought to France.1989
To date, little attention has been paid to the prisoners of war of the Imperial and
Royal Army who were in Serbian custody. The most plausible explanation for this is that
this group was numerically much smaller than those who fell into Russian and Italian
captivity. Therefore, after the war, the memories of the ‘Siberian clarity’, as Heimito von
Doderer called it in his account of captivity, as well as those of the Pontine Marshes,
were dominant.
For the troops on the Russian front, prisoner of war captivity had also been a mental
taboo. But from the first day of the campaign on, prisoners were exchanged. The Rus-
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