Seite - 880 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

880 The Inner Front The ‘Bread Peace’ After the back and forth regarding the participation of Austro-Hungarian troops in the advance into Ukraine, General Arz had, as mentioned, cut the ‘Gordian knot’ and informed Field Marshal Hindenburg on 26 February that Austria-Hungary intended to occupy the railway lines to Odessa.2097 Two days later, the troops of the Imperial and Royal 2nd Army set off. The commander of this operation, Field Marshal Böhm-Er- molli, did the accepted thing in such situations : he instructed his troops that the entry into the neighbouring country was a case of peaceful assistance for a friendly and not yet consolidated state.2098 Baggage train and combat troops were loaded on to railway carriages and trundled off to the south-east. The country, into which the Imperial and Royal troops advanced, however, was anything but peaceful. Kiev, Kharkiv, Odessa, Zhytomyr and other large cities in Ukraine were occupied by the Bolsheviks, and the Ukrainian government was on the run. Suddenly, the peculiar situation arose that the western Allies and the Central Powers had a mutual enemy : the Soviet regime in Russia. However, the troops that resisted the Central Powers could not be regarded as a serious opponent. German and Austro-Hungarian divisions advanced successively into Ukraine, whereby the Germans, who had commenced their advance earlier, certainly bore the main brunt of the fighting, but also occupied the most interesting territories, above all the Donets Basin and Crimea. Occasionally, hostilities also occurred during the advance of the Imperial and Royal 2nd Army. Disruptions in the railway lines also had a delaying effect. Overall, however, the Chief of the Imperial and Royal General Staff stated that ‘in view of the complete disruption of the Russian Army, its sensitive deficiencies in trained leaders of all ranks as well as the total lack of discipline of the Russian soldiers, [the operations could] be carried out with particular speed’.2099 On 13 March, Austrian and German troops were in Odessa. The Imperial and Royal Danube Flotilla cleared the final mines from the Danube Delta and entered the Black Sea via the Sulina mouth of the Danube.2100 The Russian Black Sea Fleet steamed to Sevas- topol. On 28 March, an agreement was reached with the German Empire, according to which Austria-Hungary was to occupy the Podolia, Kherson and Yekaterinoslav Gov- ernorates. All other governorates fell to the Germans.2101 However, if it had been as- sumed in February 1918 that conditions in Ukraine would relatively quickly normalise following the entry of the troops of the Central Powers, the contrary turned out to be the case. The administration had collapsed, the ‘Central Rada’ of Ukraine could not assert itself and local councils refused to cooperate with the troops of the Central Powers. Odessa did not even feel part of Ukraine. The farmers, who had taken posses- sion of the land, were interested in receiving protection from the troops of the Central