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‘A ustria-Hungary’s final war’ was also by no means free of banalities. Still,
how-ever
banal silence, errors and white lies may have been, it was not immune to
being categorised as being ‘small cause, big effect’.
The ‘Parma Conspiracy’
By 1917 at the latest, it had become clear that the ‘August experience’ of 1914 had re-
ceived a counterpart. At that time, the aim had been to achieve ‘deliverance through
the war’. Now, however, what was needed was ‘deliverance from the war’. The mean-
ing of the war, which at the beginning had seemed unproblematic, now needed to
be written about and discussed with increasing frequency. It still appeared to be
easiest to substantiate the will to continue fighting the war with the argument that
the enormous sacrifices should not have been made for nothing. Russia was the first
country to question this line of argumentation. However, it proved difficult to make
the decisive step backwards. The Concert of Europe was dead
– or, to use the diction
of war – had remained ‘on the field of honour’. It is probably out of the question
that Emperor Karl wished to consciously take action to counter the unleashing of
the war. However, this is what it amounted to. Karl knew nothing of the steps that
had led to the unleashing of the war. For that reason, what he had been keen to set
in motion with a certain degree of naivety, and for which to him, neither the ‘official’
Austria-Hungary nor Germany appeared to offer the necessary leverage, may not
have been a systematic counter-activity, but Karl certainly wanted to ‘unleash’ the
peace. For him, it was clearly the case that while in military terms, Austria-Hungary
had not yet reached the end, its civilian resources had been used up. After a year of
attempts at concluding a peace, the Austrian Emperor was forced to acknowledge
that his efforts had been futile, however. The peace would not be unleashed. And in
a highly critical moment, when the secure world of the Imperial and Royal Army
suddenly transformed into the opposite, Karl was overtaken by the past from just
one year previously.
What became known as the ‘Sixtus Affair’ was of importance far less as a result of
the peace feelers on which it was founded, than due to the fact of its becoming known
and the consequences resulting from it. The contact between Emperor Karl and his
wife’s brothers, who were to help raise attempts at taking steps towards peace at a
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