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930 An Empire Resigns
not run the risk of being dismissed from his post due to temporary failure, an acute
illness or age-related frailty (he was not yet 50 years old). In many respects, however, he
no longer had any prospects. He gave up. Where was his homeland ? Was he Czech or
German ? How were things to proceed ? Four years at the same hierarchical level was
enough to discourage anyone. He no longer saw any purpose in his own life and per-
haps no longer wanted to witness the dying on the Montello. It was out of the question
for him to desert like many of his Czech compatriots. He chose another way of ending
his dilemma. On the third day of the June offensive, Bolzano left his dugout and began
during the late afternoon to approach upright the Italian lines. He passed the foremost
Austrian sentries, was called to and warned. But he continued, apparently undeterred.
Evidently, he was aiming for the Italian lines. Finally, he was shouted at : ‘General, Sir,
if you go any further, I must shoot !’ Bolzano continued. He was called upon once more.
The sentry was beside himself. But then he shot with his machine gun and killed his
brigadier. Heinrich Bolzano Edler von Kronstätt lay dying between the lines.2240
This was a curiously tragic death and unparalleled. Had it really been an attempt
to desert ? Had Brigadier Bolzano been hoping to find death ? Was he aware that he
would not reach the Italian lines alive ? On 18 June, the 25th Rifle Brigade reported
that the Brigadier ‘had suffered a confusion of the mind and, in this incompetent con-
dition, been killed in an accident or fallen into enemy hands’. The Army High Com-
mand summarised the incident briefly and erroneously : Bolzano had ‘succumbed to
his grave wounds in Italian prisoner of war captivity’. The troops and the staff of Army
Group Boroević knew better.2241
Since the first weeks of the war, there had been no further suicide on the part of a
general. In the final analysis, it had been a suicide, even if the means of death had been
different. Different, at least, to General Paukert, who had lain himself in front of a train
in September 1914.
From winter 1914/15, dismissals of generals had become rarer. The fighting in the
Carpathians and the subsequent months of the war had led in individual cases to gen-
erals being dismissed on the basis of the accusation that they had failed. Overall, how-
ever, the command structures appeared to have been consolidated. This did not mean,
of course, that the most senior commands did not repeatedly issue strong rebukes or
positively lock horns, as in the case of the Army High Command on the one side
and the Commander of the 5th Army, General Boroević on the other. Even before
the assumption of command on the Isonzo, Boroević had occasionally caused havoc
and, like the Army High Command, was hard to beat in his directness when it came
to expressing himself. Thus, Boroević explained his demand following the dismissal of
Major General Anton Lipošćak in mid-January 1915, for example, with the unsubtle
formulation that the Major General ‘did not understand the situation and seems ac-
cording to his reports still not to understand it even now’.2242 The Commander of the
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