Seite - 937 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Four Million Heroes 937 It is difficult to subject the soldiers of the World War to a uniform evaluation and to use only one word for them. There were, after all  – and this should make the dimensions to some extent comprehensible  – more than eight million members of the Imperial and Royal Army, of whom half a million had fallen and without doubt not all of whom were heroes. Perhaps they only became heroes as a result of the war memorials, by means of the efforts of the survivors and later generations to make sense of a soldier’s death, the circumstances of which they frequently were not aware of. They died for their father- land but they were not to have died as cowards, since they would then have violated the basic requirements of the military and everything that had been invested in them in terms of desires, hopes and faith. Many of them will indeed have died as heroes, as people who overcame their fear, saved lives but also destroyed lives. In the files of the troop and army bodies and, finally, in the reports of the armies to the War Ministry, generally the words ‘dead, wounded, sick, captive and missing’ appear. The numbers re- flect only the final interpretation. All those who died from their wounds or in prisoner of war captivity could for a long time not be identified. How should they be defined though ? Did all those cited in the files die a hero’s death ? Were all prisoners of war cowards ? Did the sick and the wounded all die honourably ? On the heroes’ cemeteries and the memorials  – which were already erected during the war in spite of all restrictive measures  – they became anonymous masses, in spite of being mentioned by name, and it was only their comrades and relatives who remembered them as individuals. Stephan von Madáy, who became well-known as a horse psychologist and lived in Innsbruck, attempted in September 1915 by differentiating between fighters and work- ers to describe the change that the soldiers had undergone during their transition from soldiers of peace to soldiers of war. The fighter was a ‘soldier by inclination’ (Lustsoldat) and the other a ‘soldier by duty’ (Pflichtsoldat). Both were necessary. Moreover, ever more soldiers were required who were constant and capable as workers. The conduct of war resembled ever more ‘the character of methodical work’. The battles lasted longer and longer, whilst the fighter had to ‘endure weeks and months of enemy fire’.2257 In a barrage, however, perhaps no soldiers by inclination were required. The infantryman Hans Pözer described in Drei Tage am Isonzo (Three Days on the Isonzo) his feelings during the barrage in the (probably sixth) battle : ‘At that moment I was not human but some living creature whose nerves were not enough to comprehend the fearsomeness of the moment and yet were too strong to buckle.’2258 The mental components of the fighting experienced an immense increase in importance. It was no longer a question of attacks or physical strength, but only psychological equilibrium. The soldier by duty and the military worker naturally did not embody the image of the dashing cavalier or that of the ‘Kaiserjäger’ imperial rifleman on the Col di Lana. This was the dilemma. Nothing filtered through of the cavalryman’s life, the romanti- cism of the Standschützen (members of rifle companies) and the volunteers, but instead