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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
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