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Four
Million Heroes 939
Everything was subsumed under the term ‘gigantic heroic struggle’. There were, how-
ever, more than just individual observations. And there was also another image of the
soldiers. ‘In the opinion of most of our officers, an Austrian regiment is recruited from
nothing but pigs and other critters’, can be read in the family and estate papers B/428
in the War Archives in Vienna. ‘The noble gentlemen turned out to be human beings
who anxiously endeavoured not to die a hero’s death, since that’s what we’re here for’,
as it was stated elsewhere.2263 This could be contrasted with the words of Second Lieu-
tenant of the Reserve Josef Aschauer, who wrote in his diary that ‘the good soldier is
a personality […] not behind the oven but in the wind, rain and snow, he sees himself
confronted with problems that he must tackle with reflection and action. […] His body
is able to cope with all exertions and hardships. Filled with exalted love for his people,
and for his homeland, he foregoes comfort and dies in the field.’2264 All these types
existed : the good soldiers, the pigs and the ‘critters’. Most of them were soldiers by duty.
In order to make use of them for the military and war service, those who were tempo-
rarily exempted from military service, eligible with restrictions or completely ineligible
were repeatedly mustered anew. They were called before the inspection commissions
up to five times. There were also repeatedly submissions from volunteers and the fear
of joining the war too late and not being involved when the history of the twentieth
century was being written.
The veterans, however, had long since begun a fight for memory. They insisted on
the erection of memorials, and took advantage of positional warfare to produce stone
or metal clues that they had been there, that their headquarters had been located here
or there and above all that they had lost comrades. In one place, for example, were the
words : ‘To the fallen heroes of the Flitsch basin, 1915–1917’. Large and small cem-
eteries assumed the quality of memorial sites and were designed to recall the Great
War, which had to end sometime. Emperor Franz Joseph had hoped that the erection
of memorials would be postponed until after the war. His wishes had not always been
respected, and in the meantime the initiatives had accumulated. The desire for the
construction of memorials was not always conformed with, however, and there was
a struggle for memory here as well. The dispute over the erection for Imperial-Royal
Rifle (previously Landwehr) Regiment No. 8 could be regarded as thoroughly repre-
sentative : the replacement battalion of the regiment envisaged a spot in front of the
barracks in Prague’s Castle Quarter, on Pohořelec square, for a memorial in honour
of the fallen members of the regiment. The military command in Prague indicated a
location on the grounds of the planned garrison cemetery in the district of Kobylisy.
The officer corps of the regiment, however, insisted on the Castle Quarter. Once more,
however, there was a strict rejection and the military command explained this with the
‘not faultless conduct’ of the regiment in the field as well as that of the replacement
battalion at the beginning of the war, which did ‘not justify a privileged location for
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