Seite - 948 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

948 An Empire Resigns the peoples of the Monarchy are more intimately bound together in kinsmanship than [they were] at the outset. Naturally, the combat value has waned’, but this was also the case in the German Army. The Prussian War Minister Wild von Hohenborn, who was not exactly a fan of Conrad’s, noted : ‘I think he is right.’2279 The criticism of the behaviour of troops shifted increasingly during the course of the war to the political level, whilst in the Hungarian Reichstag (Imperial Diet) and then in the Austrian Reichsrat (Imperial Assembly) emotions were running high. Ultimately, no-one escaped unscathed. It was also possible to follow how one nationality stirred up hatred against another and was incited. Budapest lodged the complaint that impe- rial German and Austrian commanders had insulted Hungarian officers and soldiers. Count Apponyi went even further and sharply criticised in September 1916  – in rela- tion to the declaration of war by Romania  – Archduke Friedrich, whom he regarded due to his incapability as to blame for the Germans being so dominant. Count Karolyi polemically asked whether the King of Hungary (i.e. Franz Joseph) had abdicated in favour of the German Kaiser.2280 The language intensified. To describe the Army Su- preme Commander publicly as ‘incapable’ was an indication of this. What practically all the peoples of the Empire had in common was that they yearned for an end to the war. The people were frustrated because the fifty-year-olds had already been mustered for the fourth time. This made no sense to them.2281 The war continued, however, and one had to ask how the internal disintegration of the army was to be brought under control. In the event of presumed or proven unreliability, was a solution to be sought whereby troop bodies with a dominant national affiliation were deployed far away from those fronts where they were subjected not only to enemy propaganda but also to their national sentiments ? In the case of the ‘Kaiserjäger’ Imperial Rifle Regiments, for example, the route had been taken to reduce the proportion of Italians, and it had been dramatically cut. In ‘Kaiserjäger’ Imperial Rifle Regiment No. 2, now only 6 per cent were Italians, as compared with 41 per cent at the beginning of the war. The first and third regiments now only had 2per cent instead of previously 38 per cent of Italians, whilst the fourth regiment was regarded as free of Italians. Instead, thousands of Italians were stuck in Landwehr Regiment No. 5, whose proportion of Italians had been 20 per cent before the war and which in 1918 boasted more than 60 per cent. Eight so-called ‘south-west- ern battalions’ had been formed that belonged to a new category, namely the P.U. units, which stood for ‘politically unreliable’. They were deployed almost exclusively for security tasks in the interior of the Empire.2282 Was it the solution to deploy the Italians who remained in the front formations only in Russia and the Ruthenians in Italy ? Could the leadership problems, which were related to a stronger national mixing, and above all the linguistic problems be brought under control ? Was it really the case  – as the Russians were occasionally characterised  – that patriotism was not a real concept for the Czechs, Ruthenians and other Slavs and that they therefore surrendered automatically or prac-