Seite - 953 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Army Disintegrates 953 people portrayed their motives in the best possible, and indeed dazzling, light, mingled truth and fiction, and painted as gloomy a picture as possible of the troops they had just left. When, in February 1918, two Slovaks from Imperial and Honvéd (Hungarian stand- ing army) Infantry Regiment No. 1 deserted, they stated that they had been treated badly, suffered from hunger and could no longer bear their German and Hungarian comrades. A Romanian from the Imperial and Royal Infantry Regiment No. 64 made a similar state- ment : he had been treated poorly by the Hungarian officers, and ‘the Austro-Hungarian soldier receives more blows than bread’.2301 The prisoners of war and the deserters repeat- edly cited increasing privation, deficient nourishment and also the catastrophic hygiene conditions as the cause of their very personal renunciation of the Empire.2302 For the Al- lies and the exile organisations it was a case of following up on this. ‘Our cause is flourish- ing’, as it said on a leaflet signed by the Croat Ante Trumbić. ‘Everyone is convinced that Austria will no longer exist after the war. […] Fight fearlessly and energetically with all [your] power against “Central Europe”, in order to allow a free Yugoslavia to emerge.’2303 More and more officers deserted. Some of them then found themselves in Ljudevit Piv- ko’s ‘Yugoslav unit’. Troops who had been regarded throughout the war as particularly reliable, now showed signs of inner disintegration, whilst those who then deserted did not care that they were regarded as traitors. The hunger and the hopelessness were stronger motivations. Among the reasons for deserting, hunger was cited six times as often as na- tionalistic reasons.2304 In such a situation, no propaganda was needed. When the Italians captured the war diary of the almost completely Croat Infantry Regiment No. 96, they naturally read with interest what the War Surveillance Office recommended for keeping the troops in line. Among other things, it was urged that battalions receive patriotic instruction on a weekly basis ; the Emperor’s Hymn was to be practised and sung loudly, and the officers were also to be present and to join in.2305 The success of such measures was not quantifiable. During the course of the Piave Offensive, around 12,000 Imperial and Royal sol- diers fell into prisoner of war captivity or deserted. In July 1918, two Czech Uhlans, evidently from Uhlan Regiment No. 11, recounted that their comrades were united in their hatred for the Germans and hoped for an Allied offensive in order that they could surrender. One Polish gunner, who had deserted to the Italians in August 1918, related that many Austrian Poles wanted to desert but they were discouraged as non-swim- mers by the prospect of having to cross the Piave. Therefore, most of them took the route to the north, into the interior of the Dual Monarchy.2306 Tens of thousands of soldiers were busy searching for deserters. They had barely any success  – and perhaps did not want to, either. The desertion problem was also addressed in the Reichsrat. The Polish deputy Her- mann Liebermann took the view that the patrols looking for deserters were complete nonsense and the damage done to the ‘peaceful population’ was incomparably higher