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Labor, War, and Revolution in a Habsburg Industrial District, 1906-1919

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Labor, War, and Revolution in a Habsburg Industrial District, 1906-1919 CALAMITOUS METHODS OF COMPULSION: LABOR, WAR, AND REVOLUTION IN A HABSBURG INDUSTRIAL DISTRICT, 1906-1919 John Robertson A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the decree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History. Chapel Hill 2014 Approved by: Chad Bryant Konrad Jarausch Wayne Lee Louise McReynolds Donald Reid © 2014 John Robertson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT John Robertson: Calamitous Methods of Compulsion: Labor, War, and Revolution in a Habsburg Industrial District, 1906-1919 (Under the direction of Chad Bryant) This investigation re-centers violence in the domestic experience of the First World War in order to explain the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy, arguing that the First World War revolutionized the experience of Habsburg governance in the Ostrava-Karviná industrial district. Before the outbreak of war, the state acted as judge and arbiter; afterwards it acted as tyrant, according to plans laid out before the war. The tyrannical character of war-time Habsburg governance as it sought to mobilize and coerce industrial labor hollowed out the state, as deprivation and violence drove desperation and resistance. Ultimately by the summer of 1918 the Habsburg state had become disposable, shattering Habsburg authority long before the formal end of Habsburg rule in the Bohemian lands. The end of the war and the dissolution of the Habsburg state opened up a moment of broad political and social possibilities, in which the ethno- nationalist and class politics suppressed by the war re-emerged as competing power centers. Though there were many claimants for legitimacy and loyalty in Ostrava-Karviná, the iron fist of the Czech Legion led to the establishment of a new multi-ethnic empire in Ostrava-Karviná - Czecho-Slovakia. iii To James Kyle Doyle, without whom none of this would have been possible. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many people who have made this work possible, and they all have my deepest gratitude. I would first of all like to thank my parents, who raised me with inexhaustible love, care, and affection and always supported my scholastic pursuits even when they took me halfway around the world. I would like to thank my grandparents as well, for always loving and believing in me. Despite my infrequent e-mails, you have been in my thoughts often. For whatever degree of academic rigor this work displays I am greatly indebted to a long series of excellent teachers who have challenged and taught me how to think critically, how to analyze documents and events, and how to shape and write scholarly arguments. Chris Hays and Russ Brown at Poudre High School set my path firmly on that of a historian and offered an inspirational model of teaching which I have never forgotten. During my time at the University of Miami I became deeply indebted to Dr. Hermann Beck, who saw potential in me as a European historian and provided many of the opportunities and mentoring which allowed me to succeed in graduate school. I am likewise indebted to Dr. Anthony Krupp, who dedicated an enormous amount of time, care, and effort to cultivating my facility with the German language as well as an ability to think more deeply about what language reveals and hides. In my seven years as a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill I have been blessed with support and teaching far beyond my merit. My graduate advisor, Dr. Chad Bryant, has been a remarkable advisor, mentor, and supporter. His unfailing support, kindness, and keen intellect has been absolutely essential to the successful completion of this work as well v as the maintenance of my sanity over the last seven years. I would also like to thank Dr. Wayne Lee for all his support and and teaching during my graduate career. I have always considered myself a military historian, and thanks to Dr. Lee I can make such claim with a straight face. Dr. Konrad Jarausch, Dr. Louise McReynolds, and Dr. Donald Reid have also at various times significantly impacted the way I think about history as a discipline and my own work in particular, and I would like to thank them for imparting some of their knowledge to me as well as for their support for my academic career. During my time in Ostrava doing research for this dissertation, Dr. Petr Popelka was enormously kind and generous to me during a challenging time, and I will forever be grateful for that. I am also grateful to the Fulbright Commission for generously funding my research in the Czech Republic. I have also been incredibly lucky in my fellow graduate students in my time at Carolina, both personally and professionally. In no particular order I am deeply grateful to Brad Proctor, Zach Smith, Greg Mole, David Williard, Brittany Lehman, Patrick Tobin, Laura Sims, Dan Giblin, Andrew Haeberlin, Waitman Beorn, Jen Lynn, Julie Ault, Laura Brade, Mark Slagle, Adam Domby, Jen Kosmin, Alex Ruble, Peter Gengler, Sarah Barksdale, Claire McLendon, and Doreen Thierauf. Finally, I would like to give my heartfelt thanks to Vanessa Boisvert, at whose kitchen table much of this dissertation was written, for her love and support. Also my thanks to Sushia Boisvert, who did her best to prevent me from completing the writing process. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES......................................................................................................................viii A NOTE ON USAGE.....................................................................................................................ix INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................2 CHAPTER 1: CULTIVATING AN IRON DISCIPLINE: THE VITKOVICE GENERAL STRIKE OF 1906.......................................................................................................37 CHAPTER 2: “GUT UND BLUT FÜR'S VATERLAND”: HABSBURG MILITARIZATION POLICY AND THE WAR PRODUCTION LAW OF 1912................................................................................................................................................89 CHAPTER 3: BLOOD AND SOIL: ETHNO-NATIONALIST VIOLENCE AND THE COMING OF WAR...................................................................................................124 CHAPTER 4: ABSCHRECKUNG- UND BESSERUNGSMITTEL: THE EXPERIENCE OF THE WAR, 1914-1916.................................................................................171 CHAPTER 5: PRISONS TO COMPEL THE LABOR OF FREE MEN: THE EXPERIENCE OF WAR, 1917-1918.................................................................................251 EPILOGUE..................................................................................................................................329 CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................344 APPENDIX ONE: CITIES AND LOCATIONS.........................................................................353 APPENDIX TWO: MINING AND INDUSTRIAL OPERATIONS...........................................354 APPENDIX THREE: SELECTED TERMS AND TRANSLATIONS.......................................357 REFERENCES............................................................................................................................358 vii LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE 1 – AREAS UNDER MILITARY ADMINISTRATION IN THE HABSBURG MONARCHY................................................................................................1 viii A NOTE ON USAGE The specificity of language as a central site of political contestation in the Habsburg Monarchy in general and in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia in particular has rendered denotation a minefield. I have attempted as much as possible to avoid anachronistic and/or nationalist usages, and to avoid implicitly or explicitly accepting the nationalistic postulate that the choice of a particular descriptor also entails taking a political position on the "true" or "authentic" character of the described. For this reason I have avoided using national descriptors to describe nationalist actors or activities, thus using for example "Czech-national" or "ethnic Czech" instead of simply "Czech" for self-consciously Czech-speaking Habsburg citizens. For places with English names, I have used those names. The majority of place names used here, though, have no accepted English equivalent. I have generally chosen to use the Czech name followed by the German name for these, while occasionally also listing an additional name if relevant. This usage is aimed purely at rendering the areas discussed as legible as possible for the reader, who will thus be able to locate these areas on contemporary maps of the Czech Republic while also recognizing the areas discussed in both Czech- and German-language sources. For personal names, many figures discussed used multiple equivalent names (Bendřích vs. Friedrich, for example) depending on the language in which they happened to be using at the time, and for these I have largely defaulted to the usage given in the documents. In some instances I have used the more widely known German names, again in hopes of remaining as legible as possible for the reader. Finally, following contemporary usage regarding the name of the state I use Czecho- Slovakia and Czecho-Slovak rather than Czechoslovakia and Czechoslovak preceding the ix passage of the February 1920 Constitution. Following the adoption of this Constitution the correct legal
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