Austria-Hungary, the Origins, and the First Year of World War I
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1914: Austria-Hungary, the Origins, and the First Year of World War I Günter Bischof, Ferdinand Karlhofer (Eds.) Samuel R. Williamson, Jr. (Guest Editor) CONTEMPORARY AUSTRIAN STUDIES | VOLUME 23 UNO PRESS innsbruck university press Copyright © 2014 by University of New Orleans Press, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to UNO Press, University of New Orleans, LA 138, 2000 Lakeshore Drive. New Orleans, LA, 70119, USA. www.unopress.org. Printed in the United States of America Design by Allison Reu Cover photo: “In enemy position on the Piave levy” (Italy), June 18, 1918 WK1/ALB079/23142, Photo Kriegsvermessung 5, K.u.k. Kriegspressequartier, Lichtbildstelle Vienna Cover photo used with permission from the Austrian National Library – Picture Archives and Graphics Department, Vienna Published in the United States by Published and distributed in Europe University of New Orleans Press by Innsbruck University Press ISBN: 9781608010264 ISBN: 9783902936356 UNO PRESS Contemporary Austrian Studies Sponsored by the University of New Orleans and Universität Innsbruck Editors Günter Bischof, CenterAustria, University of New Orleans Ferdinand Karlhofer, Universität Innsbruck Assistant Editor Markus Habermann Production Editor Copy Editor Abram Himelstein Jen Hanks University of New Orleans Press University of New Orleans Press Executive Editors Christina Antenhofer, Universität Innsbruck Kevin Graves, University of New Orleans Advisory Board Siegfried Beer Helmut Konrad Universität Graz Universität Graz Peter Berger Sándor Kurtán Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien Corvinus University Budapest John Boyer Günther Pallaver University of Chicago Universität Innsbruck Gary Cohen Joseph Patrouch (ex officio) University of Minnesota Wirth Institute for Austrain and Christine Day Central European Studies, University of New Orleans University of Alberta Oscar Gabriel Peter Pulzer Universität Stuttgart University of Oxford Malachi Hacohen Oliver Rathkolb Duke University Universität Wien Reinhard Heinisch Sieglinde Rosenberger Universität Salzburg Universität Wien Pieter Judson Alan Scott European University Institute, Universität Innsbruck Florence Heidemarie Uhl Wilhelm Kohler Austrian Academy of Sciences Universität Tübingen Ruth Wodak University of Lancaster Publication of this volume has been made possible through generous grants from the Austrian Ministry of European and International Affairs through the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York as well as the Austrian Academic Exchange Service (ÖAAD). The Austrian Marshall Plan Anniversary Foundation in Vienna has been very generous in supporting CenterAustria at the University of New Orleans and its publications series. The College of Liberal Arts at the University of New Orleans and the Auslandsamt of the University of Innsbruck provided additional financial support. Dedicated to Charles S. Maier, Harvard University, on the Occasion of His 75th Birthday Table of Contents PREFACE xiii TOPICAL ESSAYS AUSTRIAHUNGARY AND THE ORIGINS OF WORLD WAR I Samuel R. Williamson, Jr.: Austria and the Origins of the Great War: A Selective Historiographical Survey 21 Hannes Leidinger: e Case of Alfred Redl and the Situation of Austro- Hungarian Military Intelligence on the Eve of World War I 35 Wolfram Dornik: Conrad von Hötzendorf and the “Smoking Gun”: A Biographical Examination of Responsibility and Traditions of Violence against Civilians in the Habsburg Army 55 Günther Kronenbitter: Amnesia and Remembrance – Count Berchtold on 1914 77 SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS AT WAR Richard Lein: A Train Ride to Disaster: e Austro-Hungarian Eastern Front in 1914 95 Jonathan Gumz: e Habsburg Empire, Serbia, and 1914: e Signicance of a Sideshow 127 Jason Engle: “is monstrous front will devour us all”: e Austro-Hungarian Soldier Experience, 1914-15 145 Peter Berger: Exiles of Eden: Vienna and the Viennese during and after First World War 167 Gerhard Senft: Resistance against the War of 1914-1918 187 Nicole-Melanie Goll: ‘Our Weddigen’: On the Construction of the War Hero in the k.u.k. Army. e ‘Naval Hero’ Egon Lerch as an Example 213 Verena Moritz: e Treatment of Prisoners of War in Austria-Hungary 1914/1915: e Historiography of Prisoners of War in the Late Habsburg Empire 233 Hans Petschar: Gathering War: e Collection Eort by the Imperial Court Library in Vienna during World War I 249 NONTOPICAL ESSAYS Marion Krammer/Margarethe Szeless: Yoichi Okamoto and the “Pictorial Section”: Austrian-American Relations in Press Photography 1945 – 1955 275 Birgit Johler/Katharina Kober/Barbara Sauer/Ulrike Tauss/Joanna White: A Local History of the 1938 “Anschluss” and Its Memory: Vienna Servitengasse 293 BOOK REVIEWS Michael P. Steinberg: Review of Robert Kriechbaumer, Zwischen Österreich und Großdeutschland: Eine politische Geschichte der Salzburger Festspiele, 1933-1944 321 Christina Antenhofer: Heidi Hintner, Donatella Trevisan, Luise F. Pusch, eds., Frauen an der Grenze: 13 Frauenbiographien aus Süd- und Osttirol und dem Trentino / Donne di frontiera. 13 biograe di donne tirolesi e trentine 327 Kurt Bednar: Nicole M. Phelps, US-Habsburg Relations from 1815 to the Paris Peace Conference: Sovereignty Transformed 333 William M. Johnston: Coeehouses as a “Distilled Form of Modernity”, Charlotte Ashby, Tag Gronberg and Simon Shaw-Miller, eds., e Viennese Café and Fin-de-siècle Culture 339 Samuel R. Williamson, Jr.: “e Odd Couple”, Jean-Paul Bled, Franz Ferdinand: Der eigensinnige ronfolger, trans. Susanna Grabmayr and Marie-erese Pitner (Vienna: Böhlau, 2013), Wolfram Dornik, Des Kaisers Falke: Wirken und Nach-Wirken von Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, with afterward comments by Verena Moritz and Hannes Leidinger 351 Richard Wiggers: Gerald Steinacher, Hakenkreuz und Rotes Kreuz: Eine humanitäre Organisation zwischen Holocaust und Flüchtlingsproblematik 359 Jacqueline Vansant: Maria Fritsche, Homemade Men in Postwar Austrian Cinema: Nationhood, Genre, and Masculinity 365 Marion Wieser: Anton Pelinka, Wir sind alle Amerikaner: Der abgesagte Niedergang der USA 371 David M. Wineroither: Robert Kriechbaumer, Franz Schausberger, eds., Die umstrittene Wende: Österreich 2000 – 2006 377 Peter A. Ulram: Ludger Helms und David M. Wineroither, eds., Die österreichische Demokratie im Vergleich 385 ANNUAL REVIEW 389 LIST OF AUTHORS 397 Preface Günter Bischof Mark Trachtenberg has rightly suggested that the great French historian Elie Halévy summed up the origins of World War I in the Rhodes Lectures delivered at Oxford in 1929 only 15 years after the outbreak of the war in “a single but quite remarkable paragraph.” Halevy wrote: “But everyone knew, who chose to know, that, whenever Austria declared war upon Serbia, Pan- Slavist sentiment would become too strong for any Russian government to resist its pressure. Everyone knew, who chose to know, that whenever Russia gave so much as a sign of declaring war upon Austria, Pan-German feelings would compel the German government to enter the lists in turn. It was likewise common knowledge that Germany, whenever she declared war upon Russia, was resolved not to tolerate the existence in the west of an army that was after all the second best army in Europe; that she would first march upon Paris and annihilate France as a military power, before rushing to back to the east, and settling matters with Russia.” It was also clear that, in order to implement that plan, the German army felt it would have to march through Belgium. But “everybody understood that if ever the Belgian coast and the northern coast of France were to fall under the domination of Germany, Great Britain, feeling her prestige and her security in danger, would enter the war on the side of Belgium and France.” War by August 1914 became virtually inevitable: “everyone knew, who wished to know, not only that European war was imminent, but what the general shape of the war would be.”1 For the past 100 years some of the greatest historians and political scientists of the twentieth century have picked apart, analyzed and reinterpreted this sequence of events taking place within a single month 1 . Marc Trachtenberg, The Craft of International History: A Guide to the Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 31, summarizing and citing Halevy, “The World Crisis of 1914-1918: An Interpretation,” first published in 1930, and reprinted in The Era of Tyrannies: Essay on Socialism and War (London: Allen Lane, 1967), 179. xiv in July/early August 1914, again and again, from the classic works of Luigi Albertini, Fritz Fischer and Barbara Tuchman, and Jack Synder onwards to Christopher Clark and Margaret Macmillan most recently. The four years of fighting during World War I destroyed the international system put into place at the Congress of Vienna in 1814/15 and led to the dissolution of some of the great old empires of Europe (Austrian- Hungarian, Ottoman, Russian). The 100th anniversary of the assassination of the Austrian successor to the throne Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo unleashed the series of events described with such economy by Halevy above. The assassination in Sarajevo, the spark that set asunder the European powder keg, has been the focus of a veritable blizzard