1914-1918. an Anatomy of Global Conflict
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1914–1918 AN ANATOMY OF GLOBAL CONFLICT Editor-in-Chief Vol. 4 Andrzej Chwalba 1914–1918 AN ANATOMY OF GLOBAL CONFLICT 7UDQVODWHGE\7HUHVD%DâXN8OHZLF]RZD Th is publication was fi nanced by the Jagiellonian University in Krakow – Faculty of History REVIEWER Tomasz Schramm SERIES COVER DESIGN Jan Jacek Bruski COVER DESIGN Agnieszka Winciorek Cover photography: The fortress of Przemyśl (Galicia). One of the destroyed forts, 1915; Courtesy of the National Digital Archives (Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe) in Warsaw. www.wuj.pl © Copyright by Andrzej Chwalba & Jagiellonian University Press First Edition, Kraków 2014 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any eletronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereaft er invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers ISBN 978-83-233-3638-9 ISSN 2299-758X Jagiellonian University Press Editorial Offi ces: Michałowskiego 9/2, 31-126 Kraków Phone: +48 12 663 23 81, +48 12 663 23 82, Fax: +48 12 663 23 83 Distribution: Phone: +48 12 631 01 97, Fax: +48 12 631 01 98 Cell Phone: + 48 506006 674, e-mail: [email protected] Bank: PEKAO SA, IBAN PL 80 1240 4722 1111 0000 4856 3325 Table of Contents Author’s Preface ........................................................................................ 7 I. Th e War Starts .................................................................................... 9 1. Sarajevo ............................................................................................ 9 2. Th e last hours of peace ................................................................... 19 3. Could war have been avoided? .................................................... 25 II. Land Warfare ...................................................................................... 37 1. Manoeuvre warfare ........................................................................ 37 2. Trench warfare ................................................................................ 38 3. Alpine warfare ................................................................................. 56 4. Th e winter wars ............................................................................... 62 5. Landing operations......................................................................... 65 6. Th e war of the secret services ........................................................ 67 7. Psychological warfare ..................................................................... 78 8. Arms and equipment ..................................................................... 89 III. A Soldier’s Lot .................................................................................... 105 1. Th e wounded ................................................................................... 105 2. Diseases and epidemics ................................................................. 113 3. Th e killed ......................................................................................... 119 4. Prisoners-of-war ............................................................................. 125 5. Deserters and mutinies .................................................................. 128 IV. Th e Civilians’ War .............................................................................. 133 1. Th e war economy ............................................................................ 133 2. Military occupation and resistance .............................................. 145 3. Everyday life .................................................................................... 150 4. In sickness and in health. Charity ................................................ 158 5 5. Material damage. Migrations ........................................................ 164 6. Th e plight of women ...................................................................... 167 7. Revolutions ...................................................................................... 171 V. Th e War of the Nations ..................................................................... 181 1. Th e Czechs and the Yugoslavs ...................................................... 182 2. From Poland to Finland ................................................................. 190 3. Jews, Armenians, and Arabs ......................................................... 201 4. Th e Irish case ................................................................................... 208 Time to Conclude ..................................................................................... 211 Selected Bibliography .............................................................................. 213 Index of Persons ........................................................................................ 217 Geographical index .................................................................................. 221 Author’s Preface We know more or less all there is to know about the way the hos- tilities of the 1914–1918 war developed. What’s still left to be cleared up are just a few details which will not have much of an eff ect on the general picture of the armed confl ict. At the most they’ll help to nu- ance the chronicle of the war. Of course, we won’t manage to explain or sort out all the problems. We certainly won’t ever be able to estab- lish the precise fi gures for losses sustained by the belligerents in par- ticular clashes and battles. Th ere will just be estimates. On the other hand, better prospects for research are opening up for historians in- terested in the soldiers’ predicament, in what was going on behind the front lines, in the role civilians, communities, and nations played in the war, in the war economies and everyday life, or in the role of the women who made an energetic entry into a “man’s” story. It will be worthwhile to study the stories of individual soldiers and what they suff ered, of heroism and treachery, of people losing and recovering their faith in God, of struggling to survive and growing accustomed to death. An area which off ers promising horizons for research is his- torical anthropology, which has the cognitive instruments needed to embark on new paths of study and the eff ective verifi cation of what has been accomplished hitherto. Another opportunity to enhance our knowledge of the Great War are the case studies being conducted in many of the world’s academic centres, examining the inside story of the war from the point of view of its rank-and-fi le participants. Yet another prospective area for study are the attempts to classify the diff erent types of armed confl ict. In a word, research on the fabric of the war and its participants off ers the chance for progress on the way to a global understanding of the nature and essence of the Great War. 7 Th e hundred years that have elapsed since the Sarajevo assassination on the 28th of June 1914 and the outbreak of war are an incentive to search for new areas of scholarly exploration. Th is book is an attempt to embark on fresh paths of research using new instruments of cognition. It searches for answers to questions in historical anthropology. It contains a clinical review of a collection of diverse source materials from all the important fi elds of battle and their aft ermaths, as well as from the civilian background. It makes use of a variety of resources relating to the Eastern, Western, and Southern European fronts, as well as fronts beyond Europe. To make the book more readable I have decided to break free of the usual academic custom of footnoting and have put only a selected biblio- graphy at the back. I would like to thank Professor Michał Baczkowski, Professor Tadeusz Czekalski, and Professor Tomasz Gąsowski of the Jagiel- lonian University in Kraków for reading the book in statu nascendi and sharing their opinions and comments with me. I am indebted to Professor Tomasz Schramm of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, whose suggestions helped to verify some of my judgements and ideas, and improve the quality of my narrative. Andrzej Chwalba Kraków, April 2014 I. The War Starts 1. Sarajevo Sarajevo, capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia- Herzegovina, lay on the peripheries of the Habsburg Empire and was not remarkable in any way except for its population of many cultures and religions, and its variegated architecture. Its modern districts held a central position and were built according to impe- rial standards. It was a city of the administrative and business nou- veaux, with a cosmopolitan class of state offi cials, representatives of many nations, but dominated by native speakers of German, loyal to the House of Habsburg and the Roman Catholic religion. Th e new town with its cafés and restaurants, theatre and cinema, fashionable shops, elegant streets and promenade, was encircled by squalid and impoverished districts, with no running water or sewerage, cluttered up with cheap tenement houses, shacks and shanties, more reminis- cent of the Ottoman Empire. Herds of animals roamed the streets, women covered up from head to toe in traditional Muslim apparel shuffl ed along, and child beggars, many of them disabled, loitered on street corners, while the menfolk, clad in loose-fi tting woollen trou- sers, spent their days in the cafés, drinking Turkish coff ee. Th e land- marks of each district were their places of worship. Muslim mosques were the predominant edifi ces, oft en