Terror in the Balkans (73 page)

throughout the war, with a worse loss of life per head of population than

any other combatant nation. As well as the 275,000 men lost in battle,

eight hundred thousand civilians perished from diseases born of war-

time privations. 33 And the occupation regime the Austrians imposed

had a fearful impact upon the Serbian population. Much of the coun-

try’s economic resources were ransacked, its menfolk were deported for

labor in the empire, and its intelligentsia were imprisoned.34 Neverthe-

less, Habsburg occupation in Serbia was less piratical and oppressive

than it might have been. For the Austrians did not seek systematically

to ethnically cleanse the Serbian people. Their aims were akin instead

to those of nineteenth-century imperialism, seeking to subject Serbia to

absolutism and decisively weaken the foundations of nationalism within

Forging a Wartime Mentality
37

the country.35 In 1917, they suppressed a Serbian uprising with consider-

ably less indiscriminate severity than they might have done.36 Overall,

Austria-Hungary’s occupation of Serbia was less vicious than Bulgar-

ia’s.37 More needed to happen during the decades that followed, then,

to ensure that it was the hateful precedent of 1914–1915, not the some-

what less hateful one of 1916–1918, that would hold greatest sway over

Austrian-born offi cers’ behavior in Yugoslavia during World War II.

Another theater in which the Austro-Hungarian army saw action—one

that, like the western front, was marked by arduous conditions, and by

grueling stalemate interspersed with ruinously costly offensives by both

sides—was the Italian front.38 This theater came into being after Italy

entered the war on the Allied side in May 1915. Much of the fi ghting took

place amid terrain that was unforgiving in the extreme, such as the tow-

ering Dolomites or the harsh, otherworldly terrain of the Carso plateau.39

Actual fi ghting, when it came, was as pitiless as anything on the western

front. Captain Abel, an offi cer of the Austro-Hungarian army, wrote:

The incoming shells are visible to the naked eye; they look like black

sausages. If their effect were not so terrible, the sight of Carso veter-

ans leaping this way and that to avoid the shells would be ridiculous.

Not realizing that they must dodge the shells, many of the newcom-

ers are blown up. As soon as the bombardment ends, the Italians

rush out of their advance positions—usually very close to our front

line—and jump into our trenches.40

Disease was a further cross to bear, particularly later in the war as

mounting food shortages sapped the troops’ physical and psychologi-

cal strength.41 In spring 1917 the Austro-Hungarian 43d Rifl e Division,

among whose offi cers was a future regimental commander in Yugoslavia,

Adalbert Lontschar, was assailed with malaria. Matters were not helped

by the almost simultaneous conviction of one of the division’s staff doc-

tors, Doctor Popper, for theft.42 At the beginning of August 1918 the

Austro-Hungarian 87th Infantry Regiment—home to a future divisional

commander in Yugoslavia, Karl Eglseer—was assailed likewise.43

38
terror in the balk ans

The bitterness of the “White War,” as the historian Mark Thompson

aptly titles it,44 also possessed a darker impulse, national and cultural in

character. Many Austrian offi cers shared General Conrad’s excoriating

assessment of the Italians as the “congenital enemy.” This animus had

originated in the Wars of Italian Unifi cation during the nineteenth cen-

tury. It resurged when fi rst Italy refused to enter the Great War on the

side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, its partners in the so-called Triple

Alliance, in summer 1914, and then entered the war on the opposite side

the following spring.45 It fi rst manifested itself during the Great War when

Austro-Hungarian combat aircraft bombarded Venice, then as now one

of Italy’s most important historical and cultural centers. The historian

Alan Kramer likens such actions to the warfare of cultural destruction the

Germans perpetrated when they torched the university library in Lou-

vain.46 Italian civilians, such as those who found themselves under fi re

from Austro-Hungarian and German artillery at the Battle of Caporetto

in 1917, also felt the impact of the Austrians’ bitter resolve.47

Italian POWs suffered also. Admittedly, this was largely due to gen-

eral wartime privations, brought about by British naval blockade and by

the Central powers’ often inept “system” of rationing.48 But not entirely.

For instance, while captive Italian offi cers need not have expected condi-

tions as wretched as their men’s, they were still the subject of their cap-

tors’ detestation. Thus, for instance, decreed the rear area command of

the Austro-Hungarian Fourth Army in August 1915:

This state [Italy] benefi ted greatly from our alliance; as an alliance

partner, she treacherously stabbed us in the back . . . It is forbid-

den therefore to engage [captured Italian offi cers] in normal social

interaction such as the shaking of hands or general conversation. By

this treatment, captured Italian offi cers must be made to realize that

we despise a state that has behaved itself like Italy has, and that we

therefore cannot treat its offi cers as social equals.49

By fostering such odium towards prisoners, on top of the odium Austri-

ans already directed against Italians for their country’s sneak declaration

of war, orders such as these helped to dehumanize the enemy. It would

be going much too far to argue that this was a direct harbinger of the

Forging a Wartime Mentality
39

ideologically driven pitilessness offi cers would display during World

War II. Such orders tended to look backward—to more traditional notions

of honorable and dishonorable conduct—rather than forward. But at the

same time, dehumanizing the enemy in this way still constituted a step

down that future path, albeit a relatively small one. It is a further sign that

the Italian front, like other Great War battlefronts, engendered some of

the radicalization that would motivate many offi cers later.

Finally, from 1914 through to early 1918, along an immense front from the

Baltic to the Black Sea, the German and Austro-Hungarian armies faced

the armies of Russia. This front was not characterized by bloody, immobile

stalemate in the way of the western or Italian fronts. Here, amid mountains,

forests, swamps, and seemingly endless plains, the stalemate was often

bloody
and
mobile, with immense advances matched by equally immense

retreats. The cumulative strain of war steadily sapped the strength of Russia

and, eventually, Austria-Hungary to a terminal degree. Only in early 1918

did the new Bolshevik government in Russia sue for peace, bringing to an

end more than three years of ferocious struggle across seemingly limitless

terrain, amid sometimes unimaginably harsh environmental conditions.50

And even after that, soldiers of the Central powers found themselves locked

in bitter struggle with Bolshevik forces in many parts of the East.

The war in the East was not characterized by modern, industrially

charged carnage of the kind seen on the western front. Instead, it was char-

acterized by savagery and chaos such that the historian Michael Geyer

has justifi ably described it as “the Wild War.”51 More than any other

theater of the Great War, moreover, it was in the East that German and

Austrian troops could be brutalized not just by the fi ghting conditions

they endured, but also by their experience of the landscape, of its native

population, and of the political forces that convulsed the region as the war

continued. In other words, while the East was not necessarily
the
most

brutalizing environment in which German and Austrian soldiers served

during the Great War, it could certainly brutalize them in particularly

diverse ways. For this reason, together with the fact that several offi cers

featured in this study served on the eastern front, the characteristics of

this theater of war warrant some space here.

40
terror in the balk ans

In 1914 many Austro-Hungarian offi cers contemplated the coming

struggle with the Russian army—nicknamed the “Steamroller” by vir-

tue of its alleged ability to overwhelm its opponents with its irresistible

size—in a cold sweat. Colonel Brosch of the 1st Tyrolean Kaiserjäger

Regiment believed he would witness the fi nal destiny of the Habsburg

Empire “not as an uncommitted bystander, but as a resigned combatant

who will see the black steamroller, which will obliterate us, approach,

but who cannot stop it.”52 But Conrad, ever the aggressor in matters stra-

tegic, immediately went over to the attack. And as in Serbia, the Austro-

Hungarian army’s shortcomings brought disastrous failure and colossal

death tolls each time. The Germans, to the detriment of their own plans,

were repeatedly forced to divert troops southward to bale the Austrians

out. The Austro-Hungarian army had soon decimated and debilitated

itself to a point where it resembled a territorial and militia army.53

The desperate fi ghting, the harsh conditions, and the Austrians’

increasingly apparent military impotence are all conveyed in the war

diary of Karl Eglseer’s 87th Infantry Regiment:

11/22/14 . . . The Russians penetrated behind the second and third

companies, and a violent battle ensued . . . Of the third battalion,

only a small fraction was able to break through. A large part was

captured by the enemy. At the same time the second battalion, posi-

tioned at Werretyczos, was outfl anked on the right and driven back

after resisting heavily. The regiment fought valiantly, but its weak-

ened position, the excessive distance of the . . . battle groups and

the lack of reserves all made a successful defense impossible. The

Russians’ tactic was, clearly, to penetrate in overwhelming strength

through dense terrain into the empty gaps between our (positions)

. . . Major Leimser, the third battalion’s commander, was captured

together with between 12–14 other offi cers of the regiment . . . Due

to the great cold, the heavy snow, and having to spend four nights

out in the open, the regiment’s fi ghting capability and supplies were

completely exhausted.

11/28 . . . Losses from 11/20–11/28/: 2 offi cers and 10 men dead, 3

offi cers and 100 men wounded (almost all on 11/20 and 11/22/). 7

Forging a Wartime Mentality
41

offi cers and 129 men taken prisoner. 11 offi cers and 655 men missing

altogether (including those taken prisoner).

12/21 . . . At 3pm the enemy attacked the right fl ank of the 47th

Infantry Regiment. At the same time, the 87th was comprehensively

attacked in overwhelming strength. It was therefore forced at 3pm

to withdraw to and re-establish defenses in the previously occupied

area of Lazy. Major Seidel’s attack was unable to make any impact.

There was no support from our own artillery to be detected.

12/24 . . . 5.10pm the order came for heightened vigilance and battle

readiness, for the Russians were aiming to surprise us . . . The Rus-

sians broke through the second battalion; the fi rst battalion was also

compelled to abandon its position. The regiment assembled in the

town square at Zmigrod. The panic and fear of the Italian troops54

. . . weakened discipline so much that the offi cers were only able to

restore it by fi ring their revolvers into the air. The regiment, particu-

larly the second battalion, had suffered painful losses again. It was

later established that its companies had fought stubbornly. Lieuten-

ant Eglseer and Captain von Wanka were caught up in the struggle,

wounded badly, and captured. This overwhelming blow seems to

have been spearheaded by the enemy’s cavalry.55

As this diary indicates, the environment was especially pitiless during

winter. It was never more so than it was for the Austro-Hungarian troops

whom General Conrad committed to a horribly misconceived offensive

in the Carpathian Mountains during winter 1914–1915.56 But the envi-

ronment could be unforgiving at any time of year, as Private Wilhelm

Schulin, serving with the German 26th Infantry Division north of Brest-

Litovsk, recounted in summer 1915:

Exertions, privations, very heavy knapsack, neck and shoulder pain

from the rifl e and long, diffi cult marches; extremely tired feet and

body. Bad roads—either uneven asphalt or deep sand—and always

the uneven fi elds, marching up and down deep furrows. Often in

double time, and usually no water or at best stinking water, no bread

for days on end.57

42
terror in the balk ans

Despite all this, some German and Austro-Hungarian observers favor-

ably contrasted the eastern front with the industrial slaughter and

smaller scale of the western front. They romanticized the notion of a mil-

itary campaign waged across wild, unspoiled expanses, making greater

use of “classic” elements of warfare such as cavalry.58 But there is little