The Austrian Chief of Staff, Conrad, Within the World Catastrophe

“Only according to the law of cause and effect do the fates of humanity roll along, with thousands of causal relationships. What does an individual count in this elementary work at the ultimate sources of incomprehensible forces!” This sentence is at the beginning of the book in which the Austrian field marshal Conrad von Hötzendorf describes his work before and during the war catastrophe. The first volume of this book is already available. (Field Marshal Conrad: From my period of service 1906-1918. First volume: The time of the annexation crisis 1906-1909. Rikola Verlag Vienna, Berlin, Leipzig, Munich 1921.) — One In this sentence, one reads the confession of the man who was appointed Chief of the General Staff of the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1906 and who, as such, was at the center of Austrian warfare until his dismissal in July 1918.

The reader of the book finds this unspoken confession of the most important personality for Austria-Hungary during the war years on almost every page. And one can even get the impression that this confession expresses an extraordinarily significant fact within the course of the war. Conrad is undoubtedly a genius in his own way. One recognizes this from the book. With a sure eye, he sees through the impending dangers for the existence of his country from his military point of view; with the certainty of will, he wants to fight against them as the administrator of the military apparatus. But the whole description that Conrad gives is actually only proof that his clear-sightedness and determination do him no good in his military post. Conrad believes that in order to counter the looming dangers, Austria needs to expand its armed forces; the Minister of War does not help him to achieve this expansion; Conrad has in mind Austria's position within European politics and the forces that are emerging from the nationalities to dissolve the state ; he considers a very definite foreign policy to be necessary if the army, at the head of which he stands, is to give this position firmness and prevent this disintegration: the foreign minister pursues a very different policy, which Conrad considers harmful.

And so the man who holds in his hands the power that he considers the only secure basis for Austria's continued existence feels absolutely powerless. This feeling runs through the whole book. It throws waves of thought to the surface of the narrative that are characteristic of a man whom the world calls such a man of action. “It is not true to say that history is the teacher of mankind; taken as a whole, people learn nothing from it, otherwise they would not have been making the same mistakes over and over again for thousands of years. Just as children do not make use of the experiences and teachings of their parents, so new generations do not do so in relation to the old..."

What would Conrad have done if he had also had political power as a military leader? He sees himself as someone who foresaw that Austria would have to wage a war of a terrible kind if it wanted to continue to exist. Since he has been in his important position, he has constantly pointed out this conviction to others. He believes that the prospects for such a war will become increasingly dire the longer we wait to start it. He would like to bring about the conditions for war at an earlier stage. He has very definite views on this. On page 4i of the book, he expresses this as follows: “The Austro-Hungarian monarchy has neither the means nor the forces to be equally well prepared for all cases of war. Its preparations must therefore concentrate on specific cases of war; it must therefore be determined which these cases of war are, and in good time, because, in particular due to the slow inflow of financial resources - only in small installments - years for the preparation would have to pass and finally, and this is the most important thing: the monarchy does not have the strength to fight all its enemies at the same time. Its policy must therefore be conducted in such a way that there will never be multiple clashes, but that it will deal with its inevitable aggressive opponents one after the other, one at a time, who are working towards a fight against it.” Conrad has wanted a policy along these lines since he became Chief of General Staff. He has always complained that the Foreign Minister has no understanding for such a policy. He is of the opinion that the policy he considers harmful will ultimately bring about the form of war that he wants to avoid and in which he will necessarily be defeated as the leader of the army. The course of the world war, he says, confirms what he predicted years ago.

From this point of view, Conrad provides descriptions of the general situation in Austria-Hungary that clearly show the moments of the monarchy's disintegration; from this same point of view, he presents the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in an extraordinarily dramatic way. He presents the development of the Austro-Hungarian military system in such a way that one can always see the bleak situation in which he finds himself.

A piece of world history that speaks powerfully, a piece of biography that is humanly touching, passes before the reader. You get a deep insight into the overall administration of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. You get to know the personalities who believe they are serving their country well, and yet they all work against each other and in such a way that they contribute to the greatest possible disintegration.

Anyone who reads the book learns a great deal from Conrad's concise and vivid style, which is necessary to understand the fate of European humanity in the present day. And when you have finished reading the book, you leaf back to the first pages thoughtfully; you feel once again the need to take a look at the inner life of one of the men who could become a leader in the fortunes of Europe in the twentieth century. Conrad presents a man of genius, who reveals much of his most intimate thoughts in these first pages. “The course of what we call historical events is also that process of transformation that dominates all of nature, which expresses itself in the uninterrupted becoming and passing away - in its ultimate cause - according to unfathomable laws.” The Austrian general with the worldview, as often described in this weekly, that excludes genuine human insight! “It is not individual men who make their time, but time that makes its men. And those men who happen to be in leading positions in great epochs work there by obeying the impulses that are conditioned by the great course of time,” writes Conrad. And for the reader, his account can fade away into the words that appear on the first page: “In later years, I had come to a worldview that made me see all earthly events as ultimately meaningless.”