Terror in the Balkans (69 page)

ness and the parsimony of the Austrian and Hungarian parliaments, was

undersized and underresourced.6 One partial solution was, again, to

open the offi cer corps to candidates from a wider range of social back-

grounds. This drive to greater egalitarianism was further abetted by the

system of military schooling open to offi cer candidates.7

Within the Royal-Imperial Army’s rank and fi le, the empire’s full eth-

nic kaleidoscope was properly represented. But within the offi cer corps,

the ethnic Germans dominated—even if this had less to do with their

ethnicity as such than with the superior education they enjoyed.8

The different branches of both armies maintained a distinct pecking order.

Most sought after was the cavalry, followed by the artillery and fi nally the

Before the Great War
15

infantry.9 For Austro-Hungarian offi cers particularly, going into the infan-

try was a lottery, contingent upon a regiment’s location, the quality of its

offi cers, and the literacy level of its men. The last of these was contingent

upon a unit’s ethnic composition; only a fraction of the army’s units were

monolingual, and of these only a smaller fraction still spoke German.10

Equally rigid were the social conditions in which new offi cers found

themselves. While some German offi cers stationed within the Reich’s

cosmopolitan urban centers were able to pursue some sort of intellectual

existence,11 the German lieutenant’s life was usually deeply conform-

ist. In the Imperial German Army, most offi cers were still required to

train even after receiving their lieutenant’s commission, by attending

the War School (
Kriegsschule
)—eight months’ cram-learning of subjects

including battle tactics, weaponry, fortifi cations, terrain, and military

organization.12 Social life centered on the offi cers’ mess, and socially

conservative, aristocratic values governed virtually every aspect of an

offi cer’s existence, irrespective of his own social origin.

All this made for an existence that, privileged though it was, was also

intensive, narrow, and isolated from society. Not only was there no place

in the curriculum in which to instruct offi cers on the social, political,

and economic context of that wider society; such was the narrow pattern

of their lives, and the strength of the socially conservative programming

to which they were subjected, they were likely to be disinclined to learn

about such things anyway.13 Stunting offi cers’ critical faculties in this

way would have ominous implications for their later development.14

The Austro-Hungarian offi cer corps similarly sought to isolate its

members from society. Given the army’s experience of civilians since

1848—violent revolution that year, frequent ethnic unrest throughout

the empire in the decades that followed, parsimonious civilian parlia-

ments, and stifl ing state bureaucracy—it is small wonder that the army

leadership sought to instill within its offi cers a feeling of aloofness from,

indeed aversion to, civilian infl uences.15 In one respect at least, however,

Austro-Hungarian offi cers were less straitjacketed than their German

colleagues. Thanks to Austria-Hungary’s sheer diversity, the course of

a Habsburg junior offi cer’s military service exposed him to a far greater

variety of peoples and environments than his German counterpart. The

historian Gunther Rothenburg elaborates:

16
terror in the balk ans

The large territorial expanse of the Dual Monarchy, which included

the gentle landscapes of Lower Austria and Bohemia, the mighty

ranges of the Alps and the Carpathians, the rich lands of Slovenia and

the plains of Galicia, the wild forests of Bosnia and Transylvania, as

well as the barren crags of the Dalmatian coast, with garrisons rang-

ing from cities of culture and refi nement like Vienna, Budapest, and

Prague, provincial towns like Graz, Agram, or Budweis, to small,

isolated hamlets, gave service in the joint army a special character.

An offi cer might serve a tour in a big city and fi nd himself during

the next in an isolated fort in Bosnia or in the mud of a small Gali-

cian hamlet. Described by one English journalist “as hard-working,

hard-living men,” the average Austro-Hungarian regimental offi cer

was judged the “superior of the average German offi cer . . . more

intelligent, more readily adaptable, in closer touch with his men, less

given to dissipation, and remarkably free from arrogance.”16

Rothenburg’s English eyewitness is overgeneralizing about the Ger-

man offi cer of the period.17 Yet there is something in the argument that

the German offi cer’s Austro-Hungarian counterpart was, on the whole,

more open-minded. But the argument should not be taken too far. Ulti-

mately, how far an Austro-Hungarian offi cer chose to absorb a better-

developed worldview was down to him individually. Like his German

counterpart, he could expect no meaningful education on wider social,

political, and economic realities from his superiors.

Within both offi cer corps, meanwhile, the years before the Great War

portended ominous changes. During the late nineteenth and early twen-

tieth centuries, technical and industrial change made it possible for

major powers to recruit, equip, and supply mass conscript-based armies.

The scale of warfare that the Europe-wide emergence of mass armies

presaged required a hitherto unparalleled degree of technical prowess

and operational planning. This was also an era in which the revolution

in defensive fi repower, advances in communication, and the advent of

airpower on the battlefi eld were transforming warfare fundamentally.18

Before the Great War
17

In the new reality these converging elements created, it was incum-

bent upon the ambitious young offi cer to gain expertise not just in a tra-

ditional branch of the army, but also, eventually, in one of the cutting-edge

fi elds of military planning and technology. The most sought-after route

was to qualify as a staff offi cer. This presented the ambitious young offi -

cer with the perfect opportunity to master the entire technical, organi-

zational, and operational foundation upon which the new warfare was

based. Only the very ablest offi cers—many of whom, in the case of the

German and Austro-Hungarian offi cer corps, would eventually fi ll the

Wehrmacht’s senior-most positions—were granted such an opportunity.

But many other future Wehrmacht offi cers were at least able to pursue

their ambitions further by transferring to one of the rapidly develop-

ing technology-oriented branches of their respective armies—airships,

machine-gunnery, or battlefi eld communications, for instance—before,

during, or after the Great War.19

The emergence of the technically minded military planner would cul-

minate during the interwar years in the advent of the “specialist in mass

destruction.” This was a badge the Reichswehr offi cer corps would come

to sport with particular pride. But even before the outbreak of the Great

War, offi cers’ increasing professional specialization could bring baleful

implications. For it encouraged ambitious young offi cers with new pro-

fessional preoccupations to work and think in a way more specialized,

focused, and intensive than ever before. This discouraged out-of-the-

box thinking on military matters. And, more importantly for this study,

such narrowness could further deprive an offi cer of the opportunity to

develop societal awareness, political maturity, and general openness to

the world.20 Though increasing professional specialization did not make

such an outcome inevitable, it did make it more likely.

All the more likely given some of the still more disturbing develop-

ments that were now in train. Whether in Wilhelm II’s Germany or in

the Austro-Hungarian Empire, brutal worldviews were already emerging

across wider society. And such was the level of social and political illit-

eracy that affl icted both offi cer corps that a great many offi cers, though

not yet automatic prey to such worldviews, were morally and intellectu-

ally ill-equipped to resist them as fully as they might have done.

18
terror in the balk ans

One of the most infl uential ideas of the age across Europe, and quite

possibly the most noxious, was Social Darwinism. Social Darwinists

believed that the struggle between the “superior” and the “inferior,” and

the extinction or subjugation of the weak in favor of the strong, were the

natural order of things not just in the animal kingdom, but in human

affairs also. During the 1880s, those who believed it was the Germans

themselves who, by dint of their cultural, scientifi c, and military achieve-

ments, occupied the foremost position among all the “races” of human-

ity, merged into the Pan-German movement.

Pan-Germans in Germany itself clustered around the Pan-German

League, and in German-speaking Austria around the Greater German

People’s Party (GDVP). Both groups drew support from particular

middle-class circles. For the Pan-German League it was teachers, civil

servants, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals who saw themselves

as pillars of social authority and custodians of German culture. For the

GDVP it was right-wing university students, and artisans and shopkeep-

ers who felt threatened by technological change.21

As the German and Austro-Hungarian offi cer corps expanded, offi -

cers who hailed from such backgrounds became much more numerous.

If they did indeed subscribe to Pan-German sentiment, they could not

necessarily expect a particularly warm reception in the traditional-

istic climate of either offi cer corps. But this did not mean they would

encounter particular hostility either. For this same climate itself con-

tained elements common with Pan-Germanism. One such element was

anti-Semitism.

From the 1870s onward, the “science” of Social Darwinism lent Europe’s

long-established tradition of anti-Semitism an even more sinister, bio-

logically founded aspect. For Pan-Germans it provided a warped basis

for the equally warped view that Jews, as non-Germans, should be pre-

vented from “polluting,” and thus weakening, the “purity” that was the

foundation of the German people’s strength. Pan-Germans within the

Austro-Hungarian Empire in particular regarded Jews as a spiritual,

economic, and biological menace. This view became more buttressed

and widespread as thousands of eastern Jews were driven to live in

Before the Great War
19

the Austro-Hungarian Empire, particularly in Vienna, by murderous

pogroms in Tsarist Russia.22

Nevertheless, even if there was considerable latent anti-Semitism

within the Habsburg offi cer corps, there was little active anti-Semitism.

This was probably due in no small part to the greater open-mindedness

that service across such an ethnically diverse realm afforded. Emperor

Franz Josef hugely appreciated the loyalty of all his subjects, Gentile and

non-Gentile. Jews were disproportionately prominent, thanks probably

to their superior education levels, amongst the army’s reserve offi cers.

There were also considerable numbers of Jewish career offi cers.23

But by the eve of the Great War, the Royal-Imperial Army was no

longer quite as comfortable a home for Jews as it had been. General

Conrad, the chief of the army high command, and Archduke Franz Fer-

dinand, who as well as heir to the throne was also inspector general of

the army, were both self-declared anti-Semites. There was also a glass

ceiling, with higher-ranking offi cers and staff offi cers counting very

few Jews among their number.24 But it would be wrong to exaggerate

the extent to which anti-Semitism was beginning to pervade the offi cer

corps in its entirety.25 The still relatively benign experience of Jewish

soldiers within the Austro-Hungarian army of the Great War would

vindicate this view.

North of the border, however, the picture was less benign already.

“Anti-Semitism,” asserts the historian Martin Kitchen, “was one of the

fundamental creeds of the German Offi cer Corps.”26 As Jews could not

be barred by law, they were barred instead on grounds of “character.”

Jews from a commercial background, for instance, could be excluded for

their “undesirable” bourgeois social origins. Typical were the remarks

of one German offi cer in 1911. Responding to Jewish demands for equal

treatment in the army, he expressed astonishment at the notion that “the

salvation of the Fatherland depended on our accepting a few dozen use-

less Isidores, Manasses, and Abrahams as confessing Semites in our

Offi cer Corps.”27 Reprehensible as they are, such remarks indicate old-

school economic and religious anti-Semitism, not the more venomous,

biologically based brand espoused by the Pan-Germans. But such old-

school anti-Semitism was widespread and entrenched, and would form a

bedrock for that more vicious strain later on.

20
terror in the balk ans