The Undermining of Austria-Hungary - Home - Springer978-0-230-28635...The Undermining of Austria-Hungary The Battle for Hearts and Minds Mark Cornwall First published in Great Britain

The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

Also by Mark Cornwall

THE DEVIL'S WALL: The Nationalist Youth Mission of Heinz Rutha

The Undermining of Austria-Hungary The Battle for Hearts and Minds

Mark Cornwall

pal grave macmillan

* © john Mark Cornwall 2000 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2000 978-0-333-80452-0

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ISBN 978-1-349-42240-1 ISBN 978-0-230-28635-1 (eBook) DOI10.1057/9780230286351

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Inside North America ISBN 978-0-312-23151-4

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For my parents, fohn and Benita Cornwall

Contents

List of Tables

List of Illustrations

List of Maps

Preface

Preface to the Paperback Edition

List of Abbreviations

1 A Theory of Front Propaganda

2 Austria-Hungary and the Control of Wartime Morale

3 The Experience of Propaganda against Russia 3.1 The campaign on the Eastern Front 3.2 The 'breaking of Russia' 3.3 The Serbian campaign

4 Austria-Hungary's Campaign against Italy 4.1 The Italian target 4.2 The launch of an Austrian campaign 4.3 The impact of Austria-Hungary's front propaganda

5 The Seeds of Italy's Campaign 5.1 Obstacles to effective propaganda 5.2 The role of Italian military Intelligence 5.3 The dream of Carzano 5.4 The propaganda duel

6 Italy's Campaign against Austria-Hungary 6.1 The British contribution 6.2 Steed's coordinating mission 6.3 The Padua Commission 6.4 Trench propaganda

7 Austria-Hungary on the Defensive 7.1 The perception of enemy propaganda 7.2 The Feindespropaganda-Abwehrstelle 7.3 The case of the 42nd Honved Infantry Division 7.4 Austria loses the propaganda duel

vii

ix

X

xi

xii

XV

xix

1

16

40 40 49 62

74 74 78 92

112 112 122 131 149

174 174 185 202 228

257 257 268 287 299

viii Contents

8 The Climax of Italian Psychological Warfare 8.1 The pressure of Crewe House and the Italian obstacle 8.2 An Italian or an Allied campaign? 8.3 Padua's summer campaign:

the 'Oppressed Nationalities' 8.4 Padua's summer campaign: the Magyars

and German-Austrians 8.5 New trials in trench propaganda

9 Disintegration 9.1 The failure of patriotic instruction 9.2 A final duel in front propaganda

10 Conclusion

Appendix

Bibliography

Index

320 320 332

342

362 373

405 405 415

433

445

454

466

List of Tables

7.1 Diminishing strength of the 42HID (1918) 297 7.2 Percentage of literate males, aged 16--50, in Austria,

Hungary and Bosnia-Hercegovina 300 7.3 Desertions to the Italian 4th Army, 15 May-14 June 1918 301 8.1 Propaganda and Reconnaissance Units, June-November 1918 377 9.1 Desertions from the Austrian 11th Army, 1-30 September 1918 408

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List of Illustrations

4.1 'A Joke against a Joke': Austrian propaganda, lampooning Gabriele D' Annunzio (KA: 6sterreichisches Staatsarchiv, Kriegsarchiv, Vienna) 87

4.2 'Spaghetti Signori!': Austrian propaganda, satirizing the Italians (KA) 88

6.1 The Padua Commission in June 1918 (Antoni Szuber, Walka o Przewage Duchowq, Warsaw, 1933) 206

7.1 Manifesto 16: Trumbic announces to Zagreb and Ljubljana that Italian-Yugoslav relations are excellent (KA) 266

8.1 Manifesto 169: Serbs should reflect on the lessons of Kosovo (KA) 347

8.2 Manifesto 243: Two Czech brothers meet on Val Bella (KA) 354 8.3 Manifesto 131: Czechs ought to follow the example of

Jan Hus (KA) 356 8.4 Manifesto 109: The death of Hungary is announced (KA) 364 8.5 Manifesto 228: Austria's identity papers are marked

'Unscrupulousness', 'Slovenliness' and 'Hunger' (KA) 368 9.1 America rejects Burian's peace offer: Austria's final effort

at propaganda against Italy (KA) 418 9.2 Manifesto 352: A poem of Sandor Petofi to inspire

the Magyars (OHM: Orszagos Hadt6rteneti Muzeum, Budapest) 425

X

List of Maps

2.1 Austria-Hungary in the First World War 4.1 The Italian Front in 1918 5.1 The Italian Front in 1917 5.2 The Front east of Asiago (June 1918)

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17 83

132 146

Preface

In his most influential book published in 1927, Harold D. Lasswell, one of the pioneers of the modem study of propaganda, wrote that when the First World War had receded into the past it would be possible to write 'at least a fragment­ary history of the international propaganda of the time' .1 The following work is a contribution to that history. Its purpose is to examine one facet of wartime propaganda: the phenomenon which can be termed 'front propaganda', or the use of propaganda as a weapon of warfare against the enemy. Since Lasswell's study appeared, only a few authors have attempted to assess this modernized weapon of the Great War. The first, Hans Thimme, concentrated on the West­em Front in his Weltkrieg ohne Waffen. Another, lesser-known, work was by a Pole, Antoni Szuber, and dealt extensively with the Italian Front, the theatre where he had served as a wartime propagandist; however, his study in Polish could only reach a limited audience. 2 Later works, most notably those of George Bruntz, Luciano Tosi, and Michael Sanders and Philip Taylor, continued to emphasize the theme from a western perspective, in the latter cases setting front propaganda in the context of a specifically national wartime development of propaganda (British or Italian).3 The result has again been to present a fragmented picture of how the weapon was wielded among the belligerents. Indeed, as this study will argue, the effect of these works, even though each has contributed its own piece of the propaganda jigsaw, has been to distort the historiography, building consistently upon long-established myths about western, or more specifically British, superiority in the field of psychological warfare.

This study does not profess to give a complete picture of how front propa­ganda was exercised during the First World War. My aim is to restore a balance to the historiography, particularly to move away from a British focus, and to do so by investigating the propaganda weapon as wielded by and against the Habsburg Empire. In tum, this serves to open up other facets of the Great War which remain under-researched or often inaccessible to a western audi­ence. Thus, the analysis of front propaganda is concentrated upon the Italian and Eastern Fronts, scenes in any case of the most significant propaganda campaigns of the war (although they are barely mentioned in existing historio­graphy). And because the Habsburg Empire is the focus, either as propagandist or as victim of enemy propaganda, the work naturally explores the strengths and weaknesses of Austria-Hungary during its last war, assessing especially the degree to which its citizens were successfully mobilized on behalf of the Empire or were susceptible to arguments or information which could damage morale

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Preface xiii

and ultimately undermine the Monarchy's viability. In this way, while main­taining front propaganda as the key focal point, the book has a second major purpose of contributing towards the historiography of the collapse of Austria­Hungary.

The project was initially envisaged with a British focus, as a study of wartime British propaganda against the Habsburg Empire, but its concept was gradually moulded into its current shape as a result of the evidence which I discovered in Vienna, Budapest and Zagreb. I owe a special debt to Roy Bridge and Nicholas Pronay of the University of Leeds, who first suggested the research project, provided vital contacts in central Europe, and guided me with enthusiasm and criticism through the early stages: their support has been invaluable. During my research visits to foreign archives, I benefited greatly from lively discussions in Vienna with Lothar Hobelt, Peter Broucek and Steven Beller. In Budapest, my struggle in an environment where the language was wholly foreign to me was significantly eased through the help of Geza jeszenszky, Marton Farkas and Daniel Szabo. In Zagreb, I was privileged to talk to the late Dragovan Sepic, one of the wise doyens of Croatian history, and also secured untiring assistance from Zvonimir Passek in using the papers of the Yugoslav Committee, and from Damir Zagotta at the Croatian State Archives.

Over the years, many other anonymous individuals have assisted my research in the Viennese Kriegsarchiv, the Hungarian military archives, the library of the Orszagos Hadtorteneti Muzeum in Budapest, and the Vojensky Historicky Archiv in Prague. I particularly thank the Kriegsarchiv (Osterreichisches Staat­sarchiv) in Vienna for permission to reproduce propaganda leaflets from its collection. Since the material in this archive has recently been reordered, some of my references are according to the old system - but are still easy to locate. Where propaganda leaflets are named in this book, the title has been left as in the original (however erroneous the spelling).

In Britain I wish to acknowledge the assistance provided at Churchill College, Cambridge; the House of Lords Record Office; the Brotherton Library, Leeds; and the British Library. I am particularly grateful to Christopher Seton-Watson for many fruitful discussions and for his generosity with access to his father's papers. In mid-1982 I visited the village of Aldbourne in Wiltshire and there discovered, concealed in a chest in an attic, the papers of General Charles Delme-Radcliffe. I am indebted to his nephew, the late Peter Delme-Radcliffe, for the use of this material and am only sorry that he did not live to see how the archive of his 'wicked uncle' (as he termed him) added to an assessment of the Italian campaign against Austria-Hungary. Others to whom I owe a debt for shaping my thoughts include Zbynek Zeman and Norman Stone who read early versions of the manuscript and made valuable comments; Geoffrey Wadding­ton and Frank Magee for their friendship and support in Leeds; the late john Leslie; Chris Bartlett, whose incisive perceptions of the past have constantly

xiv Preface

enthused me during my years in Scotland; and John Hind, Krzysztof Nawotka and Dieter Kotschick for help in the translation of Romanian and Polish material.

My research was also considerably aided through the hospitality and friend­ship of certain individuals: the late Eva Nyomarkay and Mr and Mrs Albert Jakab, who warmly welcomed and introduced me to the world of Budapest; Monika Maruska and Erik Roth in Vienna; Radenko Radojcic in Zagreb; Radek Tesar in Prague. Paul Roberts for many years tolerated my joys and anxieties about the project, and accompanied me on visits to the Italian Front: his steady encouragement did much to ensure the book's completion.

Finally, clutching the theory that it is possible to name key historians who are the making of another historian, I mention my mentors, Eric Pankhurst (Stroud), Roy Bridge (Leeds) and Zbynek Zeman (Oxford), each of whom has taught and enthused me. Dan Healey has been my constant support in the final stages of the book, quietly confident about its completion: to him I am truly grateful. My final thanks are to my parents, John and Benita Cornwall, who provided a model for living. I dedicate the book to them.

Notes

JMC Dundee

1. Harold D. Lasswell, Propaganda Technique in World War I (New York, 1927) p. 12. 2. Hans Thimme, Weltkrieg ohne Waffen (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1932); Antoni Szuber,

Walka o Przewagc Duchowq. Kampanja Propagandowa Koalicji 1914-1918 (Warsaw, 1933).

3. George Bruntz, Allied Propaganda and the Collapse of the German Empire in 1918 (Stanford, 1938); Luciano Tosi, La Propaganda Italiana all'Estero nella Prima Guerra Mondiale. Rivendicazioni Territoriali e Po/itica delle Nazionalita (Udine, 1977); Michael Sanders and Philip Taylor, British Propaganda during the First World War 1914-1918 (London, 1982).

Preface to the Paperback Edition

The events in this book about the collapse of the Habsburg Empire took place a century ago when all the belligerents in the Great War were searching for new weapons to achieve victory. It was in this spirit that some Italian Intelligence officers began to 'throw out the seeds of future discord' on the Italian Front, using nationalist propaganda in order to undermine the morale of the opposing Austro-Hungarian armed forces. 1 This was just one of the seminal propaganda campaigns of the war. Yet it was the most important, both at the time and in retrospect, because of its scale and its long-term mythical impact for the rest of the twentieth century.

Enemy propaganda in wartime was of course nothing new. In living memory -in the 1848 revolutions- Piedmont's army had distributed proclamations urging Hungarian soldiers to desert in north Italy. 2 The campaigns of 1917-18, however, turned military propaganda into a sophisticated instrument, a 'modem weapon of warfare' which many previously sceptical army officers came to see as a useful aid at least to conventional weaponry. Its modernity was self-evident in its techniques. Daredevil airmen took to the skies to distribute the revolutionary messages en masse over targets far below. And the messages themselves evinced a new populist dimension to warfare, where all individuals could and should play their part in a great moral crusade by upholding or paralyzing the military machines. For in the final war years the public rhetoric circulating to justify the global conflict was at its most virulent, demonizing the enemy as never before while seeking to persuade fellow-citizens to hold out for victory, peace, and a secure future.

The Allied psychological war against Austria-Hungary presented Habsburg soldiers and civilians with a typically exaggerated and moralizing picture of their disintegrating empire. According to the propaganda arguments, the Habsburg Empire was a 'prison of peoples' run by an oppressive and doomed regime against nationalities who were champing at the bit to escape and proclaim their own independence. During 1918, the highpoint of the propaganda campaign, this stereotypical nationalist rhetoric was immensely powerful in shaping the public image of Austria-Hungary across Europe. In the decades thereafter - indeed for the rest of the twentieth century - it was an image that stuck, for some of those who organized the war propaganda of 1917-18 became the key historians of the old Habsburg Empire. Equally, for most of the Successor States of the empire (except perhaps Austria), the final wartime interpretation of Austria-Hungary continued to be a prominent state narrative justifying their existence. In other words, 'the national histories of central Europe reinforced the legacy of war propaganda.' 3

This gives an added significance to The Undermining of Austria-Hungary. For although the time-period described is relatively short, the propaganda ideas

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Preface to the Paperback Edition xvi

from that brief era were exploited by interested parties for half a century to condemn the 'anachronistic' Monarchy. Recent historiography has done much to correct that twentieth-century image of the empire as simply decrepit or doomed. Many Habsburg historians now interpret the Monarchy as very much a vibrant concern in its last decades, a European state that was slowly evolving and finding solutions to its political and economic problems, one where many citizens could find fulfilment and flexibly express both aspirations and frustrations. 4

The world of the wartime propaganda campaigns might seem rather alien to that positive pre-war image. For certainly, the Austria-Hungary described in this book is an empire in crisis, worn down by the trauma of total war, and susceptible to many of the arguments of enemy propaganda. Those propaganda battles of 1917-18 therefore force us constantly to ponder how far myth and reality actually converged or diverged in the final years of the war. The (nationalist) propagandists were typically idealists who got used to stretching their arguments to match their ideals. But at the same time, in 1918, Austria-Hungary was indeed engulfed by a mixture of national and social umest that the state could not control. While wartime created peculiar challenges, I would still argue that we cannot treat the wartime empire in isolation when explaining its disintegration. Many of the festering grievances which enemy propaganda exploited in 1918 had their roots not just in the war but in the pre-war era, when those who exercised power in the Habsburg regime already felt that their empire was in some kind of cns1s.

When this book first appeared in 2000, it bridged a growing divide between traditional and cultural approaches to the history of the Great War. Since then, some of its underlying themes have been explored much further by other historians. New works have revealed how the state's wartime legitimacy weakened, leading to the breakdown of the state-citizen relationship in Vienna; or the shifts in allegiance occurring in Czech and Slovenian regions. 5 Others have detailed the impact of military priorities in terms of state surveillance; how South Slavs were often stereotyped and persecuted; or how the Habsburg military elite arbitrarily dismissed civilian concerns. 6 I have myself substantially re-assessed elsewhere how the Habsburg authorities sought to manage morale and patriotism on the home front (suggesting some success in that regard). 7 The result is a growing body of scholarship that tries to explain with the tools of cultural history the wartime crisis in the Habsburg hinterland. This in tum places the mythical propaganda battles on the Italian and Eastern Fronts in a new perspective. We can appreciate better the skills of those who wielded the propaganda weapon, not just the Italians but also the Austrians. We can also evaluate with more nuance how their mentality - how far the blunt or rose-tinted propaganda language - diverged from the concerns of their target audiences. How the propaganda was manufactured, and how it was received, depended very much on the unusual wartime information bubble, where the prevailing news quarantine shaped the mindsets of individuals, allowing hopes and fears to accumulate in equal measure on both sides of the front.

While so much Great War historiography has always been devoted to the Western Front and the western belligerents, this book describes life and death in

Preface to the Paperback Edition xvii

spaces of the conflict that are often as neglected as the history of wartime Austria­Hungary. 8 Those spaces had their own horror, and also produced peculiar facets of warfare due to the special terrain and the geopolitical associations of each front. Thus The Undermining of Austria-Hungary, after excursions into revolutionary Russia, takes us deep into the world of the Austro-Italian Front, 9

where Italian military Intelligence demonstrated surprising prowess, where a Czech Legion could prove its mettle, and where a major struggle began over the creation of Yugoslavia on the shores of the Adriatic.

Alongside the 'outlandish stories of derring-do and duplicity', to quote one reviewer, 10 we are also introduced to maverick personalities of the propaganda war. As historians like Margaret MacMillan have shown, personalities matter at decisive historical moments. 11 In the hothouse environment of the Italian Front, men like the Slovene Ljudevit Pivko, the Czech Frantisek Hlavacek, the Italian Ugo Ojetti, the Croat Milivoj Jambrisak, or the eccentric Englishman Charles Delme-Radcliffe, were able briefly to flourish. But their day on the international stage was then quickly forgotten when the war ended. One reason was that their own war narrative did not sit easily with those who were the official interpreters of the great conflict in the post-war world. 12 Indeed, the blunt preciseness of the wartime propaganda arguments concealed a host of disputes among the propagandists themselves. In the post-war world, not least in interwar Yugoslavia, the reality of what was underneath the fine words was soon laid bare. And, as with any modem war, when states launch violent offensives with arms or with propaganda, there are usually dangerous repercussions that are impossible to foresee. The 'seeds of future discord' distributed in the Great War helped initially to poison Austria-Hungary. But in twentieth-century Eastern Europe they then continued to germinate, perpetuating a world of nationalist stereotypes and conflict that the old Habsburg imperial framework had at least done something to sublimate.

Notes

Mark Cornwall All Souls College, Oxford

Cesare Pettorelli Lalatta [Finzi], 'I. T. 0. ' Note di un Capo del Servizio Informazioni d'Armata (1915-1918) (Milan, 1934), p. 140. See Colonel Istvan Tiirr, Narrative of the Arrest, Trial and Condemnation of Colonel Turr showing how Austria respects International Law (London, 1856), pp. 5-6. John Deak, 'The Great War and the Forgotten Realm: The Habsburg Monarchy and the First World War', The Journal of Modern History, vol.86, no.2 (2014): 345. See for example Pieter M. Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge MA, 2016). Respectively: Maureen Healy, Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War I (Cambridge, 2004); Ivan Sediry, Cesi, ceske zeme a velkd w:ilka 1914-1918 (Prague, 2001); and Pavlina Bobic, War and Faith: The Catholic

Nationalitätenkonflikt in der Steiermark 1900-1918 (Innsbruck-Vienna-Bozen, 2007); and Jonathan Gumz, The Resurrection and Collapse of Empire in Habsburg Serbia, 1914-1918 (Cambridge, 2009).

7 Mark Cornwall, ‘Das Ringen um die Moral des Hinterland. Moral, Loyaltität und Zensur,’ in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848-1918, vol. X1/1, Die Habsburgermonarchie und der Erste Weltkrieg, ed. Helmut Rumpler (Vienna 2016), pp. 393-435. Volume XI of this series contains much new research on the empire at war.

8 For two new general syntheses, see Manfried Rauchensteiner, Der Erste Weltkrieg und das Ende der Habsburgermonarchie (Vienna, 2013); and Alexander Watson, Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War 1914-1918 (London, 2014).

9 For an excellent new history of the Italian Front, see Mark Thompson, The White War. Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 (London, 2008).

10 R.J.W. Evans: The English Historical Review, vol.116, no.469 (2011), p. 1297. 11 Margaret MacMillan, History’s People: Personalities and the Past (London, 2015). 12 For a range of views on the conflicted war memory in the Successor States, see Mark

Cornwall and John Paul Newman (eds), Sacrifice and Rebirth: The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War (New York, 2016). Pivko and Hlavá ek both wrote their memoirs in the 1920s, but they were suspect individuals to those who ruled interwar Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.

6 Respectively: Tamara Scheer, Die Ringstraßenfront. Österreich-Ungarn, das Kriegsüberwachungsamt und der Ausnahmezustand während des Ersten Weltkrieges (Vienna, 2010); Martin Moll, Kein Burgfrieden. Der deutsch-slowenische

Church in Slovenia 1914-1918 (Leiden, 2012).

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List of Abbreviations

[For archive abbreviations see bibliography.] AK Armeekommando AOK BH CIGS CPI cs d. DMI DOHL EPD FAR FAst

FJB FM FML GM GO Gstbs Abt HFB HGK HID HIR HM Hptm ID IR KA KD KISA KK KPQ k.u.k. KUA Lt MilKmdo

Armeeoberkommando (Austro-Hungarian High Command) Bosnia-Hercegovinan Chief of Imperial General Staff Committee on Public Information Comando Supremo (Italian High Command) despatch Director of Military Intelligence German High Command Enemy Propaganda Department (Crewe House) Field artillery regiment Feindespropaganda-Abwehrstelle (Enemy Propaganda

Defence Agency) Feldjagerbataillon Feldmarschall Feldmarschalleutnant Generalmajor Generaloberst Generalstabs Abteilung Hadifeli.igyeleti Bizottsag (War Surveillance Commission, Budapest) Heeresgruppekommando Honved infantry division Honved infantry regiment Honved Ministry Hauptmann (Captain) Infantry division Infantry regiment Kriegsarchiv Cavalry division Isonzo army command Corps command Kriegspressequartier (War Press Office) kaiserlich und konglich Kriegsi.iberwachungsamt (War Surveillance Office, Vienna) Leutnant I lieutenant Military command

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XX List of Abbreviations

MK/I<M MKSM Na. Abt Obst Op.Abt OULK Pr. pte Qu.Abt SchD SchR t ..

Militiirkanzlei im Kriegsministerium Militarkanzlei Seiner Majestat Nachrichten Abteilung Oberst (Colonel) Operations Abteilung Austrian Official History of the War Propaganda private Quartier Abteilung Schiitzendivision Schiitzenregiment telegram

‘The Undermining of Austria-Hungary has no peer in scholarly work about the First World War, the Habsburg Empire, and propaganda. Sifting and synthesizing a phenomenal range of material in many languages, Cornwall illuminates political communication, military strategy, nationalities policy, and the causes of imperial collapse. Everyone interested in the war's course and consequences should read this book.’ Mark Thompson, The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 ‘A work of immense erudition, which not only revises the received wisdom on the mechanics of war-time propaganda, but also sheds light on a raft of issues concerning the war on both the Eastern and the Italian fronts.’ Hew Strachan, German History ‘A truly impressive work of history. Cornwall’s mastery of most of the Habsburg monarchy’s major languages has enabled him to utilize an impressive range of sources … Historians of the monarchy, of the First World War, and of wartime propaganda will find this book indispensable.’ Daniel Unowsky, The Historical Journal ‘Cornwall offers new insights into the collapse of the monarchy while revising the traditional less-than-friendly assessment of the overall Italian war effort. His ability to weave military actions, domestic politics, and international diplomacy together has produced a major work on the last years of Habsburg rule.’ Samuel R. Williamson Jr., The Journal of Modern History ‘It might be thought well-nigh impossible to find an aspect of the First World War still largely untouched by scholarship. Yet Mark Cornwall has done so … A highly impressive volume, which also retails some outlandish stories of derring-do and duplicity.’ R.J.W. Evans, The English Historical Review ‘Cornwall’s valuable study exhibits talents of the first order: prodigious energy, enviable linguistic ability (in eight languages), and careful analysis and synthesis of much material … The propaganda war which he illuminatingly explores is an important and less well-known aspect of total war. He is himself both its historian and its demythologizer.’ A. Levin, History ‘A model of thorough and solid research … of cautious, measured judgement. Cornwall’s book fills a gap in the literature in a manner which will ensure that it will not be soon superseded.’ Trevor Thomas, The Slavonic and East European Review

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