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2014
H-Diplo Review Essay
H-Diplo
H-Diplo Essay No. 117
H-Diplo Review Essays Editors: Thomas Maddux and
Diane Labrosse
H-Diplo Web and Production Editor: George Fujii
Published on 29 October 2014
Commissioned by Thomas Maddux
An H-Diplo Review Essay
h-diplo.org/essays/
Wolfram Dornik, Julia Walleczek-Fritz, and Stefan Wedrac, eds. Frontwechsel: ÖsterreichUngarns „Großer Krieg“ im Vergleich. Vienna: Böhlau, 2014. 466pp. Index. ISBN 978-3-20579477-6 (cloth, €69.00).
URL: http://tiny.cc/E117 or http://h-diplo.org/essays/PDF/E117.pdf
Reviewed by Ke-chin Hsia, Indiana University, Bloomington
A
ustria-Hungary was the country that started it all. Its decision to go to war with
Serbia one hundred years ago opened the floodgate that fundamentally changed
Europe and the rest of the world. Ironically, in the cottage industry that is the
history of the First World War, Austria-Hungary always seems to be struggling for
attention. The ‘big boys,’ Great Britain, Germany, France, and to a lesser extent Russia,
dominate both popular narratives and scholarly analyses. Even authors interested in
more global or inclusive approaches have very few or only very dated things to say
about Austria-Hungary beyond the run-up to the ultimatum. 1 There are historical
reasons for this continued bias, not the least the lasting influence of wartime
propaganda and the nationalist historiographies of the successor states. 2 Nevertheless,
as more and more readers recognize that the Western Front was only part of a larger
story, and Central and Eastern Europe’s twentieth century was deeply shaped by the
war’s legacies, there is an ever pressing and justified need to put Austria-Hungary back
in the picture.
1 The tide may be turning. For example, Christopher Clark’s international bestseller The Sleepwalkers:
How Europe Went to War in 1914 (London: Penguin Books, 2013[2012]) opens with two substantial chapters
on Serbia and Austria-Hungary respectively. The Austria-Hungary chapter absorbs newer scholarship from
the last 30 years. For a synthesis of this revisionist historiography of Austria-Hungary, see Gary B. Cohen’s
“Neither Absolutism nor Anarchy: New Narratives on Society and Government in Late Imperial Austria,”
Austrian History Yearbook 29 (1998): pt.1, 37-61, and “Nationalist Politics and the Dynamics of State and Civil
Society in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1867–1914,” Central European History 40, no. 2 (June 2007): 241-278.
On the historical and historiographical reasons, see John Deak, “The Great War and the Forgotten
Realm: The Habsburg Monarchy and the First World War,” Journal of Modern History 86:2 (June 2014): 336380.
2
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While a lively international literature on Austria-Hungary’s war experiences has been
growing for some time, 3 the question remains: How to bring Austria-Hungary’s final
war to the mainstream World War I historiography? The editors of Frontwechsel
(“changing front,” a telling title indeed) are convinced that comparison holds the key.
Deploying a more explicitly comparative perspective, they argue, enables historians of
Austria-Hungary a fuller engagement with the latest trends in First World War studies.
Committing to both synchronic and diachronic comparisons will, moreover, allow
historians see the war in the longue durée—not merely as the beginning (“Urcatastrophe”) or the end (“common history under the Habsburg dominion”) of
something—and bid a firm farewell to the lingering national and Cold-War strictures
(12-13).
Frontwechsel is no doubt an ambitious project. It originates in a 2012 conference
organized by the enterprising “Forum: Österreich-Ungarn im Ersten Weltkrieg” (Forum
on Austria-Hungary in the First World War, founded in 2008). 4 The twenty articles,
sixteen in German and four in English, are mostly authored by young (or younger)
historians from Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, and almost all of them
incorporate at least a comparative dimension, if not a comparative framework. The first
three essays, originally the keynote lectures of the conference, show how much
historical writing on the First World War has evolved. Gerhard P. Groß traces the
debate on the origins of the war since the highly emotional Fritz Fischer Controversy. 5
He points out that the new research of the last two decades has significantly decentered Germany’s role in the outbreak of the war (without exculpating it). This
development portends a less polemical and more sober discussion of the belligerents’
share of responsibility in the war’s origins. Hannes Leidinger reflects on the necessity to
catch up with the comparative trend, arguing that a comparative approach promises to
offset the fragmentation of academic WWI research and prepare the ground for much
needed up-to-date overviews for the public. 6 Perhaps the most telling of all, the veteran
military historian Manfried Rauchensteiner ventures into the history of mentality. 7 He
3 A ‘state of the art’ report can be found in Alan Sked, “Austria-Hungary and the First World War,”
Histoire@Politique. Politique, culture, société 22 (Jan.-Apr. 2014), under “Le dossier: Historiographies
étrangères de la Première Guerre modiale,” http://www.histoirepolitique.fr/index.php?numero=22&rub=dossier&item=213 (accessed 1 July 2014).
4
The Forum’s webpage is http://www.ersterweltkrieg.at (accessed 1 July 2014).
“Annäherung an die Urkatastrophe: Das Bild des Kriegsausbruchs 1914 von Fritz Fischer bis heute,”
in Frontwechsel, 19-35.
5
6
“Vergleichende Weltkriegsforschung—Analyse eines Trends,” in Frontwechsel, 37-47.
“Kriegermentalitäten. Miszellen aus Österreich-Ungarns letztem Krieg,” in Frontwechsel, 49-68.
Rauchensteiner wrote the standard single volume military history of Austria-Hungary’s First World War in
the last twenty years: Der Tod des Doppeladlers: Österreich-Ungarn und der Ersten Weltkrieg (Graz: Styria,
1993). An extended and revised version of the book is re-titled Der Erste Weltkrieg und das Ende der
Habsburgermonarchie (Vienna: Böhlau, 2013)
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identifies typical “warrior mentalities” with first-hand accounts from Austro-Hungarian
frontline soldiers. The impact of cultural and everyday historical inquiries into the
Western Front is clearly felt here. 8
Cultural history and everyday history very much underpin the first, “Experience vs.
Memory” section of the book. Liisi Eglit summarizes Estonian World War One soldiers’
experiences of returning to civilian life. 9 She underlines the fact that in comparison with
their Austrian counterparts, the ensuing Estonian War of Independence (1917-1920)
added another layer of war experience and memory-making to Estonian First World
War veterans, an occurrence that was not uncommon for many Eastern European
soldiers and civilians. Aibe-Marlene Gerdes explores public as well as private initiatives
to document the war immediately after its outbreak, 10 a “historicizing of the present” in
Germany and Austria (143). Ralph Andraschek-Holzer reminds us that there is a corpus
of German-language war prose beyond the familiar Erich Maria Remarque and
company. 11 For these post-1918 ‘Austrian’ writings, he proposes a system for future
comparative literary analysis. Maciej Górny contends that there was also a “war of the
intellectuals (Krieg der Geister)” in Eastern and Southeastern Europe. 12 In contrast to
the more well-known Western version, this one was fought crisscrossing lines of state
boundaries, behind and across battlefronts, and among supposed allies (or at least
those technically on the same side) by a plethora of nationalist activists at odds with
each other. Their discourses of civilization versus barbarity and national characters
were intended as much for international public opinion as for their
opponents/oppressors and co-nationalists.
Another main theme of the first section is the role of transnational/international actors
in a conflict between sovereign states. Antje Bräcker asks what Catholic orders could
achieve in relief provision in the midst of rising tension between nationalist agitation
and the Habsburg interests. 13 Julia Walleczek-Fritz discusses neutral humanitarian
On the evolution from the military-diplomatic focus to a socio-cultural paradigm in the British,
French, and German interpretations of the First World War, see Jay Winter and Antoine Prost, The Great War
in History: Debates and Controversies, 1914 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
8
71-90.
9
“The Experience of Returning. Estonian World War I Soldiers’ Return to Society,” in Frontwechsel,
10 “Sammeln. Dokumentieren. Erinnern? Die österreichischen Kriegssammlungen des Ersten
Weltkrieges,” in Frontwechsel, 139-161.
11
12
191-210.
“Österreichische Prosa zum Ersten Weltkrieg im Vergleich,” in Frontwechsel, 163-189.
“Der ‚Krieg der Geister‘ im Osten? Eine Fußnote zum vergangenen Paradigma,” in Frontwechsel,
“Katholisches karitatives Wirken in den Balkankriegen und im Ersten Weltkrieg zwischen
Habsburgerreich und Nationalbewegungen am Beispiel der Kriegsgefangenenfürsorge,” in Frontwechsel, 91104.
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organizations’ interventions on behalf of the welfare of Prisoners of War (POWs) in
Austro-Hungarian and Russian captivity. 14 In view of a brand new literature identifying
the First World War as the incubator of modern humanitarianism and the international
human rights regime, 15 her essay reminds us that the older principle of reciprocity still
defined the interaction between the belligerents and conditioned the neutral, non-state
actors’ room for relief intervention.
The second section, “Self-Determination vs. Foreign Domination,” focuses on a theme
that is at the very center of the current First World War scholarship: the experiences of
occupation. Several articles in the section also touch on the persistence of war
conditions extending in both directions beyond the 1914-1918 confines. Daniel Marc
Segesser shows that the assumptions about ‘civilization’ and stereotyped views of the
Balkan nations on the one hand, and the complicated and contested legality of armed
resistance by the occupied people on the other, muted the reaction to the atrocities
committed by the Austro-Hungarian forces in Serbia in August 1914—in sharp contrast
to German atrocities in Belgium. 16 Heiko Brendel and Emmanuel Debruyne conduct a
methodical comparison of German occupation on the Western Front and the Central
Powers’ occupation in the Balkans. 17 It is perhaps their caution against seeing all the
armed conflicts on the ground as part of the First World War that stands out. Small
wars fought by insurgent groups for their own reasons in the Balkans started well
before 1914, and they force us to consider the limits in applying the term ‘world war.’
Elisabeth Haid compares Austria-Hungary’s and Russia’s policies as well as propaganda
related to Galician Ruthenians (the Ukrainian speakers). 18 Repeatedly changing hands
between the two empires during the war, Galicia provided the backdrop for an example
of how much prewar stereotypes and suspicions determined the practices of wartime
treatment of civilians—whether one’s own or not—in the borderland regions, and how
these loaded policies were presented to the home-front audience.
Diachronic comparison is an approach the editors of Frontwechsel support. Three
essays in the second section represent this attempt. Stephan Lehnstaedt offers
14 “Kontrolle durch Fürsorge. Neutrale humanitäre Organisationen und ihre Engagement für
Kriegsgefangene in Österreich-Ungarn und Russland im Ersten Weltkrieg in vergleichender Perspektive,” in
Frontwechsel, 105-137.
15 Bruno Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918-1924 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2014); Jay Winter and Antoine Prost, René Cassin and Human Rights: From the
Great War to the Universal Declaration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
“Kriegsverbrechen? Die österreichisch-ungarischen Operationen des August 1914 im Serbien in
Wahrnehmung und Vergleich,” in Frontwechsel, 213-233.
16
17 “Resistance and Repression in Occupied Territories behind the Western and Balkan Fronts, 19141918. A Comparative Perspective,” in Frontwechsel, 235-258.
18 “Nationalitätenpolitik und Kriegspropaganda. Die galizischen Ruthenen aus der Perspektive
Österreich-Ungarns und Russlands,” in Frontwechsel, 259-282.
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methodological reflections on the diachronic comparison between the occupation of
Poland by Imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War One and by Nazi
Germany in World War Two. 19 Petra Svoljšak and Bojan Godeša trace the Italian
administration of the Slovene population in the occupied territories during the two
world wars. 20 The Italianization of the Slovene culture was the occupiers’ tool on both
occasions, with violence added in the second time around. The Slovene sense of cultural
and ethical superiority over the occupiers offers an interesting case of reverse national
stereotyping which undermined the Italian rationale. Claire Morelon chooses occupied
France in the Second World War as the comparison case in discussing the food
shortage-induced urban-rural antagonism in World War One Prague. 21 In both
instances, farmer-centered national narratives were devised to save the endangered
national solidarity, with Nazi German occupiers (for the French in the Second World
War) and Bohemian Germans (for the Czechs in World War One Prague) assigned the
role of the villain, respectively.
The third section of the book, entitled “Civilian Politics vs. the Military,” covers more
traditional diplomatic, military, and high-politics topics, but the comparative
perspective is not entirely missing. Lothar Höbelt’s article questions common
assumptions about wartime civil-military relations by focusing on the role of the
constitutional monarchs in war, the plebiscitary legitimacy of military intervention in
politics (especially the Hindenburg-Ludendorff regime), coalition war-making and
inter-service rivalries, and the assumption by armed forces of anti-bellicose stances. 22
Austria-Hungary and France, surprisingly, shared to some extent similar dynamics in
the high-level civil-military interaction.
More prominent in this section, though, is the interactive dimension between the states.
Verena Moritz calls for the injection of intelligence studies into the history of the
relations between Austria-Hungary and Russia. 23 A historical analysis of both sides’
military intelligence activities promises new insights into the diplomacy and military
preparedness before and during the early stages of the war. It will, moreover, reveal
“Besatzungen vergleichen. Methodische Überlegungen zur Okkupation Polens im Ersten und
Zweiten Weltkrieg,” in Frontwechsel, 283-301.
19
20 “Italian Interwar Administration of Slovenian Ethnic Territory: Italian Ethnic Policy,” in
Frontwechsel, 303-323.
“A Threat to National Unity? The Urban-Rural Antagonism in Prague during the First World War in
a Comparative Perspective,” in Frontwechsel, 325-342.
21
22 “Frock Coats and Brass Hats‘: Das Verhältnis von Politik und Militär im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in
Frontwechsel, 357-376.
“Militärische Nachrichtendienste vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg. Voraussetzungen und Perspektiven
einer Geschichte wechselseitiger Wahrnehmungen und Einschätzungen am Beispiel Österreich-Ungarns und
des Zarenreichs,” in Frontwechsel, 399-420.
23
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mutual perceptions and take the temperature of the prewar public mood through the
popular fascination with espionage reportage. M. Christian Ortner charts the
development of Austria-Hungary Army’s battle procedure (Kampfverfahren) during the
First World War. 24 A result of the cult of the offensive undergirded by infantry assault
and the belief in sheer will, the catastrophically high casualties of the first months
(statistically most frontline junior officers would not be around for a third battle) and
the ensuing stationary battles forced the Austrians to learn from the Germans. Lessons
from the Western Front introduced linear tactics and better artillery-infantry
coordination to the field army in 1915. The German zone defense and storm troop
tactics followed in 1917. This was an example of how technology and skills were
transferred and circulated during the war. This section is rounded out by Stratos N.
Dordanas’s analysis of the Macedonian question during the war, which reveals
divergent interests between Germany and Austria-Hungary (and other affiliated
countries), 25 and Günther Sandner’s analysis of Otto Neurath’s pre-1914 and wartime
theorizing of war economy, which epitomized a more optimistic age in its belief in the
collective rationality and democratic management of economy being superior to
unregulated market forces. 26
As a whole, Frontwechsel testifies to the success of cultural history in transforming the
study of the First World War. The interest in the representational and the creation of
meaning are obvious in the study of memory, experience, and mentality, which is well
represented in the volume. But many other articles also highlight the importance of
prior perceptions, assumptions, and stereotypes in shaping wartime policies, actions,
and the reactions of the belligerents and the neutrals (and the international public) to
these very policies and actions. In this regard, Frontwechsel is both an invaluable
contribution to a more nuanced and layered understanding of the First World War in
Eastern and Southeastern Europe, and a worthy response to what has taken place in the
general historiography of the First World War. 27
24 “Die Entwicklung des österreichisch-ungarischen Kampfverfahrens im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in
Frontwechsel, 421-450.
“Österreich-Ungarn und die Makedonische Frage während des Ersten Weltkrieges,” in
Frontwechsel, 345-355.
25
“Was Menschenkraft zu leisten vermag. Otto Neurath und die Kriegswirtschaftslehre,” in
Frontwechsel, 377-397.
26
27 The historiographical essay by Jay Winter and Antoine Prost (The Great War in History) discusses
many of the trends and developments I have in mind here. For new themes, questions, perspectives, and
methodologies being explored across the field of First World War Studies, see the five collections of essays
published under the auspices of the International Society for First World War Studies (as of this writing a
sixth, entitled Other Fronts, Other Wars?, will be published shortly): Jenny Macleod and Pierre Purseigle, eds.,
Uncovered Fields: Perspectives in First World War Studies, History of Warfare 20 (Leiden: Brill, 2004); Pierre
Purseigle, ed., Warfare and Belligerence: Perspectives in First World War Studies, History of Warfare 30
(Leiden: Brill, 2005); Heather Jones, Jennifer O’Brien, and Christoph Schmidt-Supprian, eds., Untold War: New
Perspectives in First World War Studies, History of Warfare 49 (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Jennifer D. Keene and
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Frontwechsel also poses productive questions about the First World War in more
general ways. As several articles clearly show, for many Eastern and Southeastern
Europeans, the ‘Great War’ simply could not be confined to the period between 1914
and 1918. Many of the wartime phenomena and conditions began as early as 1912 and
lasted beyond 1920. Furthermore, basic categories that historians of the First World
War often take for granted, such as state boundaries, national and ethnic identities, the
distinction between the civilian and the combatant (as well as that between one’s own
citizens and foreign subjects), were less certain, stable, or even meaningful.
Frontwechsel makes a strong case that a Habsburg perspective on the First World War
will do more than just fill in the factual blanks.
The editors’ confidence in comparison is also justified. The footnotes in the articles
prove the advantage of a comparative dimension or framework in marshalling
knowledge previously not widely shared beyond individual national historiographies.
And in a comparative light, ‘old’ facts gain new significance and compel us to rethink the
broader narratives they constitute. But it is also in comparison that Frontwechsel’s
ambitious project of innovation reveals its pitfalls. First, the usefulness of diachronic
comparison is not convincingly established; the number of articles that actually engage
in such comparison in a substantive manner is unfortunately too small. Then there is
the question of emphasis. Some articles (Gerdes’s and Lehnstaedt’s, for example) are at
best an asymmetrical exercise: the Austro-Hungarian case is compared with its German
counterpart in such a way that the real focus and the authors’ expertise clearly lies on
the German side. This imbalance unwittingly echoes the wartime power relations and
the historiographical marginalization of Austria-Hungary since then—exactly what
Frontwechsel wants to overcome. This may well have been the consequence of rushing
to explore new questions and sharing new insights, because these articles, and some
others (Bräcker’s and Moritz’s) in the volume, are apparently stronger in raising
research questions, discussing methodologies, and evaluating sources than in
presenting substantive and sustained arguments. These are perhaps less satisfying, but
they do point to where we can expect new advances in the near future.
Can Frontwechsel help integrate Austria-Hungary into the mainstream First World War
historiography? Methodologically, and to some extent in terms of substantive matters,
the historians of these parts of Europe hold up their end and show what they can bring
to the table. Let us see if others are ready to take up their offer.
Ke-chin Hsia is a Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of History at
Indiana University, Bloomington. Educated in Taipei and Chicago, his research interests
include late Austria-Hungary and the Austrian Republic, the First World War, historical
origins of the welfare state, civil administration in the age of democratization, and
Michael S. Neiberg, eds., Finding Common Ground: New Directions in First World War Studies, History of
Warfare 62 (Leiden: Brill, 2010); James E. Kitchen, Alisa Miller, and Laura Rowe, eds., Other Combatants, Other
Fronts: Competing Histories of the First World War (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
2011). It must be added that Austria-Hungary is undeniably under-represented in these five volumes.
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nationalism in contiguous empires. His publications include: “A Partnership of the
Weak: War Victims and the State in the Early First Austrian Republic,” in From Empire
to Republic: Post-World War I Austria, ed. Günter Bischof, Fritz Plasser, and Peter Berger
(New Orleans: UNO Press; Innsbruck: Innsbruck University Press, 2010), 192-221, and
“Who Provided Care for Wounded and Disabled Soldiers? Conceptualizing State-Civil
Society Relationship in WWI Austria,” in Other Fronts, Other Wars? First World War
Studies on the Eve of the Centennial, ed. Joachim Bürgschwentner, Matthias Egger, and
Gunda Barth-Scalmani (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 303-328.
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