Cornwall M. The Undermining of Austria-Hungary: The Battle for Hearts and Minds

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34 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

During the year 1917, the number of desertions to Italy from the Tyrolian

region which Conrad now commanded was perceived to have grown dramat-

ically: from

115 in the first six months to a total of 82 for the months of July

and August alone. And while in the past the deserters had usually been `Slavs or

Romanians', this was no longer entirely the case. Conrad therefore ordered a

thorough investigation, judging that the phenomenon had to have `apart from

nationalist agitation and war-weariness, its own special causes'.

The results, which Conrad dispatched in a short report to the AOK on 15

September, illustrate amply the degree to which the military in the war zone

saw events within Austria-Hungary as the major threat to army morale and

discipline.

General war-weariness or the rigours of life in the front line

appeared to be side issues. Above all, the report, based upon the views of

corps commanders and their subordinates, put the blame for the rise in deser-

tions upon

the amnesty for political prisoners which Emperor Karl had granted

in July 1917. Through this, former `traitors' like Karel Krama

ÂÏ

r were released and

went home to a tumultuous welcome in their home-towns. Apart from the

recriminations which followed on all sides, Conrad and other officers were

always bitterly opposed to the amnesty because of the bad example it set for

military discipline; about a year later, Karl would be told, to his surprise, that

since the amnesty desertions had increased by 80 per cent.

In his report,

Conrad duly highlighted insufficient discipline as a major problem, and

pointed to the laxity which seemed to be a feature of the `new regime'. Most

notably, Karl had also decided to abolish two forms of military punishment

(tying up and chaining up) which the officers felt to be vital as a means of

controlling the ranks. Since the officers would only be left with the option of

punishing recalcitrants by placing them in `labour units', it was a matter over

which the AOK would petition Karl energetically in order to have the ban

rescinded (which was achieved in early 1918).

For the

military, it was a tightening rather than a loosening of discipline

which seemed essential because of the low calibre of troops which were reach-

ing the

war zone. As Arz had noted earlier in 1917, Conrad in September

pointed to the steady influx of `unreliable elements' from the hinterland,

specifying these as men of Serb, Czech, Romanian and Ruthene nationality,

who then had to be mixed with `reliable' German or Magyar troops. Not only,

he advised, should this mixing be avoided, since the new recruits were

unsettled by serving next to troops speaking a different language, but the

assignation of unreliable elements had to stop: `for otherwise in a short time

there will be no units left which we can characterize as absolutely reliable'.

One officer at the AOK minuted alongside Conrad's words, `Yes, but where then

can we send them?' It had, after all, been normal procedure at least since the

behaviour of Czech regiments in 1915 to place known unreliable elements

under firm supervision. And especially after the Austro-Hungarian army was

Austria-Hungary and the Control of Wartime Morale 35

reorganized from May 1917, it became standard practice to create nationally-

mixed regiments as an extra check upon suspect nationalities.

More funda-

mentally, the

military's criteria for judging `reliability' was highly suspect. It

might still be true that Germans, Magyars, Croats, Slovenes and Poles made,

on the whole, the most disciplined soldiers. But in 1917, the list of deserters to

Italy was beginning to contain more German and Hungarian names ± a sign

that crude generalizations about reliability could not continue for much longer.

Conrad's report

of 15 September was a good summary of the kind of dilemma,

if not helplessness, which the military commanders would face for the rest of

the war. Having failed to defeat any of their enemies decisively (except

little Montenegro in 1916),

having tried to run a dictatorship in Austria

which antagonized many of the nationalities, the military from 1917 were left

at the mercy of a hinterland which was sinking increasingly into an economic

and social crisis. Their appeals for discipline or some solution from the political

authorities were usually in vain, because the latter were now having to oper-

ate in

a more constitutional framework and were themselves grasping at straws

to sustain the domestic war effort. In attempting to maintain army morale,

the army commanders were always trying to keep the troops isolated from

poisonous influences, but this was an impossible task for an Empire which

was dependent on a `civilian army' and trying to come to terms with `total

war'. The examples were only too clear in Conrad's report. When he complained

that the troops' morale was depressed by their lack of leave, he again blamed

the political authorities for exacerbating the problem. It was from the hinter-

land that

there now came newspapers, insufficiently censored, which dwelt

too much on thoughts of peace and undermined the men's stamina. It was in

the hinterland that those who managed to secure leave were seduced by relat-

ives or

nationalist agitators, deserting in the belief that they would be given

an amnesty after the war. If Conrad's complaints could well be matched by

those of the AOK from the early months of the war when Czech morale in

particular was an issue, the threat from the rear now appeared infinitely greater

and insoluble. In vain the military would try to keep the troops in the war

zones in a kind of quarantine, while seeking to alert the domestic authorities

to the danger of allowing too much free expression.

Even if

this could be achieved to a limited extent, there were new threats

on the horizon which would act as catalysts upon existing troop grievances.

Conrad finished his report by mentioning two of them. Firstly, there was the

issue of insufficient food supply from the hinterland, which was beginning to

result in a regular shortage of rations at the front for men who were often

enduring harsh climatic conditions. Secondly, there was the new threat of

enemy propaganda leaflets, which were being sent over to the Austro-Hungarian

troops to depress their morale. In the following year, both of these threats

would escalate. If the food crisis was fundamental in influencing morale in all

36 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

parts of Austria-Hungary, the phenomenon of front propaganda was one

which would interact with existing weaknesses in the Monarchy. It was also

an expression of the ideological struggle which the war had become as it

entered its fourth year, a struggle which the Austro-Hungarian authorities

were increasingly having to wage both internally and externally.

Notes

1. Jo

zsef Gala

ntai, Hungary in the First World War (Budapest, 1989) p. 68.

2. Carl Freiherr

von Bardolff, Soldat im alten O

sterreich.

Errinerungen aus meinem Leben

(Leipzig, 1938) p. 188; Prince Ludwig Windischgra

tz, My Memoirs (London, 1921) p. 57.

3. Franz Kafka,

The Diaries of Franz Kafka 1910±1923, ed. Max Brod (Penguin, 1972)

p. 301. Nazdar

is an older Czech form of `hurrah!' or `cheers!'

4. Olda Kokoschk

a and Alfred Marnau (eds), Oskar Kokoschka Letters 1905±1976 (Lon-

don, 1992)

p. 54.

5. For the

following, see particularly Joseph Redlich, O

sterreichisch

e Regierung und

Verwaltung im Weltkriege (Vienna, 1925), chapters 2 and 4.

6. See Rauchen

steiner, Der Tod des Doppeladlers, p. 108.

7. Redlich, O

sterreichisch

e Regierung, p. 137.

8. Rudolf Jer

bek,

Potiorek. General im Schatten von Sarajevo (Graz, 1991) p. 163.

9. Signe Klein,

Freiherr Sarkotic

von Lovc

en. Die Zeit seiner Verwaltung in Bosnien-Hercego-

vina von 1914 bis 1918, Ph.Diss. (Vienna, 1969) pp. 38±9.

10. Christoph Fu

sterreich

hr,

Das k.u.k. Armeeoberkommando und die Innenpolitik in O

1914±1917 (Graz, Vienna and Cologne, 1968) pp. 63±4.

11. Undated report

of the Gemeinsamen Zentralnachweisbu

(which censored corres-

pondence with

prisoners of war abroad): Gustav Spann, Zensur in O

sterreich

waÈhrend

des 1. Weltkrieges 1914±1918, Ph.Diss. (Vienna, 1972) p. 304 note 712.

12. Luciana Palla,

Il Trentino Orientale e la Grande Guerra (Trento, 1994) p. 133; and Fu

hr,

Das k.u.k. Armeeoberkommando, pp. 81ff.

13. Janko Pleterski,

`Koros

ki Slovenci med Prvo Svetovno Vojno', in Janko Pleterski,

Lojze Ude and Tone Zorn (eds), Koros

ki Plebiscit. Razprave in C

lanki

(Ljubljana,

1970) pp. 77±9.

14. Milada Paulova

Jugoslavenski Odbor (Zagreb, 1925) pp. 6±9.

15. Va

clav

calt in Jarome

: Alois Z

ipek

(ed.), Domov za Va

lky, 5 vols (Prague, 1929±31)

I, p. 295.

16. Fu

hr,

Das k.u.k. Armeeoberkommando, pp. 30±62.

17. Gala

ntai,

Hungary in the First World War, p. 70.

18. See Tibor Zsuppa

`The Hungarian Political Scene', in Mark Cornwall (ed.), The Last

Years of Austria-Hungary, 2nd edn (Exeter, 2000).

19. For a

full analysis, see Gala

ntai, Hungary in the First World War, pp. 72ff.

20. See the

discussion in Z.A.B. Zeman, The Break-Up of the Habsburg Empire 1914±1918

(Oxford, 1961) pp. 57±62.

21. Gala

ntai,

Hungary in the First World War, pp. 98±100.

22. Ibid., pp.

110ff, 146, 263.

23. Cf. Edward

Timms, Karl Kraus. Apocalyptic Satirist. Culture and Catastrophe in Habsburg

Vienna (New Haven and London, 1989) p. 279.

Austria-Hungary and the Control of Wartime Morale 37

24. My own

article, `News, Rumour and the Control of Information in Austria-Hungary

1914±1918', History, vol. 77, No. 249 (1992), is a useful summary of the dilemmas

facing the authorities, but it gives insufficient attention to their patriotic efforts.

25. Cf. Gerard

DeGroot, Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War (London and

New York, 1996) p. 184. For a useful French comparison to set against the Austro-

Hungarian, see Jean-Jacques Becker, The Great War and the French People (Leamington

Spa, 1993), chapter 2.

26. Vlado Strugar,

Jugoslavenske Socijaldemokratske Stranke 1914±1918 (Zagreb, 1963)

p. 121.

27. Andrew Wachtel,

`Culture in the South Slavic Lands 1914±1918', in Roshwald and

Stites (eds), European Culture in the Great War, p. 194. (This article otherwise pays

little attention to the crucial role of the daily press in shaping culture and public

opinion.)

28. Jan Hajs

man,

eska

Mafie. Vzpomõ

nky

na Odboj Doma, 2nd edn (Prague, 1934)

pp. 28ff, 75. See also Vincenc C

ervinka's

experience with the Prague daily Na

rodnõ

tiskova

', in ZListy:

`Persekuce va

lec

, hlavne

ipek (ed.), Domov za Va

lky, III, pp. 19ff.

29. Gala

ntai,

Hungary in the First World War, p. 64. See also Ivan Sanders, `Hungarian

Writers and Literature in World War I', in B. Kira

ly and N. Dreisziger (eds), East

Central European Society in World War I (New York, 1985) pp. 145ff.

30. See Timms,

Karl Kraus, pp. 285ff. With his focus on Vienna, however, Timms

exaggerates the degree to which the whole of Austria-Hungary's press was `willingly

converted into an instrument of propaganda' (p. 281). Niall Ferguson also implies

this through his heavy use of Kraus as a vehicle to analyze the press: The Pity of War,

pp. 239ff.

31. Michael Ka

rolyi,

Memoirs of Michael Ka

rolyi: Faith without Illusion (London, 1956)

p. 60.

32. From 1914±1

5 the Pressereferent (based at the AOK) was Karl Schneller, and from

1915±18, Edmund von Glaise-Horstenau.

eska

Mafie, p. 31. For the view of one correspondent attached to the KPQ ,

see Karl Hans Strobl, Die Weltgeschichte und das Igelhaus: vom Nachmittag des Lebens

(Budweis and Leipzig, 1944) pp. 44ff.

33. Hajs

man,

34. Heinrich Benedikt

, Damals im alten O

sterreich.

Erinnerungen (Vienna and Munich,

1979) p. 352.

35. Hildegund Schmo

lzer,

Die Propaganda des Kriegspressequartiers im Ersten Weltkrieg

1914±1918, Ph.Diss. (Vienna, 1965) pp. 17ff. For the organization of the KPQ , see

also Klaus Mayer, Die Organisation des Kriegspressequartiers beim AOK im Ersten Weltk-

rieg 1914±191

8, Ph.Diss. (Vienna, 1963).

36. Steven Beller,

`The Tragic Carnival: Austrian Culture in the First World War', in

Roshwald and Stites (eds), European Culture in the Great War, p. 132.

37. See Schmo

lzer,

Die Propaganda des Kriegspressequartiers, pp. 26±32; and the essays in

Roshwald and Stites (eds), European Culture, pp. 132, 173, 184, 202±4.

38. Redlich, O

sterreichisch

e Regierung, p. 124.

39. Rauchensteiner, Der

Tod des Doppeladlers, pp. 262±3. See the catalogue of posters

which accompanied an exhibition held in Gorizia in 1991: Maria Masau Dan and

Donatella Porcedda (eds), L'Arma della Persuasione. Parole ed Immagini di Propaganda

nella Grande Guerra (Gorizia, 1991).

40. As one

example, note the situation in Bohemia by 1918 where subscribing to the 8th

war loan was totally eclipsed by collections for the `nationalist cause': Z

ipek

(ed.),

Domov za Va

lky, V, p. 149.

38 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

41. Dr Karl

Kobald, Kriegshilfsbu

des k.k. Ministerium des Innerns (ed.), Kriegsalma-

nach 1914/1916

(Vienna, 1916) p. 5. Schnitzler's contribution reveals that even

those who wished to abstain from such propaganda were often unwittingly caught

up in it (cf. Timms, Karl Kraus, p. 300).

42. Kurt Peball,

`Literarische Publikationen des Kriegsarchivs im Weltkrieg 1914 bis

1918', Mitteilungen des O

sterreichisch

en Staatsarchivs, vol. 14 (1961), pp. 240±60. A

useful summary is in Peter Broucek, `Das Kriegspressequartier und die literarischen

Gruppen im Kriegsarchiv 1914±1918', in Klaus Almann and Hubert Lengauer (eds),

sterreich

und der Groûe Krieg 1914±1918 (Vienna, 1989) pp. 132±7.

43. Timms, Karl

Kraus, p. 301.

44. For further

examples of this in Austria, see A.J. May, The Passing of the Hapsburg

Monarchy 1914±1918, 2 vols (Philadelphia, 1966) I, pp. 292±327.

45. There is

no space here to detail the economic crisis, but see a standard work: Gustav

Gratz and Richard Schu

sterreich-Ungarns. Die

ller,

Die wirtschaftliche Zusammenbruch O

Trago

die der Erscho

pfung (Vienna, 1930); and for example, Rauchensteiner, Der Tod

des Doppeladlers, pp. 409ff.

46. May, The

Passing of the Hapsburg Monarchy, I, p. 308.

47. Cornwall, `News,

Rumour and the Control of Information', pp. 60±1.

48. Felix Ho

glinger,

MinisterpraÈsident Heinrich Graf Clam-Martinic (Graz and Cologne,

1964) p. 179.

49. For the

Czechs, see Jan Hajs

man's two volumes of memoirs: C

eska

Mafie, pp. 182ff;

and Mafie v Rozmachu. Vzpomõ

nky na Odboj Doma (Prague, 1933). For the Yugo-

slavs, see

Mark Cornwall, `The Experience of Yugoslav Agitation in Austria-Hungary

1917±18', in Hugh Cecil and Peter Liddle (eds), Facing Armageddon: The First World

War Experienced (London, 1996) pp. 656ff.

50. Karl Friedrich

Nowak, Der Weg zur Katastrophe (Berlin, 1926) p. xliv.

51. Rauchensteiner, Der

Tod des Doppeladlers, p. 363.

52. Norman Stone,

The Eastern Front 1914±1917 (London, 1974) p. 314 note 16.

53. OULK, I:

Das Kriegsjahr 1914 (Vienna, 1931) p. 44.

54. Istva

Dea

k, Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer

Corps 1848±1918 (Oxford, 1992) p. 193; and Mate Nikolic

's report on the army, cited

in Ljudevit Pivko, Informatorji (Maribor, 1925) p. 77.

55. See below

Chapter 7, pp. 270ff.

56. Mark Cornwall,

`Morale and Patriotism in the Austro-Hungarian Army 1914±1918',

in John Horne (ed.), State, Society and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War

(Cambridge, 1997) p. 180.

57. See Richard

Plaschka, `Zur Vorgeschichte des U

bergange

s von Einheiten des Infan-

terieregiments Nr.28

an der russischen Front 1915', in O

sterreich

und Europa. Festgabe

Hugo Hantsch zum 70. Geburtstag (Vienna, 1965) pp. 455±64.

58. Hajs

man,

Mafie v Rozmachu, p. 230.

59. Arthur Arz

von Straussenburg, Zur Geschichte des Grossen Krieges 1914±1918 (Vienna,

1924) pp. 144±5, 147.

60. O

sterreichische

s Staatsarchiv, Kriegsarchiv Vienna [hereafter KA], AOK, Op.Abt

1917, Op.Nr 44599, Kommando der SW Front to AOK Op.Abt, Op.Nr 17480,

2 September 1917.

61. KA, AOK

Op.Abt 1917, Op.Nr 45286, Heeresgruppekommando [HGK] Conrad to

AOK Op.Abt, Op.Nr 31165, 15 September 1917.

62. Peter Broucek

, `Aus den Erinnerungen eines Kundschaftoffiziers in Tirol 1914±

1918', Mitteilungen des O

sterreichisc

hen Staatsarchivs, vol. 33 (1980), p. 273. For

Austria-Hungary and the Control of Wartime Morale 39

Conrad's own

regular complaints: Nowak, Der Weg zur Katastrophe, pp. xxxviii, xlii,

xliii.

63. His view

was identical to that of other commanders such as Archduke Joseph, who

noted in his diary that unreliable elements simply corrupted the good regiments: `By

mixing Hungarians among the ``unreliable'' troops, these do not become better or

more reliable' (Gala

ntai, Hungary in the First World War, p. 136).

64. For the

restructuring of the army from May 1917, and its mixed benefits, see Richard

Plaschka, Horst Haselsteiner and Arnold Suppan, Innere Front. MilitaÈrassistenz, Wider-

stand

und Umsturz in der Donaumonarchie 1918, 2 vols (Vienna, 1974) I, pp. 33±7.

65. In its

conclusion, the Austrian official history noted that all other `victories' of the

Monarchy ± over Serbia, Romania or Russia ± were partial, since the enemy was able

to withdraw and regroup elsewhere: OULK, VII, pp. 823±4.

The Experience of Propaganda

against Russia

3.1 The campaign on the Eastern Front

By 1918 the AOK at Baden was convinced that propaganda, used to undermine

the morale of enemy troops, could be a very effective weapon of warfare. This

belief owed something to all the belligerents' sporadic dabbling in front propa-

ganda from

the beginning of the war. On the Western Front, from September

1914 the Germans were dropping manifestos over enemy lines, eliciting a

response from the British and French, even if a full campaign by either side

would have to wait until 1918. The Balkan and Italian Fronts too in the early

years had witnessed some intermittent front propaganda, in the Italian case of

an increasing sophistication under the influence of their army Intelligence

officers. The Austrian military's own commitment to the propaganda weapon,

however, required time, and above all, months of futile campaigning with

traditional armaments before they would even consider employing such an

`unchivalrous' instrument against the enemy. Their outlook changed percept-

ibly only

after the experience of 1917. In that year the Central Powers, Ger-

many and

Austria-Hungary, launched the first coordinated propaganda

campaign of its kind on any front. They did so on the Eastern Front against

the Russians with the purpose of accelerating the Russian army's desire for

peace. The campaign was later belittled in the official histories and in memoirs,

and historians have continued to underestimate or simply ignore it, thereby

focusing attention all the more on the sophisticated Allied propaganda cam-

paigns of

1918.

In fact the 1917 campaign helped to make the latter possible

and was therefore crucial for all the belligerents. The Central Powers at the time

viewed it as a success, judging that their efforts had interacted with events in

the Russian hinterland to force an armistice on the Eastern Front. It indicated to

them what could now be achieved with the propaganda weapon and they

proceeded to wield it in new directions, on the Italian, Balkan and Western

Fronts. In turn, the propaganda victory in the East stimulated a response in the

The Experience of Propaganda against Russia 41

Allied camp: in Lord Northcliffe's words, `the tragedy of Russia [was] due partly

to lack of Allied propaganda to counteract that of the Germans'.

In these

developments the Eastern campaign was a formative stage for both sides in

their conception of psychological warfare, highlighting both the alleged poten-

tial of

the new propaganda weapon and the need to compete with the enemy in

a new field of operations.

Prior to

1917 psychological warfare on the Eastern Front was not unusual. It

was the Russians who gave the lead and first made good use of it. The 100 000

manifestos which they scattered as the Russian `steam-roller' advanced into

Galicia in the autumn of 1914 had proclaimed, under the signature of Grand

Duke Nicholas, `liberty' for all peoples of Austria-Hungary.

In the following

months these leaflets steadily increased in number, `as if falling from the sky',

as one Czech observer noted. While the Russians may have hesitated to issue

specific manifestos in the Czech language, their first efforts set an example

which was quickly followed: many of their leaflets were soon being copied

or forged in the Czech lands of the Monarchy. Moreover, they alarmed the

Austrian authorities who stepped up their vigilance against the spread of treas-

onable ideas,

and even sentenced seven people to death in early 1915 for

circulating enemy manifestos.

The Russians' early perception that the Austrian

army's multinational character might be exploited is also clear from other

evidence. In August 1914 the Russian Minister of War had agreed to create a

Czech unit (Druz

ina) specifically to act as propagandists or Intelligence troops

among Czechs in the opposing trenches; the Druz

ina became the basis for a

slow expansion of Czech volunteers in the Russian army.

Yet apart from this limited patrol work, the Russian use of written propa-

ganda in

the first years of the war seems to have matched that of their oppon-

ents. Namely,

it was piecemeal and usually limited to crude appeals about the

prisoners and booty captured.

Both of the Central Powers were not slow to

respond in kind, and occasionally showed some ingenuity. Suggestive letters

written by Russian prisoners of war were distributed; and one Austrian leaflet

which was scattered widely from the air told Russian soldiers that seven roubles

would be paid for every enemy rifle which was surrendered.

The Austrians

could also themselves play the `separatist card', announcing, for example, to

Russia's Moslems that Turkey had entered the war on the side of the Central

Powers.

By late 1916 this process had gone a stage further. Balloons were

launched from the Austrian trenches, carrying leaflets which communicated the

Central Powers' peace offer and their promise to create a postwar independent

Poland; it apparently caused a striking increase in the number of Polish deserters

from the Russian army.

Between the Germans and Austrians, the key initiative for developing the

propaganda weapon from this point appears to have lain with Germany. In

view of the paucity of material in the German archives for this period, we are

42 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

forced to rely heavily on the Austrian records in constructing the 1917 cam-

paign; but

they consistently betray the same story of Germany's lead. In July

1916 the German High Command (DOHL) had established a military section at

the German Foreign Ministry in order to bring its influence to bear upon

Germany's propaganda abroad. Though financed by the Foreign Ministry, this

section under Colonel Hans von Ha

ften was from January 1917 directly respons-

ible to

the DOHL. It drew up policy for German propaganda in the neutral

press, but was also responsible for composing material to be sent to subordinate

propaganda offices on the Eastern Front for use against the enemy. In fact

ften soon built up his organization into the major centre for dealing with

military aspects of German propaganda abroad.

In Austria-Hungary a tighter coordination of propaganda work abroad and on

the Eastern Front occurred only from March 1917. On 15 March the Foreign

Ministry at the Ballhausplatz in Vienna, alarmed at the increasingly lively

cultural propaganda of the other Great Powers in neutral countries, took the

initiative and set up its own `propaganda section' in the press department of

the ministry.

Its purpose was to give a greater uniformity and direction to

what all acknowledged to have been the `chaotic conditions' previously

prevailing in Austria's cultural and economic propaganda abroad. For the

military aspects of such propaganda, the new Chief of the General Staff,

General Arz von Straussenburg, welcomed the suggestion of Colonel Eisner-

Bubna, the new head of the KPQ , that he should centralize and coordinate

military propaganda in neutral countries (especially Switzerland).

Thus two

centres ± at the Foreign Ministry and the KPQ ± now cooperated, eliminating

previously overlapping activities by many departments, in order to promote

Austria-Hungary's image in the neutral and Allied states.

It is

not clear whether this reorganization directly influenced the AOK to pay

more attention to its propaganda on the Eastern Front. Probably such a change

was chiefly due to the Central Powers' sudden awareness of the new opportun-

ities in

the East. The event which would galvanize their campaign into action was

the fall of the Tsarist regime, and the evidence from the Russian trenches that

soldiers were anxious to receive news about the Russian hinterland. By 16 March,

on the southern parts of the front, the Austrians were advertising the revolt of the

Petrograd garrison and arrest of the Tsarist ministers by means of placards raised

above the trenches or leaflets scattered by plane.

German military Intelligence

was also quick to exploit the obvious deterioration of discipline among the

Russian rank and file.

For the Germans this was to be only one ingredient in

their broader policy of encouraging chaos in the Russian interior with a view to

knocking Russia out of the war and achieving a separate peace in the East. Earlier

in the war the Austrian High Command had dabbled with the idea of destabil-

izing Russia

by supporting some Russian left-wing agitators. They had, for

example, financed Zivin, a Socialist Revolutionary in Switzerland until the

The Experience of Propaganda against Russia 43

summer of 1916, but had then dropped him, possibly because they had expected

his work to have a more damaging and immediate impact on the Russian armed

forces.

Germany had gone a lot further than Austria-Hungary in this type of

activity. From 1915 the German Foreign Ministry had been financing Russian

revolutionaries; and it was in the aftermath of the March 1917 revolution, with

the real prospect of ending war in the East, that Germany's political and military

elite agreed to allow the Bolshevik Lenin to travel in the famous `sealed train'

from Switzerland to Petrograd (where he arrived on 16 April).

At the

front, it was Russian overtures, especially their increased fraternization

across the trenches, which shaped the German response. By late March the

Germans were not only making rather clumsy attempts at oral and written

propaganda, but also planning to send a special newspaper across the lines to

feed the Russian yearning for news.

Certainly the Russian commanders in

turn stepped up their own use of leaflets against the opposing forces, challen-

ging their

enemies' arguments. They urged Austrians of German nationality to

revolt against rulers who, in the pocket of the Prussian militarists, were turning

the Monarchy into `an enormous cemetery'.

And, in wooden placards erected

between the trenches, they advised the enemy to behave `honourably' and

negotiate peace with the new Russian government.

It was in this unsettled

environment that the Central Powers' campaign was born. The Easter holidays

of mid-April were approaching, and the DOHL sensed that the mass fraterniza-

tion which

was bound to occur at that time (as in previous years) would be

highly opportune for disseminating some well-organized propaganda. As one

German leaflet at this time noted rather casually, `Germany is ready to make

peace, though peace is not necessary for her. She will wait patiently to see if the

new and free Russia will start peace negotiations with us in the holy holidays of

Christ's resurrection.'

General Max Hoffmann, Chief of Staff of Eastern Command (Oberost), was

put in charge of this operation. Its express aim was to stimulate the desire for

peace among the Russian rank and file and promote chaos so that an armistice

would become inevitable.

Especially to be targeted were the Russian soldiers'

committees which, springing up along the front in previous weeks, were closely

tied to the Petrograd Soviet and might be expected to sympathize with its `Peace

Manifesto' of 27 March. Hoffmann drew extensively on Colonel von Ha

ften's

organization to gather material for the use of German Intelligence officers

during the campaign. The basic arguments to be used were formulated on 9

April by the German Foreign Ministry in a series of propaganda guidelines. Such

coordination between the Foreign Ministry and the military, on the broad

themes to be used in propaganda at the front, was to become standard practice

in the months ahead. In the guidelines of early April it was emphasized

that Germany desired peace, but did not need it and, in response to Russian

propaganda, would not succumb to any Russian agitation aimed at spreading