Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 52. (2007)
FRIED, Marvin Benjamin: Feldmarschall Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf: A Memoir Analysis
Marvin Fried of Germany.”198 Particularly the League of Nations receives criticism from Conrad, who saw it as an “instrument”199 of the Great Powers France, England, and Italy, to “keep their military superiority at the lowest possible costs,”200 by forcing all “smaller or less powerful”201 nations to disarm. He also feared the League of Nations as an instrument of the victors to “secure [...] economic benefits”202 against the vanquished states. Conrad, before writing these lines, lived through some of the major events of the collapse of various Versailles statutes and thus correctly predicted that “a time [would] come [when...] the League of Nations will pop like a soap bubble,”203 and was during the interwar period nothing but a pipedream. As a convinced Social Darwinist, Conrad again shows he feels very strongly that the “international community of humanity is a utopia, as is the international League of Nations.”204 Conclusions Conrad suffers, throughout most of his memoirs, from a combination of a Messiah and a Cassandra complex, being the all-knowing savior as the prior but lamenting, as in the case of the latter, that no one believed him until it was too late. He believed he spoke the unequivocal truth, which “no one should fear to hear.”205 Over seventy years before Samuel Huntington would outline the Clash of Civilizations, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf drew the line down the center of Europe dividing the western half from the “eastern invaders”206 and dubbed this division a “Clash of Nations.”207 This was the last of his several quite startlingly prophetic enunciations in his memoirs. His papers, when restructured as they have been in this article, show a progression of themes. He begins with mild accusations and declarations of blame laid on others. But continuing down Conrad’s mental road, we see a progression to more and more extreme rhetoric, filled with deep hatred, racism, and delusions of grandeur. It is clear that in his old age his failures caught up with him. Shown clearly in this article, the recompiled version of his papers suggested hidden hatred and angers which can potentially be overlooked in the broad scheme of his many 198 Conrad von Hötzendorf, Franz: Private Aufzeichnungen, Pg. 190. 199 Ibid, Pg. 190. 200 Ibid, Pg. 189. 201 Ibid, Pg. 189-190. 202 Ibid, Pg. 187. 203 Ibid, Pg. 186. 204 Ibid, Pg. 170. 205 Ibid, Pg. 180. 206 Ibid, Pg. 163. 207 Ibid, Pg. 163. 244
