Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 46. (1998)
GODSEY, William D. Jr.: Officers vs. Diplomats: Bureaucracy and Foreign Policy in Austria-Hungary 1906–1914
Officers versus Diplomats importance like fortifications, railways, and the production of armaments.16 Within a year of coming to office, he further set about trying to improve the language capabilities of and to provide more frequent travel opportunities abroad for officers of the General Staff. This initiative proved short-lived, however, after the War Ministry turned a blind eye to his request for funding and after a one-time supply of money provided from the emperor’s own purse dried up.17 Then in 1910, Aehrenthal, with the support of the ambassador in Rome, succeeded in getting the emperor to forbid altogether such trips abroad.18 Both wished to avoid the unpleasant diplomatic repercussions when the officers were unmasked and argued that the information required by Comad could be had through informers recruited within Italy.19 20 According to Conrad’s post-war memoirs, the foreign minister’s protests also compelled him to halt the dispatch of officers on „vacation“ to the Balkan states.70 Conrad’s bitterness toward Aehrenthal appears to have distorted his remembrance, it being more likely that the foreign minister had urged Conrad either to be more discreet in the Balkans or else to restrict the number of officers involved.21 At any rate, the Chief of the General Staff paid little attention to the strictures either of the emperor or the foreign minister, both of whom believed that he was overstepping the bounds of his competence. As late as the fall of 1911, he secretly dispatched to Rome an officer of his intelligence bureau, whom he later audaciously named military attaché in the same capital, to report on Italian military preparations during the Italo-Turkish war.22 Apart from such escapades and the direct espionage sponsored by the intelligence bureau of the General Staff (Evidenz Bureau), Conrad was forced to rely primarily for information on the reports of the military- and naval attachés stationed at many of the Monarchy’s missions abroad. When he came to office in 1906, the same year as Aehrenthal took over in the Ballhausplatz, the Monarchy had a total of ten military- and only two naval attachés. By 1914, Conrad had increased by a third the number of the former, while the latter, with whom he was less concerned, had multiplied nearly threefold. With the exception of the one in Tokyo, the military attachés in 1906 were concentrated in the capitals of the European great powers (London, Paris/Brussels, Rome, St. Petersburg, Berlin) or in the Balkan area (Belgrade, Sofia, Bucharest, Constantinople). Despite the rise of American prestige around the turn of the century, the Monarchy maintained no military attaché in Washington. The two 16 Feldmarschall Conrad: Aus meiner Dienstzeit 1906-1918. Vol. 1: Die Zeit der Annexionskrise. Wien- Berlin-Leipzig-München: Rikola, 1921, p. 450. 17 Ibidem, p. 345. 18 Feldmarschall Conrad: Aus meiner Dienstzeit 1906-1918. Vol. 2: 1910-1912. Die Zeit des libyschen Krieges und des Balkankieges bis Ende 1912. Wien: Rikola, 1922, p. 239. 19 Conrad: Aus meiner Dienstzeit. Vol. l,p. 450-51. 20 Ibidem, p. 451. 21 Conrad’s account of the dispute in volume 1 of his memoirs differs from the memorandum that he reprinted in volume 2. See „Denkschrift vom 9. September 1911“ in Conrad: Aus meiner Dienstzeit. Vol. 2, p. 239. 22 See S e i 11 e r, Viktor Freiherr von: Erinnerungen des letzten k. u. k. Militärattaches in Rom 1914/1915. Vortrag gehalten am 14. April und 2. Juni 1958 (unpublished typescript): Österreichisches Staatsarchiv Wien, Kriegsarchiv [KA], Nachlaß Seiller, B/811. 47
