Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 52. (2007)

FRIED, Marvin Benjamin: Feldmarschall Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf: A Memoir Analysis

monarchy,” and that an “individual could not stop it,”33 is clearly a self-fulfilling prophecy.

(ii) Following his disclaimer that he, as an individual, can not be held responsible for the war and for all the mistakes that followed, Conrad begins to lash out at those he feels are, in fact, responsible. Some of these, surprisingly, are individuals, while others are masses as a whole, taken from among the many groupings and nationalities of the imperial populace. The diplomats particularly and politics generally are his primary focus. On the one hand, he discusses the inevitability of the war, while on the other begins a systematic attack against those he holds responsible. Conrad says the diplomats “rejected his suggestions”34 and even made unconstructive moves, such as not agreeing to purchase 30.5cm artillery pieces so as not to threaten Italy,35 the “prostration”36 of which he admits was his primary goal. Conrad was “worried that diplomacy had put the military command before an unsolvable problem,” and that the diplomats had “squandered”37 the army’s potential. He calls the Austrian diplomats “honest, dumb, and hesitant” and identifies their long hesitation as creating a “military circumstance as [Conrad] had always described as disadvantageous.”38 Thus, according to Conrad, “Austria- Hungary succumbed to the weakness and indecision of its policies,”39 like a “hesitant patient who fears the operation and defers it, until the deadly disease strikes.”40 Although he professed to be a monarchist (a statement which he later shows to be false), Conrad even criticizes the late monarch, Kaiser Franz Josef I, as being “undecided” even though he “clearly understood”41 the situation. Although acknowledging that he does not view the monarch as a “higher being,”42 he believes “that if He [the monarch] came to the conclusion which led to war with Serbia, it is proven that war was inevitable.”43

Conrad feels that the war against Serbia was an “act of self-defense,”44 but admits that one had to “unsheathe the sword for the cohesion of the empire.”45 Feeling the ingratitude of the population following his efforts, he even suggests how AustriaFeldmarschall Franz Conrad von Flötzendorf

33 Conrad von Hötzendorf, Franz: Private Aufzeichnungen, Pg. 200.

34 Ibid, Pg. 165.

35 Ibid, Pg. 213.

36 Ibid, Pg. 70.

37 Ibid, Pg. 121.

38 Ibid, Pg. 151-152.

39 Ibid, Pg. 164.

40 Ibid, Pg. 162.

41 Ibid, Pg. 137.

42 Ibid, Pg. 204-205.

43 Ibid, Pg. 155.

44 Ibid, Pg. 157.

45 Ibid, Pg. 91.

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