Hannes Leidinger

The First World War has often been nostalgically described as the "good war" in comparison to the cruelties and crimes of the Second World War. The good old Emperor making a small mistake based on bad information of his generals eager for war. In reality, the Austro-Hungarian soldiers behaved quite badly and committed terrible crimes against civilians in Bosnia, Serbia and Galicia/Poland/Russia. The civilians had to endure the violence triggered by the frustrations of Austrian military incompetence and losses. Supply problems were solved by robbing the civilians who were declared enemies (even if they were actually not and even citizens of the Empire). Partisan warfare led to mean repression and war crimes that have been swept under the rug for a long time (to preserve the moral distance between the mean Germans and the Svejkian good Austro-Hungarian soldiers).

This book tries to address the issue from multiple points of view. For my taste, however, it remains to abstract and combined too many issues such as the case of who was guilty of starting the war (war guilt). Concentrating on the low-level dirty war à la crimes of the Wehrmacht would, in my opinion, have produced a better book. As it is, the chapters about the activities in Serbia and other regions feel tacked on instead of being the main part of the book.… (mer)