Army High Command (Austria-Hungary)
The Army High Command ( AOK ) in Austria-Hungary was appointed by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief , Franz Joseph I , Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary , then 84 years old, on the day of general mobilization , July 31, 1914, in view of the erupting First World War I established and existed until the fall of the dual monarchy in autumn 1918. At that time, the AOK was the command center for the armed forces of the dual monarchy .
Army commander
Archduke Friedrich von Österreich-Teschen , appointed by the monarch on July 31, 1914, was in charge of formal management until 1916 as Army Commander-in-Chief. At that time the AOK was stationed in Teschen , Austrian Silesia .
On December 2, 1916, the new emperor and king Karl I./IV. the army high command itself; Archduke Friedrich remained formally deputy army commander until February 11, 1917, when he was removed. On December 7th, 1916 a meeting of the two allied monarchs Karl I./IV. and Wilhelm II and their top military officers in Teschen; shortly thereafter, on behalf of the emperor, the army high command was transferred to Schloss Weilburg, owned by Friedrich, in Baden near Vienna , where it was very close to Emperor Karl's residence, Schloss Laxenburg . The monarch's intention was not just to nominally command command himself.
In the autumn of 1918, the representatives of the Kingdom of Hungary , since they had terminated the Real Union with Cisleithania with the consent of the ruler on October 31, were no longer subject to the AOK from November 1.
On November 3, 1918, the monarch handed over the post of Army Commander-in-Chief to Chief of Staff Arthur Arz , who refused the post. With the handover, the monarch apparently wanted to avoid having to represent the inevitable armistice of Villa Giusti himself. At that time, however, the army high command had already become practically insignificant: the so-called Hungarian troops of the previous Austro-Hungarian army were subordinate to the new Hungarian war minister , the non-Hungarian troops organized retreat or return individually depending on their home base.
As a result, Field Marshal Hermann Kövess , who was in the Balkans, was appointed Army Commander on November 3, but the news did not reach him until November 5. Until Kövess arrived in Vienna, where the AOK had moved in the meantime, and his takeover on November 11th, Arz represented him as Army Commander-in-Chief. After several weeks of quarrels with the new German-Austrian state government , Kövess, who was busy with the liquidation and demobilization of the Austro-Hungarian army, officially resigned from his position as head of the AOK on December 20, 1918. The liquidation of the Army High Command dragged on for months and was finally completed by the end of May 1919.
Chief of Staff
The chief of staff acted as the immediate subordinate of the army commander, de facto as the actual "doer" of the AOK. From 1906 to 1911, from 1912 to March 1, 1917, so (before the war right in the Austro-Hungarian Ministry of War ) Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf first Field Marshal Lieutenant , promoted on 23 November 1916, Field Marshal. Archduke heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand recommended Conrad for this top position in 1906. It had been unofficially agreed that Army Commander Archduke Friedrich would largely give his Chief of Staff a free hand. From March 1, 1917 until the end of the war, Karl I./IV. appointed Colonel General Arthur Arz as Chief of Staff.
literature
- Manfried Rauchsteiner : The First World War and the end of the Habsburg Monarchy 1914–1918 . Böhlau Verlag Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 2013, ISBN 978-3-205-78283-4 ; from p. 121 ( The unleashing of war ) to p. 1047 ff. ( The last army commander )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Manfried Rauchsteiner: The First World War and the end of the Habsburg Monarchy 1914–1918 . Böhlau Verlag, Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 2013, p. 158.
- ↑ Manfried Rauchsteiner: The First World War and the end of the Habsburg Monarchy 1914–1918 . Böhlau Verlag, Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 2013, p. 674.
- ^ Georg Reichlin-Meldegg: The Emperor's Prince Eugene? Field Marshal Hermann Baron Kövess v. Kövesshaza. The last supreme commander of the Imperial Army in World War . Ares Verlag, Graz 2010 pp. 15–17
- ^ Austrian State Archives - Army High Command (AOK), 1914-1918 (holdings) accessed on March 14, 2019