Chapters

War invalids were a conspicuous reminder of the misery of the war and of defeat at the end of it, thus always aroused very strong emotions and had to face being blamed for a great deal.

Men with amputations and the blinded were in the minority among war invalids. Many suffered under stiff joints, lameness and pain caused by shot wounds. The great majority however contracted tuberculosis.

Directly after the end of the war, the invalids began to organise themselves into societies and associations. One of their leading supporters was the Central Association, which also represented war widows, thus demonstrating the civilian character of the Austrian invalid movement.

During the First World War significant advances were made in many medical disciplines, which took advantage of the specific situation to collect scientific information and carry out research.

Doctors were not occupied exclusively with tending the wounded or treating infectious diseases at the front and behind the lines. Their involvement in the army disciplinary apparatus and their participation in the development of new weapons are further aspects that should be recalled.

The enormous number of diseased and wounded soldiers in the First World War made detailed organisation of the medical service at the front and behind the lines essential. The instructions by the Austro-Hungarian army for treating the wounded were contained in the service manual Reglement für den Sanitätsdienst des k.u.k. Heeres.

The development of new weaponry produced novel and medically challenging injuries and diseases.

Experience from earlier wars has shown that deaths from epidemics tend to far exceed losses through wounds. In the First World War as well, there were significant fatalities as a result of typhoid fever, dysentery, cholera, typhus, smallpox and malaria.

Although the danger of epidemics was known, the Austro-Hungarian army was not well prepared at the start of the war to combat classic diseases like typhoid fever, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, smallpox or malaria.

At the end of the war the world was plagued by a terrible flu epidemic which claimed 25 million victims, many more than had died during the war. Although it did not come from the Iberian peninsula, as often assumed, but probably broke out in America, it is still known today as the Spanish Flu.

While the war was still raging, a new type of war-related condition was to be seen on the streets of European cities, with its sufferers twitching and trembling as illustration of the inconceivable destructive force of modern mechanical warfare. The condition came to be known as "shell shock".

The First World War produced an army of emotionally damaged soldiers who could no longer bear the inconceivable destructive force of modern mechanical warfare. The diagnosis and treatment of mental diseases confronted military psychiatrists with new challenges.

Mental disturbances to soldiers were widespread in all countries involved in the First World War. There were nevertheless national differences in the way mentally damaged soldiers were treated.

Immediately after the outbreak of the First World War, widespread sections of the Austrian-Hungarian population were gripped by nothing less than a war craze, scarcely conceivable from today’s perspective and knowing how many millions were killed through the war.

Patent enthusiasm at the outbreak of the war was manifest particularly in intellectual circles, writers, artists, academics, philosophers, scientists, etc. They saw armed engagement as a catharsis, as a cleansing force, as a chance to escape from a pre-war world that had become fatigued and futile. 

The idea of the all-inclusive enthusiasm for war long dominated the historiography of the First World war. More recent historical research has however unmasked the theory of a euphoria encompassing all classes and political parties as a legend and attests that this view is biased and one-sided.

The exultation that erupted – most of all gripping the intellectual and academic classes and also the middle-class milieu –was rapidly overshadowed by the reality of the mechanised war. As the first statistics of losses were announced even the frenetic, jubilant shouts of many volunteers marching off to war faded into a sad echo.

The longer the war lasted, the more disillusionment and war fatigue spread among the civil population and the soldiers. The hopes of the latter, who had seen the war as a great adventure, as a great didactic force and chance to put their manhood to the test, were bitterly disappointed.