"Unlike the old Austrian officers" - distancing from and continuities of Habsburg legacy in military culture of the interwar Czechoslovak officer corps
Abstract
After the dissolution of Austria-Hungary and the founding of Czechoslovakia, both the society and the new state found themselves in a changed position concerning their military. What used to be a relationship between the multinational empire and its army with (nominally) "anational" officer corps, suddenly became interaction of (nominal, yet still multinational) nation-state and its armed force, gradually officered from the greater part by ethnic Czechs. Ideals of loyalty to the supranational dynastic state were replaced by the idea of a service in a so-called democratic army. And this new army was built not only with the know-how of proven military institutions and practices, but also with the infusion of Czechoslovak revolutionary foreign armies, the Legions, whose national-liberation discourse overwhelmed the military representations of the new republic. But still, the Habsburg legacy lingered on.
The goal of this paper is twofold. It aims to describe the politics and praxis of "deaustrification" ("odrakouštení") and explicit denial of Habsburg traditions in military discourse of Czechoslovak officer corps. It uses both the institutional documents, disciplinary proceedings, and regulations, as well as public writings and representations. At the same time and with the same sources, it wants to show that many elements of the officer's military culture, such as ideals of proper conduct, honour, or their place in wider society, although transformed, indicate some striking continuities of meanings and practices with the previous period. The Habsburg officer corps, as an institution, did not survive beyond the unleashed forces of nationalism and the storm of the Great War. But how much of its culture survived, although grudgingly, beyond the era of its empire?