When the First World War began in 1914, Kramář concluded that a victory for Germany and Austria would mark the end of the possibility of reform in the Austrian Empire and to work against the Habsburg monarchy. In the fall of 1914, Kramář advised the other Czech politicians to wait as "the Russians will do it for us alone". Kramář was referring to the Russian victories in Galicia in September 1914 that saw about 50% of the entire Austrian Army killed, wounded or captured, a crippling blow that ended whatever possibility that might had existed for Austria to be an equal partner with Germany and reduced the Austrians down to very much junior partners of the Germans. The way in Austria-Hungary started to function more and more as a satellite state of Germany led to increasing Czech support for independence during the war as it became clear that if the Central Powers won then there would be no possibility of the Slavic peoples of the Austrian Empire ever becoming the equals of the ethnic Germans and the Magyars. In March 1915, Kramář was together with Přemysl Šámal, Alois Rašín, Josef Scheiner and Edvard Beneš a founding member of an underground group called the "Maffie" which was dedicated to winning Czech independence from the Austrian empire. The "Maffie" was in contact with Russian military intelligence and used secret codes to pass on messages to Petrograd. On 3 April 1915, Kramář learned that the entire 28th Infantry Regiment of the Imperial Austrian and Royal Hungarian Army, which had been recruited from the working class districts of Prague, had surrendered en masse to the Russians in Galicia. Kramář sent a message to the Russians asking that Czech independence be declared to be one of the war aims of the Allies.