Further Observations on Austria Hungary in the First World War
The Alpine Front between Austria and Italy
Now that I’ve finished Musil’s Mann ohne Eigenschaften, I can plough ahead with Manfried Rauchensteiner’s magisterial history of Austria-Hungary in the First World War. I’ve got as far as the 12th Isonzo Offensive in October 1917 and find it astonishing that nobody in the Anglo-Saxon world has taken the Austrian perspective and turned it into a movie, play or novel. In fact, I’m coming to the view that the Austrian perspective is the key to of getting inside all of the otherwise inexplicable machinations of the First World War. Austria-Hungary was in every sense of the word, the underbelly of the war. In Western Europe and America, the story not only starts late in the day with Germany marching into Belgium, the Western Front became the war itself. Originally, it was meant to be a mere side-show: it was as if the big cats in one of the peripheral rings of a large circus unexpectedly ate the lion-tamer while everyone was supposed to be watching the high-wire act in the middle.
Franz Ferdinand talking with Oskar Potiorek during the Bosnian war games
As I have written on several occasions, the country that started the catastrophe, Austria-Hungary, evaporates from Anglo-American view as soon the remains of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife are scraped out of their Gräf und Stift limousine. Even the reasons the Archduke chose to be in Sarajevo are never discussed beyond the provocative fact that he wanted to watch military manoeuvres in Bosnia on what was a nationalist holiday for the country’s minority Serbs. There is far more to it than that: Franz Ferdinand wanted to replace the military command of Conrad von Hötzendorf in order to put an end to his years of sabre-rattling directed at Serbia. Hötzendorf gallantly offered his resignation with the recommendation that Oskar Potiorek be assessed as a possible replacement. Potiorek was in charge of the war games in Bosnia. Why manoeuvres were being held over such a sensitive time for the disaffected Serbian minority is another question, but the rest, as they say, ‘is history’.
The bodies of Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie Chotek
We forget too easily, or perhaps never knew, that countries did not declare war on blocs of alliances, but on individual countries, leaving each belligerent with a different set of enemies and fronts. In other words, the ‘Entente’ powers (Russia, France and Great Britain) did not simply declare war on the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey). America declared war on Germany, but not until later did it declare war on Austria; Italy declared war on Austria, but not until later on Germany and so on. In fact, the last two belligerents to declare war on one another were paradoxically, Russia and Austria-Hungary.
Propaganda postcard against the Entente
Fascinating dilemmas and conflicts arose with the death of the quasi-senile Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph and the coronation of his inexperienced 29-year-old nephew Karl in 1916. The Faustian pact between Austria-Hungary and Germany left Karl, who wished more than anything to be the ‘Emperor of peace’, with little room for manoeuver. Germany was being run as a military dictatorship and Karl’s desire to strike ‘a peace without annexations’ was not accepted by the German command of Generals Ludendorff and Hindenburg who, along with Wilhelm, saw Karl as a naïve youngster getting in the way of German ambitions.
Emperor Karl with wife Zita and son Otto
What makes ‘German ambitions’ so central to the war itself, is that the conflict started without Germany harbouring the foggiest intention of expanding its own borders. Only later did they decide not to forfeit a single centimetre of conquered Belgium. Yet the only reason they were in Belgium at all, was because of the Franco-Russian Alliance. It was impossible to contain Russia without knocking out France first by attacking through Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg. This was called the ‘Schlieffen Plan’ and had been developed as a theoretical deployment concept by General Schlieffen in 1905. Its resurrection, modification and implementation by General Hlemuth von Moltke was meant to keep Germany from having to fight on two fronts.
Fighting in the Balkans
The Austrians were at least attempting to keep to the original war-aim of ‘containing’ Serbia, something they could only do without having to fear the Russian-Serbian Alliance. Balkan wars in 1912 and 1913 already prior to the assassination in Sarajevo made the containment of Serbia a genuine military concern. Austria-Hungary’s hold on annexed Bosnia was controversial at best, and tenuous at worst. Hötzendorf called for the further annexation of Serbia and if necessary, in order to win allies in the region, its partition between Austria, Bulgaria and Romania. It was paradoxically Franz Ferdinand’s opposition to Hötzendorf’s plans that resulted in his being in Bosnia at all. After his assassination, there could be no further objections to ‘punishing’ Serbia, though even then, Franz Joseph would not agree to its annexation. The last thing the unstable multi-cultural Dual-Monarchy needed was yet another disaffected Slavic nation within its realm. Given the war crimes the troops of Austria-Hungary would commit in their eagerness to punish Serbia, further Slavic disaffection would have been destabilising.
The execution of Serbian women by Austro-Hungarian troops
Should the Austrians have waited until Germany had knocked out France so that it could deal with Serbia, safe in the knowledge that Russia could be kept in check? As it was, Germany was fundamentally interested in containing Russia for its own purposes and could hardly have cared less about the murder of Franz Ferdinand. General Moltke and Kaiser Wilhelm were frustrated at doddery Franz Joseph’s inability to come to any decision at all regarding Serbia. Apocryphal accounts tell of the morbidly Catholic Austrian emperor interpreting the assassination as God’s judgement on the morganatic marriage between the Archduke and the Countess Sophie Chotek. Ultimately, it was the tired, deluded Emperor Franz Joseph who ‘pushed the red-button’ of war. It must not be forgotten, however, that both he and Wilhelm were surrounded by war-mongering generals and there was no rational, opposing voice to appeal for diplomacy. The Nobel prize laureate and influential leader of Europe’s anti-war movement, Bertha von Suttner had succumbed to cancer only a week before Franz Ferdinand’s assassination.
Bertha von Suttner, 1843 – June 21, 1914
Austria’s fronts were South East in an attempt to deal with Serbia, then due South from May 23, 1915, when Italy declared war on Austria but not Germany. By 1917, what victories Austria gained had only been possible with German support and came at the expense of the home front. The problem was boringly logistical: the further the Austrians advanced into Italian, Romanian or Slovenian territory, the less transport was available for getting food to its ‘Hinterland’ (interior) civilians. There was a limit to the suffering and deprivations civilians at home could bear. The Emperor Karl’s wife was Italian by birth and had one brother fighting for the Entente and another fighting for the Central Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. Attempts via her brothers to establish a separate peace between Austria, France and Britain were thwarted by the Entente’s very sober assessment that it would be easier to defeat Germany with disgruntled and incompetent Austrian forces weighing them down. The more the Austrians hated their alliance with Germany, the better it was for the Entente. In addition, the Austrian territories of South Tyrol, Friuli, Trentino and Triest had been promised to Italy in the event of an Entente victory. The Italians were not prepared to make peace and forfeit these potential gains.
Austrian troops on the Isonzo Front
Austria-Hungary had to deal with Ruthenians, its Russian minority, having to fight Tsarist Russians; Austrian Serbs having to fight Serbian Serbs, Austrian Italians having to fight Italy’s Italians and Austrian Poles having to fight Russian Poles. The least willing of all of Austria’s constituent nationalities, the Czechs, were turning into an existential threat. Russian forces had entire regiments made up of Czechs who have deserted to the other side. The response from Karl, in the very teeth of his military command, was to recall Parliament, dissolved by Franz Joseph and to issue a general amnesty in the hope of enticing them back. In all of Karl’s attempts to make peace with the British and French – neither of whom had direct issues with the Austro-Hungarians beyond their alliance with Germany – he further promised his intention to federalise the Dual-Monarchy’s constituent states.
The dead on the battle field
Every attempt at a decent and honourable peace was thwarted by the allies along with Karl’s own ministers. He replaced those who stood in his way, such as the Home- and Foreign Ministers along with Conrad von Hötzendorf as overall military commander. At the same time, Austria was fighting against a much diminished Russian army, the Romanians, and the Italians. They could only continue to fight against this array of enemies with German assistance, which ultimately meant having to support Germany with its ethically questionable U-boat campaign. Germany’s principal motive at this point was to free up much needed Austro-Hungarian men for its bid to conquer more West European territory. The numbers tell their own tragic tale. In 1914 Austria-Hungary was able to recruit 528,408 young men; in 1915 these numbers rose to 1,565,544; yet by 1918 they had fallen to 139,373. They had started to recruit men born at the turn of century while forfeiting the recruitment of men coming into their 50s, an age, above which, few survived even in peacetime. Given the fact that the Isonzo Front alone claimed the lives of 200,000 young German and Austro-Hungarian soldiers, out of their total of 1,200,000 fatalities, it was becoming clear that there simply were no longer the number of young lives available to continue throwing away in order to aid German expansionism.
Paul von Hindenburg (left) and Erich Ludendorff. Painting by Professor Hugo Vogel
I have not read Christopher Clarkes’ The Sleepwalkers, which is immensely popular with German readers, if only because he avoids taking the chest-thumping position so often found amongst Anglo-American historians. Clarke’s book no doubt offers an entire history of the war while Rauchensteiner makes no claims of giving us more than the war from the Austrian perspective. Reduce this story to its bare essentials and it comes down to Austria wishing to extract revenge on Serbia but reluctant to do so as long as Russia continued to offer Serbia protection. Germany issued Austria with a ‘blank cheque’ meaning they would stand behind Austria in order to counter potential Russian aggression. Germany felt it could only counter Russian aggression by knocking out its ally France first. General Moltke had in any case, been trying to convince Wilhelm to carry out a preventative war against Russia while it was still weakened from its 1905 defeat by the Japanese. Just as Franz Joseph was against von Hötzendorf’s ‘preventative war’ with Serbia, so Wilhelm was equally against Moltke’s against Russia. With the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and Austria’s retribution involving the possibility of a confrontation with Russia, both Moltke and Hötzendorf felt vindicated. They could finally have their wars. The difference, however, was that the Germans saw in Austria cannon fodder, while the Austrians saw in Germany support in its local campaign against Serbia. As incredible as it seems, containing Russia and Serbia were the only stated goals the Central Powers had when their long-desired war finally came to pass. Both Germany and Austria-Hungary were looking east, rather than west and neither, despite Hötzendorf’s wish to the contrary, held the slightest ambition of annexing new territory. By the time of Franz Joseph’s death in 1916, however, Hötzendorf was running Austria as a military dictatorship with Ludendorff and Hindenburg doing the same in Germany. For the generals, annexing new territory had become the principal purpose of the war.
Storming the Winter Palace during the Russian Revolution
When Russia bowed out due to revolution and civil war at home, it left Italy exposed. The ‘Schlieffen Plan’ had absolutely not gone as intended. Rather than knocking out France so that Germany could deal with Russia without worrying about attack from the West, Russia had left the conflict altogether and forfeited huge tracts of territory. Austria was happy to reacquire its lost eastern provinces and did not demand more. With Russia gone, it looked like it might be a simple matter to deal with Italy. Even if the French and British moved men to aid Italy against Germany and Austria, it meant the Entente taking men away from the Western Front. Austria, with its lands restored, was eager to end the war as soon as possible.
“It is forbidden to dance Swing”
So why, one may be excused for asking, is this relevant to music banned by the III Reich? It’s relevant because Europe’s tribes were trying to organise themselves into the monolingual, mono-national constituent entities they ultimately became after the Second World War. To do this required creating national identities beyond the simply linguistic. Those who tried to pass themselves off as French or German but did not conform to pre-conceived national traits were excluded and with their exclusion, came the rejection of their cultural contributions. The Great War was more than anything, a tribal war. It was not dissimilar to what we are witnessing today in the Arab world. European boundaries were settled in a variety of ‘congresses’ in the 19th century by the same group of aristocratic supra-nationals, who drew lines across the deserts a century later during the twilight of Europe’s colonial empires. Little attention was paid to the fact that between all of these artificially drawn lines, different cultures, religions and even languages were thrown together. France was the model nation state, and since 1871, Germany. The empires of Austria-Hungary and Turkey, on the other hand, embodied the multi-national concept and were most at risk of falling victim to the mono-cultural nationalist spirit of the times.
Fascist laws in parts of former Austria prohibiting the speaking of any language other than Italian
The European 30-Year war of 1914-1945 ended with the continent in linguistically homogenised nation-states. A country with only a single language was never the default setting of Europe’s nations. After 1945, only Switzerland and Spain remained national entities with sizeable multi-cultural components and both countries had kept out of the conflict. Italy, on the other hand, was so determined to Italianise its war-booty of German speaking South Tyrol that they started even to Italianise German names on the gravestones of ancient cemeteries.
The Dead
This reminds modern readers that tidy mono-cultural nation-states are not the default setting of human organisation. With the artificial creation of states consisting only of one language and one ‘culture’, it was inevitable that fanatics would continue to find new minorities that did not fit into their national image. As nearly everyone belongs to one minority or another, the attempts to arrive at ever-greater national ‘purity’ would be never-ending. The Shoah came to symbolise the insanity of such fanaticism and like America, Europe has over the past 70 years tried to come to terms with citizens who are fellow nationals yet in possession of a different skin colour and practice a different religion. That this experiment has not always been successful is the legacy of the insecurities and racial stereotyping that grew from European colonial history. Austria-Hungary provided the prototype of the multi-cultural state and its tragic decline was due to lazy racist nationalism. Minority Germans and Magyars could only lord over majority Slavs by perpetuating a myth of racial and cultural superiority. Yet in a perverse way, Austria-Hungary also provided a prototype for the European Union and offered not only a text book of how things could go wrong, but potentially, how they could be made to work.
Hello Michael,
As I may have mentioned to you at one time, I spent my time in graduate school studying the origins of World War One and how that war played out militarily. Since graduate school, my best friend from graduate school and I have argued out these issues for the better part of 3 or 4 decades. After a lifetime of immersion in this field, I’d like to make a few brief observations. Some of these observations are not exactly accepted conventional wisdom but I hold them to be true nonetheless: First, Serbian foreign policy prior to 1914 was anchored in the desire to dismember Austria-Hungary. Second, the head of Serbian military intelligence plotted the assassination of Franz Ferdinand because. among other reasons, of Franz Ferdinand’s orientation to federalize Austria-Hungary with significant autonomy for Bosnia and Herzogovina and thereby take the wind out of the sails of Serbian irredentism. Third, no nation can be expected to allow itself to be dismembered and the heir-apparent murdered without justifiable retribution and Austria is no exception. Fourth, there was absolutely no vital national interest at stake for Russia in supporting Serbia’s murderous aggression and yet Russia did so nonetheless. Fifth, Russian mobilization and Russian mobilization alone absolutely guaranteed war across the continent.
With these bare essential observations, I hold to the view that the outbreak of World War I lies largely with Serbia and Russia. I am fully aware that many English, German and American historians gang up on the Germans more than any of the other powers, but there are simple and fundamental truths that I have observed above that cannot and should not be glossed over or ignored.
Hi Joseph and thanks for your take on events. I agree with most of what you write. I often use the analogy of the heir of the British throne being assassinated by Irish nationalists while visiting Belfast. If it came to light that the assassination was planned in the Republic of Ireland, you can well imagine England wishing to stomp on whatever organisation was in charge of carrying out such an audacious act of terrorism. It should be largely analogous, though Ireland had been a British holding longer than Bosnia had been part of the Dual Monarchy. Austria’s ‘right’ to annex Bosnia grew out of the Berlin Congress of 1878 and clearly cramped Serbia’s pan-Balkan ambitions. Above all, it wanted a port which Austria was never prepared to sanction. Franz Ferdinand wished to move in the direction of turning the Dual Monarchy into a Tripartite Monarchy with the South Slavs. This would result in the Northern Slavs wishing to join forces and unsettle the entrenched position of Hungary, which was even less willing than Austria in seeing greater power devolved to the Slavs. The long-term survival chances of the Monarchy without some Slavic devolution were unsustainable, and the South Slavs (Yugoslavia) were in Hungary’s half of the Monarchy, whereas the Northern Slavs were in Austria’s. Hungary inconveniently blocked them from geographically joining together. This is why the Hungarians were not at all sorry to see Franz Ferdinand out of the way and were also reluctant about going to war. The Serbs were certainly a dangerous and destabilising element in the region. Von Hötzendorf was probably right that a quick ‘preventative war’ with all of Austria’s might, may have sorted out their destabilising influences in the Balkans. Why Russia was behind Serbia is because it wished to promote its own opportunities in the region. One shouldn’t forget that this free-for-all was the result of the Ottoman Empire losing its own grip in the Balkans. The British were interested in keeping the trade routes open – the Russians were interested in controlling the Dardanelles. I have every sympathy with Austria’s position in 1914 and feel that the iniquity was Franz Joseph’s acquiescence to his generals in issuing Serbia a humiliating ultimatum. The French and the British should have been more pro-active. They left the diplomatic heavy lifting to Germany, the worst possible regional power already itching for a war with Russia. Franz Joseph was old, cranky, superstitious and easily manipulated. There are no ‘ifs’ in history – but a huge number of quite insignificant, minor ‘ifs’ could have hugely changed the 20th century.
Hello again, Michael.
I disagree with you on some points and we have different shades of meanings on others. To begin with, although gaining a port on the Adriatic was important to Serbia, the absolute focus, the be-all-end-all of Serbian foreign policy was the destruction of Austria-Hungary which the Serbs fully knew could only be ultimately accomplished by a Russian military victory over the Dual Monarchy. The Serbs, more than anyone else, wanted a European war. As to Franz Ferdinand’s desires, if you go to Konopischt, (as I nagged you about; sorry about that!) you will see the very map Franz Ferdinand had cartographers create shortly before his murder, which map (and his thinking) envisioned a federal empire run solely by the Austrians on the Imperial level (no power sharing with the Hungarians at the Imperial level), with virtual complete local autonomy guaranteed to the subject minorities. The Hungarians were, of course, opposed to this course because they knew fully well that when the Ausgleich came up for renewal in 1917 that Franz Fedinand would implement these plans and disabuse the Hungarians of their exalted position. They would become just another minority like everyone else, instead of “partners” with the Austrians The Hungarians reluctance to go to war in 1914 also had less to do with worries about the Slovaks, Ruthenians, and Poles, and more to do with the fear that more Serbs would be incorporated into the empire at the conclusion of a successful war, (thus diluting Hungarian power) and — even more importantly — that any war would stir the pot to overboiling in Transylvania with the Romanian subjects of the crown of St. Stephen. I think more than anything else, the Hungarians were scared of the loss of Transylvania for without Transylvania there was no Great Hungary but just second-rate status as a minor power on par with Belgium or the Netherlands. Again, I also return to the fact that no vital national interest was at stake for Russia in the Balkans and in supporting Serbia but they did so wholeheartedly anyway for their Slavic brothers in the name of pan-Slavism. I have to repeat this again and again and again because this is central to why war came. Whereas Austria-Hungary’s very existence was in play. The Austrians — and Franz Joseph, who I would suggest was not really dottering at this time — fully knew that it was now or never for Austria in the 1914 crisis and that if she failed to act decisively and completely, Austria-Hungary would be picked apart like a dead carcass before the decade was out and thus would end the House of Hapsburg. As to the Germans, they were absolutely NOT itching for war with Russia. May I suggest you read the first 3 chapters of Dennis Showalter’s book, Tannenberg, Clash of Empires. While the bulk of this book deals with the Russo-German battle, these first three chapters deal extensively with German military, diplomatic, and political thinking in 1914 and the years earlier. Showalter notes the Germans agonized over the idea of war with Russia and yet were also terrified of the ongoing Russian military “reforms” which, had they been completed, would have given Russia a peace-time field army of 2,000,000 men — FAR MORE than the Russians needed for internal security or for a defensive/deterrent posture. Coupled with that is that as part of these reforms the Russians — heavily prodded by the French who provided complete financing — were planning on and were building a massive railroad network in the Polish salient, whose rail lines would run up to the German border and would at the same time parallel that border. Thus, rail lines configured for an attack, not for defense. When it came down to it, both the Germans and the Austrians accepted war — even if it meant a general European war — which they both viewed as a preventive/defensive war — because the alternative of waiting until later in the decade for a war would only mean the erosion of their positions and the greater the likelihood of defeat.. In short, possible victory in 1914, probable defeat in 1917 or later. This is very clear in the writings of Conrad von Hoetzendorf. And if you can plow thru his 5-volume memoirs, My Life of Service, you’re a better man than me because I certainly can’t. Incidentally, another interesting read are the 3 volume memoirs of Maurice Paleologue, the French Ambassador to Russia, but particularly the portion of his memoirs dealing with the visit by Poincare in July of 1914. It is clear from the text and subtext that the French were not minor players on the sidelines as they and Francophile historians like to portray, but were actively putting the boot to the Czar’s behind to stiffen him up to act aggressively. I don’t think there has been much historical research into what specifically the Czar wrote in his private diary at the time and what was recorded in the minutes of the Russian Foreign Ministry about this visit, but it would be fascinating to find out. Another area I would like to see researched is what Hartwig, the Russian military attache in Belgrade, reported back to Moscow about with respect to the planning and carrying out of the assassination. Hartwig was well-acquainted with Dimutrevich, the head of Serbian military intelligence who was behind the killing, and Hartwig’s information would be vital in clearing up many areas. Hartwig himself dropped dead right in the middle of the July crisis because of the strain and it’s a pity we don’t know what information he took with him. Anyway, these are a few of my random thoughts and I hope they give you food for thought — but not indigestion.
Hi Joseph – your reading on the background is impressive. I profess to nothing more than Rauchensteiner and Golo Mann, with Rauchensteiner reporting only on the Austrian perspective. He quotes copiously from Hötzendorf’s memoirs, much of which he finds frustrated self-justification. I don’t understand why Serbia was keen for the destruction of the Dual Monarchy as opposed to removing it from the Balkans. But another puzzle for me is the French dislike of the House of Habsburg. Berta Zuckerkandl’s memoirs are also intriguing as George Clemenceau had proposed to her at one point and his brother Paul married her sister Sophie. She describes many happy visits of the Clemenceau brothers to Vienna as guests of the Szeps family. His many later pronouncements that he wished to see Austria wiped off of the face of the European map were quoted back to him in a private letter from Berta in an attempt to lift the French blockade of Vienna after the war. She never heard from him again. The Germans for their part were building the Bagdadbahn and Russia stood in the way of this important trade-connection. Indeed, Germany was looking towards today’s Arab world for trade partners and found Russia a hindrance. The renewal of the Ausgleich – I admit to having forgotten. I had misinterpreted Franz Ferdinand’s plans as the tripartite monarchy with the South Slavs being given equal importance. I recall reading somewhere – probably Mann – that this was his intention as the result would be bridge-building trans-Hungary between Austria’s Northern Slavs and Hungary’s Southern Slavs. This would have been the first, organic steps towards a federated Empire, which ultimately was also Karl’s aim when trying to strike a separate peace with the Entente. The Hungarians had been a drag on all attempts at giving greater autonomy to the Slavs and it must have been clear to the Habsburgs that something needed to be done. But I’m simply speculating. Your own work is far more extensive than my casual reading of Rauchensteiner, who also quotes from copious diplomatic diaries and internal memoranda from all belligerents. By the way, it was Rauchensteiner who reported that Moltke was as keen for the preventative war with Russia as Hötzendorf was for Austria’s preventative war with Serbia, especially as Russia was weakened by its defeat by Japan in 1905. I certainly agree the Germany felt Russia’s mobilisation to the East was offensive and not defensive. Every country saw themselves as being attacked and saw everyone else as ‘the aggressor’. The building of the French/Polish/Russian railway is new to me, but makes sense in trying to understand German mistrust. Papers are on-line from the period and available to read and download. I suspect it was one no-doubt important piece of a wider puzzle representing Russian distrust of a powerful Germany. The elephant in the European room at the time was the relatively recent arrival of a united Germany as an independent and important player in global politics. There’s an interesting article in today’s FT paralleling the Germany of 1914 with China today. In both cases, important commercial trading partners were being cast as autocratic non-democratic obstacles to free-trade, pluralistic democracy. How the British, with less enfranchisement than Wilhelminian Germany pulled off that trick remains a riddle, but somehow, they spun Germany as representing Prussian authoritarianism over Britain’s own brand of much more restricted democracy – a democracy that in contrast to Germany offered no social welfare. It was neither socially nor politically more progressive than ‘the new kid on the block’. I’m more intrigued by the thinking of Churchill who at the 1943 Moscow Convention wanted to combine Bavaria and Austria into a ‘Danube Federation’ down to the Black Sea. I also see many of the attempts by the thwarted Habsburg reformers in today’s EU and marvel at Britain’s arrogant dismissal of the EU as anything more than a ‘leave-us-alone-and-give-us-your-money’ trade-agreement, blithely ignoring the unprecedented peace in Western Europe such inter-dependence has brought and still brings. Let’s face it: such supra-national ideas were simply not in keeping with the spirit of the early 20th century with its mix of wilder Darwinian extrapolations and nationalist movements. It took two murderous wars finally to expose nationalism for what it is: a nicer word for racism.
Michael, you have written so much to comment on that I can’t comment on all of it. Let me begin, though, by correcting a mistake of mine: I must be dyslexic about diaries versus memoirs a la Count Harry Kessler as we discussed in our emails because Maurice Paleologue’s 3-volume opus are diaries, not memoirs. Sorry for that confusion. Still, they are a great read.
The most intriguing matter you brought up was why Clemenceau wanted to see Austria-Hungary wiped off the map and that is simple to understand: Clemenceau want to dismember Germany if at all possible (it wasn’t possible at Versailles), but failing that he wanted to permanently weaken Germany so that France would be the dominant power of the European continent as had been her history. One way to permanently weaken Germany was to take away as much German territory as possible (at Versailles Clemenceau wanted the west bank of the Rhine incorporated into France but had to settle for demilitarization) Another way to permanently weaken Germany was to deny her any allies. Austria, by virtue of her German language, was the natural ally of Germany and what France wanted was the destruction of Austria-Hungary, to have it replaced by a series of tiny rump states. One of those rump states, Czechoslovakia was a dagger pointed at the heart of Germany and so France set out to create and ally itself in the 1920’s with The Little Entente consisting of Czechoslovakia and Poland to act as counterweights to Germany. French diplomacy also was active in Romania to keep Romania as the counterweight to the Hungarians and in the newly created Yugoslavia to act as a counterweight to the rump Austrian and Hungarian states, both of whom would be hostile to France. I might add Hitler correctly understood that these new political entities created out of the ruins of Austria-Hungary were just as artificially contrived as the Dual Monarchy itself and so Hitler set out — particularly in the case of Czechoslovakia — to bit by bit break up the Little Entente diplomatically. For example, the German-Polish treaty/non-aggression pact of 1934 played perfectly into the scenario of peeling away France’s allies in the east. Once Poland was out of the French sphere (if only temporarily until 1939) and Hitler had swallowed Austria, the political artificiality of Czechoslovakia made it ripe for Hitler to exploit. After all, how could France (and Britain) ultimately support a polyglot Czechoslovakia when mouthing platitudes of self-determination when the Sudeten Germans, Slovaks, and Ruthenians all were dissatisfied or wanted out of a state controlled by the Czechs?
On another subject of yours, Churchill’s toying with a Danube Federation is another good example of Churchill running off in crazy directions and why he may not have been all that trusted by his Tory colleagues at earlier times: An adventurer running off half-cocked and thinking and proposing stupid things.
I don’t at all agree with your statement that nationalism automatically equates with racism
but we can leave that for a further time. In the meantime, may I suggest you look at Hew Strachan’s First World War which I think is one of the shorter and better books in recent years on the subject, and that you stay away from too much German language histories of World War One as the field of German language historiography on the subject is still overly-infected with the nonsense of the Fritz Fischer school of historians whose passionate hatred for Germany is unbound. How much blind hatred? Fritz Fischer comparing Bethmann-Hollweg to Hitler is the best example I have of the vitriol and hatred of all things German that has infected much of what has been written about Imperial Germany in the last 40 years by German-language historians.
I hope your trip to California was great and that you are now winging to the underside of the world. I am still waiting on getting my new roof from my slow poke contractors.
Dear Joseph,
Thanks again for broad insight and fascinating conclusions. As I wrote in ‘Forbidden Music’, I was certainly aware of why Clemenceau wanted to return to the pre-Bismarck status quo of Germany, but his anger at Austria remained a mystery. In fact, it’s worth pointing out that Austria was NOT seen as a German nation, or even a German speaking country. It was seen as a country where German was also spoken, and happened to be the language of government. In truth, only a minority of Austrians spoke German as a first language and it was this lack of identification of Austria as ‘German’ that caused pan-Germans such agony. Zuckerkandl writes in her memoirs that Clemenceau seems to have decided to cook the Austrian goose following the war-crimes against Serbian civilians in the Balkans. These are described in grim detail by Rauchensteiner, while not ignoring the very real threat of entire Serbian communities in Austrian territories as being genuinely dangerous to Austro-Hungarian forces.
I’m aware of France’s efforts to keep Germany in check, but again, it’s important to remember that mono-lingual, mono-cultural nation states were not the default setting of any European country until 1945. It was the racist- combined with nationalist-motivation that drove Germany to strive towards incorporating German speakers living in other nation-states. The discussion following the 1849 German Federation at the Paulus Kirche was whether countries with German speakers should be incorporated whole into a greater Germany with their majority Slav speakers being taken on as second-class servant-class citizens. It was a settlement that was rejected by the Austrians and Prussians, both of which had large Slavic populations – and in the case of the Austrians, Slavic majorities.
In fact, the reason I read Golo Mann and Manfried Rauchensteiner was because they present ‘the other side’ in a manner not found in by British or many American historians. I agree that the 20th Century would have been a more humane period had the Austrian Empire been allowed to federate, but the endemic racism and nationalism of the age simply would not allow it.
We certainly could go on and on about all of this, couldn’t we? But I do agree with you that the Austro-Hungarian atrocities against the Serb civilians played a part in Clemenceau’s vitriol directed at Austria. These WERE war crimes of the most shocking and sordid kind. I suppose that the Austrians rationalized to themselves that they were just giving back to the Serbs their just deserts for their murderous terrorism and the Serbian preaching of hatred of all thing Austrian in their schools and universities and newspapers, and indeed, all across Serbian society. Still, this was horrible stuff perpetrated on individuals innocent of any wrongdoing — other than that they were Serbs.
I’m gllad you’re reading Golo Mann and Manfried Rauchensteiner rather than Fritz Fischer or any of his disciples or even James Joll in England or Bernadotte Schmitt in America. The rancid, rabid anti-Germanism of the latter 3 just makes my blood boil.
And while we’re on the subject of “Forbidden Music”, I LOVE that review of your book you just posted. Very thoughtful review. And while we’re also on the subject (clever seguey on my part, huh?) how do I wangle out of you an autographed hardback copy for me of “Forbidden Music”, kiddo?
Kindest regards
Hi Joseph, I think we agree on more than we disagree. Your grasp of the intricacies of Austria-Hungary pre-1914 is impressive and I suspect we could talk for hours. I’m not back on this side of the Atlantic until I visit my mother in North Carolina for her 87th birthday in early December. If I recall, that’s about 3000 miles in the wrong direction for you. Let’s assume we’ll meet up at some point, when I would be delighted to sign your copy and take you to dinner in the bargain. I have a Feeling that it may be a Long evening. Thanks for your insight and encouragement.
I should not have come in from my studio. It’s 3:15 in the morning and I have three–still unfinished–sculptures to deliver to a show tomorrow and I find my self distracted by the wonderful review of Michael’s book on a blog. Then I skipped on over here to see what might be interesting. Michael, my little brother who had zero interest in military history growing up, is writing seriously about the First World War! I astounded him a few years ago by stirring up a music festival in Taiwan though I don’t read a note of music! Growing up, I was the one reading all the military histories and making model fighter planes. As a glib older brother, I attribute this sudden about face to reading Radetzky Marsch one time too many. Seriously, I think this has been a wonderful series to follow on this blog. Apropos several comments: as kids in Austria in the mid 60s the First World War was still a presence in Austria. We understood exactly coming from the American South. Faulkner might as well have been writing about Austria when he said “in the South the past is always present. In fact, it is not even the past.” Plenty of displaced royalty were still to be found. We still went to school in Lederhosen and little boiled wool green jackets. My Hauptschule in Klosterneuburg was still painted Hapsburg yellow and a bas relief of “Der Alte Franzl” decorated the outside. The Empire was not yet 50 years past.
Austrians found they had gone from rulers of an Empire to a rump state exactly the size of South Carolina. At the start of the American Civil War, one commentator wrote South Carolina was too small to be a republic and too large to be an insane asylum. Austria suffered much the same constraints.
I often visited an elderly gentleman and retired professor of Linguistics, Dr Mattias Specht. He and I shared a passion for military miniatures. I clearly recall in early 1966 his telling me about being inducted into the K.u.K. army in 1916. It was not just the paucity of young men, there was a paucity of uniforms and supplies. Specht told me he was given a newly starched, ironed and folded uniform. Upon putting it on he found there was a neatly applied patch the size of a bullet hole over the heart and on the back of the coat, another neat patch, slightly larger, where a shot through the heart would have exited. He had served on the Italian front. “The Italians are artistically gifted and great cooks and dancers, but they are certainly not warriors.”
His new year’s resolution for 1966 was to work harder for the Emperor’s return. As an American almost-teenager, I thought this sort of old fashioned and unrealistic. There were plenty of monarchists at the time who could have just as easily been morphed into “Fergit Hell!” Southerners. With maturity I see he meant the return of Rudolf von Hapsburg who spent his entire life working towards creating a better, united Europe. Neither Specht nor Rudolf was seeking a return to palaces and privilege, rather trying to apply a governmental model that had kept central Europe stable for centuries by binding economies and laws into one entity.
PS: more than 30 years ago, at a loss as to what to give me for Christmas, Michael gave me a beautifully printed and bound set of 2 volumes of important K.U.K. diplomatic records for the early 20th century up to 1914. I still have those along with a large “citizens’ handbook” for the empire circa 1909 as well as an old school atlas circa 1890 with detailed maps of every province in the empire, language and culture maps along with geology, industry and agriculture data, etc.
Well – this shows how brothers in a close family in constant dialogue and discussion can influence each other. And as a brotherly dig (lovingly made), may I point out that I guess you mean Dr Specht’s reference was to OTTO von Habsburg, rather than Rudolf.
Michael, I am absolutely GREEN with envy at the thoughtful Christmas gift to your brother of the 2-volume K und K diplomatic documents, as well as the 1909 “citizen’s handbook” and the 1890’s atlas of the empire that your brother also has. My one dominating thought at this point is to try to figure out a way to (a) have your brother leave these tomes to me in his Last Will and Testament and (b) how to make it look like an unfortunate accident when I push your brother off the curb into oncoming traffic… .. . I shall have to ponder this further so, in the meantime, your brother is safe from my rapacious schemes 🙂
Very nice write-up. I definitely love this website.
Thanks!