World War I

The German declaration of war subordinated the Austro-Serbian conflict to the German aim of settling its own rivalries with France and Russia. According to the terms of the military agreement between Germany and Austria-Hungary, the Austro-Hungarian army had to abandon plans to conquer Serbia and instead protect the German invasion of France against Russian intervention. The setbacks that the Austrian army suffered in 1914 and 1915 can be attributed to a large extent to the fact that Austria-Hungary became a military satellite of Germany from the first day of the war, though it cannot be denied that the Austrian high command proved to be quite incompetent. The Austro-Hungarian chief of staff, Conrad, had clamoured for preventive war since 1906, but, when he received his chance in July 1914, it turned out that the Austrian army had no plans for an expeditious offensive. Similarly, after Italy entered the war on the side of the Allied Powers in May 1915, Conrad was unprepared. The fact that only after the Germans had taken command could the Russian front be stabilized did little to enhance the prestige of the Austrian government.

In July 1914 parliament was out of session, and the Austrian prime minister, Stürgkh, refused to convene it. That and the military censorship established immediately after the outbreak of the war concealed the discontent of the non-German population. While German public opinion in Austria had welcomed the war enthusiastically and some Polish leaders supported the war out of anti-Russian feeling, the Czech population openly showed its animosity. The Czech leader Tomáš Masaryk, who had been one of the most prominent spokesmen of the Czech cause, emigrated to western Europe in protest. Karel Kramář, who had supported the Pan-Slav idea, was tried for high treason and found guilty on the basis of shaky evidence. German nationalism was riding high, but in fact the German Austrians had little influence left. In military matters they were practically reduced to executing Germany’s orders; in economic affairs the Hungarians, who controlled the food supply, had the decisive influence. The Hungarian prime minister, Tisza, who had opposed the war in July 1914, became the strongman of the empire. On his advice Foreign Minister Berchtold was dismissed in January 1915, and the foreign office was again entrusted to a Hungarian, István, Count Burián. But Burián failed to keep Italy and Romania out of the war. German attempts to pacify the two states by concessions were unsuccessful because Franz Joseph was unwilling to cede any territory in response to the irredentist demands of the two nations. How little the outward calm in the Habsburg lands corresponded to the sentiment of the population became apparent when Stürgkh was assassinated in October 1916 by Friedrich Adler, the pacifist son of Victor Adler, the leader of Austrian socialism. Franz Joseph made Koerber prime minister once again, but Koerber had no chance to develop a program of his own.

On November 21, 1916, Franz Joseph died, leaving the throne and the shaky empire to his 29-year-old grandnephew, Charles (I), who had had little preparation for his task until he became heir apparent on the death of Franz Ferdinand. Full of the best intentions, Charles set out to save the monarchy by searching for peace in foreign affairs and by recognizing the rights of the empire’s non-German and non-Hungarian nationalities. Charles relied heavily on the advice of politicians who had had the confidence of Franz Ferdinand. He dismissed Koerber in December 1916 and made Heinrich, Graf (count) von Clam-Martinic, a Czech aristocrat, prime minister. At the foreign office he replaced Burián with Ottokar, Count Czernin.

When parliament was reconvened in May 1917, it became manifest how far internal disintegration of the Habsburg monarchy had progressed. Parliament again became the stage of unrelenting national conflicts. Finding so little support from the Czech side, Charles turned back to the German element, and in June 1917 he made Ernst von Seidler, once his tutor in administrative and international law, prime minister. Although he tried to appease the Czechs, the stubborn insistence of the Germans not to yield any of their prerogatives made reform of the empire impossible.

At the same time, various moves to get Austria-Hungary out of the war ended in failure. After a U.S. offer of general mediation had miscarried in December 1916, Charles tried through secret channels to deal directly with the Triple Entente powers. In the spring of 1917 an exchange of peace feelers took place through the mediation of his brother-in-law, Sixtus, Fürst (prince) von Bourbon-Parma, but Italy’s unwillingness to abandon some of the concessions granted to it in the 1915 Treaty of London (by which Italy joined the Allies) made these talks abortive. Similarly, negotiations with Allied representatives carried on in Switzerland brought no results.

Since the Austro-Hungarian government was unable to extricate itself from the Dual Alliance, which tied Austria-Hungary to Germany, France and England ceased to have regard for the integrity of the Habsburg monarchy. Furthermore, the revolutionary events in Russia in 1917 and the entry of the United States into the war introduced a new, ideological element into Allied policy toward the German-led coalition known as the Central Powers. The German-directed governments represented an authoritarian system of government, and national agitation in the Habsburg lands assumed the character of a democratic liberation movement, winning the sympathies of western European and American public opinion. From early 1918 the Allied governments began to officially promote the activities of the émigrés from Austria, foremost among them the Czech leader Masaryk, and in April 1918 the Congress of Oppressed Nationalities was organized in Rome.

But the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy cannot be ascribed to the Allied policy of supporting the independence claims of the Habsburg nationalities, which was only a belated adjustment to the changed conditions within Austria-Hungary. From the summer of 1917, the activities of the nationalist movements within the empire made the situation increasingly untenable. Two days before U.S. Pres. Woodrow Wilson proclaimed his Fourteen Points—one of which demanded the reorganization of the Habsburg monarchy in accordance with the principles of national autonomy—the Czechs demanded outright independence (January 6, 1918). Within a month Polish and South Slav deputies, together with the Czechs, presented to the Reichsrat a program demanding the establishment of independent constituent assemblies for nationally homogeneous areas.