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History of Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary (also known as
the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Dual Monarchy) was a constitutional union of the Empire of Austria and the Apostolic Kingdom of Hungary that existed
from 1867 to 1918, when it collapsed as a result of defeat in World War I. The union was
a result of the Compromise of 1867. It was ruled by the House of
Habsburg, constituting
the last phase in the constitutional evolution of the Habsburg
Monarchy. The Austrian
and the Hungarian states were co-equal within the Empire. The Compromise
required regular renewal, as did the customs union between the two halves of
the Empire. Foreign affairs and the military fell under common (joint) control,
but all other government faculties were divided between the respective states.
Austria-Hungary
was a multinational realm and one of the world's great powers.
Austria-Hungary was geographically the second largest country in Europe after
the Russian Empire, at 621,538 square
kilometres (239,977 sq mi), and the third most populous (after Russia
and the German Empire). The Empire
built up the fourth largest machine building industry of the world, after the
United States, Germany and Britain.
The
Austro-Hungarian Empire consisted of two monarchies (Austria and Hungary) and
one autonomous country under the Hungarian crown: Croatia–Slavonia, which negotiated its own compromise,
the Nagodba, with Hungary in 1868. Bosnia and Herzegovina was under
Austro-Hungarian military and civil rule between 1878 and 1908, when it was annexed. Parts of the Sanjak of Novi Pazar, a province of
the Ottoman Empire, were also
under Austro-Hungarian military occupation during that period, but after the
annexation of Bosnia the Austro-Hungarians withdrew.
Austria-Hungary
was one of the Central Powers in World War
I. It was de facto dissolved by the time the military authorities signed
an armistice at Villa Giusti on 3 November 1918. The Hungarian Kingdom and the Austrian Republic were de jure treated as its
successors, while the independence of the West Slavs and South Slavs of the
Empire as the countries of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, respectively, was also recognised by the victorious powers.
Franz Joseph I of Austria
Franz Joseph in c.
1898
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Reign
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2 December 1848 –
21 November 1916 |
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Successor
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Reign
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2 December 1848 –
12 October 1866 (deposed) |
Predecessor
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Successor
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Spouse
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Issue
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Father
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Mother
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Born
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Died
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21 November 1916 (aged 86)
Schönbrunn Palace, Vienna |
Burial
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Signature
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Religion
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Franz Joseph I or Francis Joseph I (German: Franz Joseph I., Hungarian: I. Ferenc József, Slovene: Franc Jožef I., Croatian: Franjo Josip I., 18 August 1830 – 21 November 1916) was Emperor of Austria and Apostolic King of Hungary from 1848 until his death in 1916. From 1 May 1850 until 24 August 1866 he was President of the German Confederation.
In December
1848, Emperor Ferdinand abdicated the throne as part of Ministerpräsident Felix zu Schwarzenberg's plan to end the Revolutions of 1848 in Austria, which allowed Ferdinand's nephew Franz
Joseph to ascend to the throne. Largely considered to be a reactionary, Franz Joseph
spent his early reign resisting constitutionalism in his
domains. The Austrian Empire was forced to cede most of its claim to Lombardy–Venetia to the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia following the conclusion of the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859, and
the Third Italian War of Independence in 1866.
Although Franz Joseph ceded no territory to the Kingdom of Prussia after the Austrian defeat in the Austro-Prussian War, the Peace of Prague (23 August 1866) settled the German question in favour of
Prussia, which prevented the unification of Germany under the House of
Habsburg (Großdeutsche
Lösung).
Franz Joseph
was troubled by nationalism during his entire reign. He concluded the Ausgleich of 1867, which granted greater autonomy to Hungary, hence transforming the Austrian
Empire into the Austro-Hungarian Empire under his dual monarchy. His domains
were then ruled peacefully for the next 45 years, although Franz Joseph personally
suffered the tragedies of the execution of his brother, Maximilian, the suicide of his son, Crown Prince Rudolf in 1889, and the assassination of his
wife, Empress Elisabeth in 1898.
After the
Austro-Prussian War, Austria-Hungary turned its attention to the Balkans, which was a hotspot of international
tension due to conflicting interests with the Russian Empire. The Bosnian crisis was a result
of Franz Joseph's annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908, which had been occupied by his troops since the Congress of Berlin (1878). On 28 June 1914, the assassination of the heir-presumptive to the
Austro-Hungarian throne, his nephew Archduke Franz Ferdinand, at the hands of Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian
nationalist, resulted in
Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against the Kingdom of
Serbia, which was
Russia's ally. This activated a system of alliances which resulted in World War I.
Franz Joseph
died on 21 November 1916, after ruling his domains for almost 68 years. He was
succeeded by his grandnephew Charles.
Preludes: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Russian Pan-Slavic organizations sent aid to the Balkan
rebels and so pressured the tsar's government that Russia declared war on the
Ottoman Empire in 1877 in the name of protecting Orthodox Christians. Unable to
mediate between the Ottoman Empire and Russia over the control of Serbia,
Austria-Hungary declared neutrality when the conflict between the two powers
escalated into a war. With help from Romania and Greece, Russia defeated the
Ottomans and by the Treaty of San Stefano created a large pro-Russian Bulgaria. This treaty
sparked an international uproar that almost resulted in a general European war.
Austria-Hungary and Britain feared that an enlarged Bulgaria would become a
Russian satellite that would enable the tsar to dominate the Balkans. British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli moved warships into
position against Russia to halt the advance of Russian influence in the eastern
Mediterranean so close to Britain's route through the Suez Canal.
Bosniaks were recruited into elite units of the Austro-Hungarian Army as early as 1879 and were commended for their bravery in
service of the Austrian emperor, winning more medals than any other unit. The
jaunty military march Die Bosniaken Kommen was composed in their honor by Eduard Wagnes
The Congress of Berlin rolled back the Russian victory by partitioning the
large Bulgarian state that Russia had carved out of Ottoman territory and
denying any part of Bulgaria full independence from the Ottomans. Austria
occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina as a way of gaining clout in the Balkans.
Serbia and Montenegro became fully independent. Nonetheless the Balkans
remained a site of political unrest with teeming ambition for independence and
great power rivalries. At the Congress of Berlin in 1878 Gyula Andrássy (Minister of
Foreign Affairs) managed to force Russia to retreat from further demands in the
Balkans. As a result, Greater
Bulgaria was broken up
and Serbian independence was guaranteed. In that year, with Britain's support,
Austria-Hungary stationed troops in Bosnia to prevent the Russians from
expanding into nearby Serbia. In another measure to keep the Russians out of
the Balkans Austria-Hungary formed an alliance, the Mediterranean Entente, with
Britain and Italy in 1887 and concluded mutual defence pacts with Germany in
1879 and Romania in 1883 against a possible Russian attack. Following the Congress of Berlin the European
powers attempted to guarantee stability through a complex series of alliances
and treaties.
Excerpt from a 1913 Austro-Hungarian order, that banned numerous social-democratic and ethnic Serb cultural societies in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Anxious about
Balkan instability and Russian aggression, and to counter French interests in
Europe, Austria-Hungary forged a defensive alliance with Germany in October 1879 and in May 1882. In October
1882 Italy joined this partnership in the Triple Alliance largely because of Italy's imperial rivalries with
France. Tensions between Russia and Austria-Hungary remained high so Bismarck replaced the League of the Three Emperors with the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia to keep the Habsburgs from recklessly starting
a war over Pan-Slavism. Sandžak- Raška region was under Austro-Hungarian
occupation between 1878 and 1909, when it was ceded to the Ottoman Empire, before being
ultimately divided between kingdoms of Montenegro and Serbia.
On the heels of
the Great Balkan Crisis, Austro-Hungarian forces occupied Bosnia and
Herzegovina in August 1878 and the monarchy eventually annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in
October 1908 as a common
holding of Cis- and Transleithania under the control of the Imperial &
Royal finance ministry rather than attaching it to either territorial
government. This occupation was a response to Russia's advances into Bessarabia. The annexation in 1908 led some in
Vienna to contemplate combining Bosnia and Herzegovina with Croatia to form a
third Slavic component of the Empire. The deaths of Franz Joseph's brother, Maximilian (1867), and his only son, Rudolf made the Emperor's nephew, Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne. The Archduke was rumoured to have
been an advocate for this trialism as a means to limit the power of the
Hungarian aristocracy.
The Status of Bosnia-Herzegovina
A proclamation
issued on the occasion of its annexation to the Habsburg Monarchy in 1908
promised these lands constitutional institutions, which should secure to their
inhabitants full civil rights and a share in the management of their own
affairs by means of a local representative assembly. In performance of this
promise a constitution was promulgated in 1910. This included a Territorial
Statute (Landesstatut) with the setting up of a Territorial Diet, regulations
for the election and procedure of the Diet, a law of associations, a law of
public meetings, and a law dealing with the district councils. According to
this statute Bosnia-Herzegovina formed a single administrative territory under
the responsible direction and supervision of the Ministry of Finance of the
Dual Monarchy in Vienna. The administration of the country, together with the
carrying out of the laws, devolved upon the Territorial Government in Sarajevo,
which was subordinate and responsible to the Common Ministry of Finance. The
existing judicial and administrative authorities of the Territory retained
their previous organization and functions. That statute introduced the modern
rights and laws in Bosnia – Herzegovina, and it guaranteed generally the civil
rights of the inhabitants of the Territory, namely citizenship, personal
liberty, protection by the competent judicial authorities, liberty of creed and
conscience, preservation of the national individuality and language, freedom of
speech, freedom of learning and education, inviolability of the domicile,
secrecy of posts and telegraphs, inviolability of property, the right of
petition, and finally the right of holding meetings. The Bosnian Diet (Sabor)
set up consisted of a single Chamber, elected on the principle of the
representation of interests. It numbered 92 members. Of these 20 consisted of
representatives of all the religious confessions, the president of the Supreme
Court, the president of the Chamber of Advocates, the president of the Chamber
of Commerce, and the mayor of Sarajevo. In addition to these were 72 deputies,
elected by three curiae or electoral groups. The first curia included the large
landowners, the highest taxpayers, and people who had reached a certain
standard of education without regard to the amount they paid in taxes. To the
second curia belonged inhabitants of the towns not qualified to vote in the
first; to the third, country dwellers disqualified in the same way. With this
curial system was combined the grouping of the mandates and of the electors
according to the three dominant creeds (Catholic, Serbian Orthodox, Muslim). To
the adherents of other creeds the right was conceded of voting with one or
other of the religious electoral bodies within the curia to which they
belonged.
This picture is usually associated with the arrest of Gavrilo Princip, although some believe it
depicts Ferdinand Behr, a bystander.
Sarajevo assassination
On 28 June
1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand visited the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. A group of six assassins (Cvjetko
Popović, Gavrilo Princip, Muhamed Mehmedbašić, Nedeljko Čabrinović, Trifko Grabež, Vaso Čubrilović) from the
nationalist group Mlada Bosna, supplied by
the Black Hand, had gathered on the street where the Archduke's motorcade would pass.
Čabrinović threw a grenade at the car,
but missed. It injured some people nearby, and Franz Ferdinand's convoy could
carry on. The other assassins failed to act as the cars drove past them
quickly. About an hour later, when Franz Ferdinand was returning from a visit
at the Sarajevo Hospital, the convoy took a wrong turn into a street where Gavrilo Princip by coincidence
stood. With a pistol, Princip shot and killed Franz Ferdinand and his wife
Sophie. The reaction among the Austrian people was mild, almost indifferent. As
historian Z.A.B. Zeman later wrote, "the event almost failed to make any
impression whatsoever. On Sunday and Monday [June 28 and 29], the crowds in
Vienna listened to music and drank wine, as if nothing had happened.”
Escalation of violence in Bosnia
The
assassination excessively intensified the existing traditional religion-based
ethnic hostilities in Bosnia. However, in Sarajevo itself, Austrian authorities
encouraged violence against
the Serb residents, which resulted in the Anti-Serb riots of Sarajevo, in which Catholic Croats and Bosnian Muslims killed two and
damaged numerous Serb-owned buildings. Writer Ivo Andrić referred to
the violence as the "Sarajevo frenzy of hate.” Violent actions against
ethnic Serbs were organized not only in Sarajevo but also in many other larger
Austro-Hungarian cities in modern-day Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Austro-Hungarian authorities in
Bosnia and Herzegovina imprisoned and extradited approximately 5,500 prominent
Serbs, 700 to 2,200 of whom died in prison. 460 Serbs were sentenced to death
and a predominantly Muslim special militia known as the Schutzkorps was
established and carried out the persecution of Serbs.
Decision for War
While the
empire's military spending had not even doubled since the 1878 Congress of Berlin, Germany's spending had risen fivefold, and the British,
Russian, and French expenditures threefold. The empire had lost ethnic Italian
areas to Piedmont because of
nationalist movements that had swept through Italy, and many Austro-Hungarians
perceived as imminent the threat of losing to Serbia the southern territories inhabited by
Slavs. Serbia had recently gained considerable territory in the Second Balkan
War of 1913,
causing much distress in government circles in Vienna and Budapest. Former
ambassador and foreign minister Count Alois
Aehrenthal had assumed
that any future war would be in the Balkan region.
Hungarian prime
minister and political scientist István Tisza opposed the
expansion of the empire on the Balkan (see Bosnian crisis in 1908),
because "the Dual Monarchy already had too many Slavs", which would
further threaten the integrity of the Dual Monarchy.
In March 1914,
Tisza wrote a memorandum to Emperor Francis Joseph. His letter had strongly
apocalyptic predictive and embittered tone. He used exactly the hitherto
unknown "Weltkrieg" (means World War) phrase in his letter. "It
is my firm conviction that Germany's two neighbors [Russia and France] are
carefully proceeding with military preparations, but will not start the war so
long as they have not attained a grouping of the Balkan states against us that
confronts the monarchy with an attack from three sides and pins down the majority
of our forces on our eastern and southern front.”
On the day of
the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, Tisza immediately traveled to Vienna where he met Minister of Foreign
Affairs Count Berchtold and Army Commander Conrad von Hötzendorf. They proposed
to solve the dispute with arms, attacking Serbia. Tisza proposed to give the government
of Serbia time to take a stand as to whether it was involved in the
organisation of the murder and proposed a peaceful resolution, arguing that the
international situation would settle soon. Returning to Budapest, he wrote to Franz Joseph saying he would not take any responsibility for the
armed conflict because there was no proof that Serbia had plotted the
assassination. Tisza opposed a war with Serbia, stating (correctly, as it
turned out) that any war with the Serbs was bound to trigger a war with Russia
and hence a general European war. He
did not trust in the Italian alliance, due to the political aftermath of the Second Italian War of Independence. He thought
that even a successful Austro-Hungarian war would be disastrous for the
integrity of Kingdom of Hungary, where Hungary would be the next victim of
Austrian politics. After a successful war against Serbia, Tisza adumbrated a
possible Austrian military attack against Kingdom Hungary, where the Austrians
want to break up the territory of Hungary.
Some members of
the government, such as Count Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, had wanted to
confront the resurgent Serbian nation for some years in a preventive war, but
the Emperor, 84 years old and an enemy of all adventures, disapproved.
The foreign
ministry of Austro-Hungarian Empire sent ambassador László Szőgyény to Potsdam, where he inquired about the standpoint of
the German Emperor on July 5. Szőgyény described what happened in a secret
report to Vienna later that day:
"I
presented His Majesty [Wilhelm] with [Franz Joseph’s] letter and the attached
memorandum. The Kaiser read both papers quite carefully in my presence. First,
His Majesty assured me that he had expected us to take firm action against
Serbia, but he had to concede that, as a result of the conflicts facing [Franz
Joseph], he needed to take into account a serious complication in Europe, which
is why he did not wish to give any definite answer prior to consultations with
the chancellor....
When, after our
déjeuner, I once again emphasized the gravity of the situation, His Majesty
authorized me to report to [Franz Joseph] that in this case, too, we could
count on Germany’s full support. As mentioned, he first had to consult with the
chancellor, but he did not have the slightest doubt that Herr von Bethmann
Hollweg would fully agree with him, particularly with regard to action on our
part against Serbia. In his [Wilhelm’s] opinion, though, there was no need to
wait patiently before taking action. The Kaiser said that Russia’s stance would
always be a hostile one, but he had been prepared for this for many years, and
even if war broke out between Austria-Hungary and Russia, we could rest assured
that Germany would take our side, in line with its customary loyalty. According
to the Kaiser, as things stood now, Russia was not at all ready for war. It
would certainly have to think hard before making a call to arms."
But now the
leaders of Austria-Hungary, especially General Count Leopold von Berchtold, backed by its ally Germany, decided
to confront Serbia militarily before it could incite a revolt; using the
assassination as an excuse, they presented a list of ten demands called the July Ultimatum expecting
Serbia would never accept. When Serbia accepted nine of the ten demands but
only partially accepted the remaining one, Austria-Hungary declared war. Franz
Joseph I finally followed the urgent counsel of his top advisers.
Over the course
of July and August 1914, these events caused the start of World War I, as Russia
mobilized in support of Serbia, setting off a series of counter-mobilizations.
Italy initially remained neutral, although it had an alliance with
Austria-Hungary. In 1915, it switched to the side of the Entente powers, hoping to
gain territory from its former ally.
Main events
General von
Hötzendorf was the Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff. Franz Joseph I,
who was much too old to command the army, appointed Archduke Friedrich von
Österreich-Teschen as Supreme Army Commander (Armeeoberkommandant), but asked
him to give Von Hötzendorf freedom to take any decisions. The latter remained
in effective command of the military forces until Emperor Karl I took the
supreme command himself in late 1916 and dismissed Conrad von Hötzendorf in
1917.
Serbian Front
At the start of
the war, the army was divided in two: the smaller part attacked Serbia while
the larger part fought against the formidable Russian army. The invasion of
Serbia in 1914 was a disaster: by the end of the year, the Austro-Hungarian Army had taken no territory but had lost 227,000 out of a
total force of 450,000 men (see Serbian Campaign (World War I)). However in autumn 1915, the Serbian
Army was defeated by the Central Powers, which led to the occupation of Serbia.
Near the end of 1915, in a massive rescue operation involving more than 1,000
trips made by Italian, French and British steamers, 260,000 Serb soldiers were
transported to Corfu, where they
waited for the chance of the victory of Allied Powers to reclaim their country.
Corfu hosted the Serbian government in exile after the collapse of Serbia, and
served as a supply base to the Greek front. In April 1916 a large number of
Serbian troops were transported in British and French naval vessels from Corfu
to mainland Greece. The contingent numbering over 120,000 relieved a much
smaller army at the Thessaloniki front and
fought alongside British and French troops.
Russian Front
On the Eastern front, the war started out equally poorly. The
Austro-Hungarian Army was defeated at the Battle of
Lemberg and the great
fortress city of Przemyśl was besieged and fell in March 1915. The Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive started as a minor German offensive to
relieve the pressure of the Russian numerical superiority on the
Austro-Hungarians, but the cooperation of the Central Powers resulted in huge
Russian losses and the total collapse of the Russian lines, and their
100 km (62 mi) long retreat into Russia. The Russian Third Army
perished. In summer 1915, the Austro-Hungarian Army, under a unified command
with the Germans, participated in the successful Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive. From June 1916, the Russians focused
their attacks on the Austro-Hungarian army in the Brusilov Offensive, recognizing the numerical inferiority of the
Austro-Hungarian army. By the end of September 1916, Austria-Hungary mobilized
and concentrated new divisions, and the successful Russian advance was halted
and slowly repelled; but the Austrian armies took heavy losses (about 1 million
men) and never recovered. The Battle of Zborov (1917) was the first significant action of
the Czechoslovak Legions, who fought for the independence of Czechoslovakia
against the Austro-Hungarian army. However the huge losses in men and material
inflicted on the Russians during the offensive contributed greatly to their two
revolutions of 1917, and it caused an economic crash in the Russian Empire.
Italian Front
In May 1915, Italy attacked
Austria-Hungary. Italy was the only military opponent of the Empire which had a
similar degree of industrialization and economic level; moreover, her army was
numerous (~1,000,000 men were immediately fielded), but suffered poor
leadership, training and organization. Chief of Staff Luigi Cadorna marched his
army towards the Isonzo river, hoping
to seize Ljubljana, and to
eventually threaten Vienna. However, the
Italians were halted on the river, where four battles took place over five months (23 June - 2 December 1915). The fight was
extremly bloody and exhausting for both the contenders. On 15 May 1916, the
Austrian Chief of Staff Conrad von Hötzendorf launched the Strafexpedition ("punitive expedition"): the Austrians broke through the opposing front
and occupied the Asiago plateau. The Italians
managed to resist and in a counteroffensive, seized Gorizia on 9 August. Nonetheless, they had to
stop on the Carso, a few
kilometres away from the border. At this point, several months of indecisive trench warfare (analogous to
the Western front one) ensued. As the Russian Empire collapsed as a
result of the Bolshevik Revolution and Russians ended their involvement in the war, Germans
and Austrians were able to move on the Western and Southern fronts much
manpower from the erstwhile Eastern fighting. On 24 October 1917, Austrians
(now enjoying decisive German support) attacked at Caporetto using new
infiltration tactics; although they advanced more than 100 km
(62.14 mi) in the direction of Venice and gained considerable supplies, they
were halted and could not cross the Piave river. Italy, although suffering
massive casualties, recovered from the blow: a coalition government under Vittorio Emanuele Orlando was formed. Italy also enjoyed support
by the Entente powers: by 1918, large amounts of war materials and a few
auxiliary American, British, and French divisions arrived in the Italian battle
zone. Cadorna was replaced by General Armando Diaz; under his
command, the Italians retook the initiative and won the decisive Battle of the Piave river (15–23 June 1918), in which some
60,000 Austrian and 43,000 Italian soldiers were killed. The multiethnic Austro-Hungarian
Empire started to disintegrate, leaving its army alone on the battlefields. The
final battle was at Vittorio Veneto; after 4 days of stiff resistance, Italian troops
crossed the Piave River, and after losing 90,000 men the defeated Austrian
troops retreated in disarray pursued by the Italians. The Regio Esercito captured 428,000
Austrian-Hungarian soldiers 24 of which were generals, 5,600 cannons and
mortars, 4,000 machine guns. The military
breakdown also marked the start of the rebellion for the numerous ethnicities
who made up the multiethnic Empire, as they refused to keep on fighting for a
cause which now appeared senseless. These events marked the end of
Austria-Hungary, which collapsed on 31 October 1918. The armistice was signed
at Villa Giusti on 3 November.
Romanian Front
On 27 August
1916, Romania proclaimed war
against Austria-Hungary. The Romanian army crossed the borders of Eastern
Hungary (Transylvania). By November 1916, the Central Powers had defeated the
Romanian army and occupied the southern and eastern parts of Romania. On 6
December the Central Powers captured Bucharest, the Romanian capital city.
Role of Hungary
Austria-Hungary
held on for years, as the Hungarian half provided sufficient supplies for the military
to continue to wage war. This
was shown in a transition of power after which the Hungarian prime minister,
Count István Tisza, and foreign
minister, Count István Burián, had decisive
influence over the internal and external affairs of the monarchy.By late 1916,
food supply from Hungary became intermittent and the government sought an
armistice with the Entente powers. However, this failed as Britain and France
no longer had any regard for the integrity of the empire because of
Austro-Hungarian support for Germany.
Analysis of Defeat
The setbacks
that the Austrian army suffered in 1914 and 1915 can be attributed to a large
extent to Austria-Hungary becoming a military satellite of Imperial
Germany from the first
day of the war. They were made worse by the incompetence of the Austrian high
command. After attacking Serbia, its forces soon had to be withdrawn to protect
its eastern frontier against Russia's invasion, while German units were engaged
in fighting on the Western Front. This resulted in a greater than
expected loss of men in the invasion of Serbia. Furthermore it became evident
that the Austrian high command had had no plans for a possible continental war
and that the army and navy were also ill-equipped to handle such a conflict.
From 1916, the
Austro-Hungarian war effort became more and more subordinated to the direction
of German planners. The Austrians viewed the German army favorably, on
the other hand by 1916 the general belief in Germany was that it was
"shackled to a corpse". The operational capability of the Austro-Hungarian
army was seriously affected by supply shortages, low morale and a high casualty
rate, and by the army's composition of multiple ethnicities with different
languages and customs.
The last two
successes for the Austrians, the Romanian Offensive and the Caporetto Offensive, were German-assisted operations. As the Dual Monarchy
became more politically unstable, it became more and more dependent on German
assistance. The majority of its people, other than Hungarians and German
Austrians, became increasingly restless.
In 1917, the Eastern front of the Allied (Entente) Powers completely collapsed. The
Austro-Hungarian Empire then withdrew from all defeated countries. Despite
great eastern successes, Germany suffered complete defeat in the more decisive
western front. By 1918, the economic situation had deteriorated. Leftist and
pacifist political movements organized strikes in factories, and uprisings in
the army had become commonplace. During the Italian battles, the Czechoslovaks
and Southern Slavs declared their independence. On 31 October Hungary ended the
personal union officially dissolving the Austro-Hungarian state. At the last
Italian offensive Austro-Hungarian Army took to the field without any food and
munition supply, and fought without any political supports for a de facto
non-existent empire. On the end of the decisive joint Italian, British and
French offensive at Vittorio Veneto, the disintegrated Austria-Hungary
signed a general armistice in Padua on 3 November 1918.
Dissolution
The Communists ruled multiethnic Budapest from 21 March
1919 to 1 August 1919. The statues of the Heroes Square
of Budapest are covered
with Communist symbols for May Day. At the basement of the original obelisk a
new statue was erected: Marx with a worker and a peasant. The statues of
historic heroes were toppled, Hungarian national symbols were banned in the
name of internationalism.
In the autumn
of 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy collapsed. In the capital cities of
Vienna and Budapest, the leftist and liberal movements and politicians (the
opposition parties) strengthened and supported the separatism of ethnic minorities. These leftist or
left-liberal pro-Entente maverick parties opposed the monarchy as a form of government and considered themselves internationalist rather than
patriotic. Eventually, the German defeat and the minor revolutions in Vienna
and Budapest gave political power to the left/liberal political parties. As it
became apparent that the Allied powers of the British Empire, France, Italy
and the United States would win World War I, nationalist movements, which had
previously been calling for a greater degree of autonomy for various areas,
started pressing for full independence.
As one of his Fourteen Points, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson demanded that
the nationalities of the empire have the "freest opportunity to autonomous
development". In response, Emperor-King, Charles (Charles I in
Austria and Károly IV in Hungary), who had succeeded Francis Joseph in 1916,
agreed to reconvene the imperial parliament in 1917 and allow the creation of a
confederation with each
national group exercising self-governance. However the
leaders of these national groups no longer trusted Vienna and were now
determined to get independence.
