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The Final Disintegration of the Habsburg Monarchy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2009

Hajo Holborn
Hajo Holborn
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

Enormous as the problems of the Habsburg empire had become by 1914, war, for that matter even a victorious war, was unlikely to solve any of them; on the contrary, it was bound to make their solution even more improbable than before. When before approving the war against Serbia Count István Tisza demanded assurances from Count Leopold von Berchtold that it would not lead to the incorporation of substantial numbers of Serbs into the Dual Monarchy, his demand should have raised doubts in sober minds about the practicability of war as a means of improving the stability and power of the Habsburg monarchy. Most of the Austrian policymakers believed that Austria-Hungary was forced to go to war in order to retain her reputation as a great power, but after Serbia had accepted practically all the demands of the Austrian ultimatum, Austria-Hungary could have been reasonably certain that it would emerge from the crisis sufficiently respected. A radical policy of prestige, such as that which the German government urged upon the Austrians during the July crisis, can, however, easily produce a neglect of reality.

Type
The Disintegration of the Monarchy
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , January 1967 , pp. 189 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 1967

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References

1 See Craig, Gordon A., “The World War I Alliance of the Central Powers in Retrospect: The Military Cohesion of the Alliance,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. XXXVII (1965), pp. 336–344CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Fischer, Fritz, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: Norton, 1967), pp. 310–311Google Scholar.

3 See especially Redlich, Josef, Österreichische Regierung und Verwaltung im Weltkriege (Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1925), pp. 82–95Google Scholar.

4 Ritter, Gerhard, Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk, Vol. III (Munich: R. Oldenbourg), p. 77Google Scholar.

5 Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War, pp. 517–523.

6 Ibid., pp. 524–533.

7 Ibid., p. 527.

8 Taylor, A. J. P., The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809–1918 (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), p. 245Google Scholar.

9 For good accounts, see Zeman, Z. A. B., The Break-up of the Habsburg Empire, 1914–1918 (London: Oxford University Press, 1961)Google Scholar; and Gelfand, Lawrence E., The Inquiry: American Preparations for Peace, 1917- 1919 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1963)Google Scholar.