Ignác Romsics
The Great Powers and the Dissolution of Austria-Hungary
[...]
After 1849, in the sixties and seventies, policy towards Vienna changed in St Petersburg, London and Paris alike. By intervening on the Turkish and Western side in the 1854/55 Crimean War, and by temporarily occupying the Danubian Principalities, the Habsburgs lost the trust the Russians had invested in them. The occupation of Bosnia-Herczegovina in 1878 and, especially, its annexation in 1908, fatally damaged relations between Vienna and St Petersburg, since these actions tilted the balance of power in the Balkans in favour of Austria-Hungary at the expense of Russia. In London and Paris too, they took a poor view of that annexation, the more so because of the alliance Austria-Hungary had entered into with the German Reich in 1879. Considerations that derived from the supposed strategic role of the Danubian Empire in ensuring equilibrium had also lost their relevance because of the serious internal tensions that had thrown Austria-Hungary off balance. The longing for a federal constitution by the Slavs—primarily the Czechs and Croats—was accompanied in the first decade of the twentieth century by a deteriorating relationship between the Germans and the Hungarians, the two privileged nations of the Empire. It therefore became fashionable in the West in the immediate pre-war years to refer to the Habsburg Empire as the Sick Man of Europe, the name that had long been attached to the Ottoman Empire.
The First World War, as most wars, was fought over territory.
Italy demanded the Tyrol, Istria and Dalmatia, Serbia demanded other southern
areas in Austria-Hungary. Romania laid claim to Transylvania and its marches.
In 1915 and 1916 the Entente promised these regions to Italy, Serbia and Romania,
to induce them to join hostilities or to boost their war effort. Of the enemy
Great Powers, Russia alone made territorial demands on Austria-Hungary. In
keeping with longstanding ambitions, Petrograd demanded the eastern provinces
inhabited by Ukrainians and Ruthenes and also wished to attach Polish-inhabited
Western Galicia to an autonomous Poland within Russia.
As for the future of the rest of Austria-Hungary, wedged
between Poland, Greater Romania and Greater Serbia, Russian foreign policy
showed some hesitation at first. Immediately before and after the outbreak
of hostilities, Czar Nicholas himself repeatedly stated that Austria-Hungary
was not likely to survive the territorial concessions it would be forced to
make. Grand Duke Alexei, the Chief of the General Staff, argued that Austria-Hungary
would have to be divided up into states that served Russian purposes. Other
members of the military and political leadership agreed. Foreign Minister
Sazonov, however, made mutually contradictory declarations. Addressing the
emissaries of the Allied Powers on September 14th 1914, he argued
that after the war the Habsburg Empire must be turned into a kingdom consisting
of three member states, Austria, Bohemia and Hungary. Maurice Paléologue,
the French Ambassador in St Petersburg, noted on January 1st 1915
that according to Sazonov Austria–Hungary must be dismembered. These approaches
and discussions finally, in 1916, led to a decision to plan for a complete
dissolution of the Empire and the creation of new nation-states. Of Austria,
Hungary and Bohemia, Russia wished to establish the closest ties with the
last named. Hungary’s lot, however, would have been nothing more or better
than that of a vassal state.
[...]
It is precisely this uncertainty that is reflected in a secret
document prepared by Foreign Office advisers in August 1916, and approved
by the Prime Minister that autumn, the first to contain comprehensive proposals
for territorial arrangements after the war was victoriously concluded. This
plan considered it to be in the most obvious British interest to limit the
influence and expansion of the Germanic powers and of Russia in the eastern
half of Europe. “For that reason, and also with the more general object of
arriving at a durable settlement, we must bear in mind the two principles
of nationality and of reasonable economic facilities...” The possibility that
the Allies might save the Habsburg Empire, as they had done in 1849, was not
excluded. A more desirable scenario would be, however, if the nations were
given a free rein and the Empire fell apart in keeping with their ideas. A
powerful South Slav federation, centred on Belgrade, was essential, bearing
in mind the strategic interests of the British Empire, since this could be
a barrier in the way of the German Drang nach Osten. An Austria presumed to
be part of Germany, an independent Hungary and an independent Romania, plus
an independent Bohemia which could possibly be joined to a Poland under the
aegis of Russia or to the South-Slav state would share the rest. Lord Balfour,
the Foreign Secretary, informed the Americans about to enter the war in a
like spirit in April 1917. “Three states would be formed from the Austrian–Hungarian
Empire: Bohemia, Hungary and Austria.” It must be stressed, however, that
notions of a preservation of the Danubian Empire were linked to ideas of modernization,
democratization and federalization. Thus on 10th February 1917, the Prime
Minister, Lloyd George, himself declared: “We have no policy of sheer dismemberment,
but we must stand by the nationalities of our Allies such as Romanians, the
Slavs, the Serbians and the Italians”. A year later, on January 4th
1918, he moved a resolution passed by the War Cabinet, that “Austria-Hungary
should be in a position to exercise a powerful influence in South-East Europe.”
In the first half of the war French government policy too
hesitated. The preservation of the Habsburg Empire rather than its complete
liquidation was considered desirable. In an early 1915 dispatch, Maurice Paléologue,
the French ambassador to Russia, reporting a conversation with the Foreign
Minister, said that Austria was the only question on which their opinions
differed. As long as there was a Germany and an Italy, the continued existence
of Austria was in the French interest. Philipe Berthelot who, of all the high-ranking
French diplomats had the least sympathy for Austria-Hungary, and who happened
to be Eduard Bene¹’s close friend, advised his Foreign Minister on August
16th 1916, in connection with the raising of a Czech Legion, that
the time had not come yet to decide on the future of Bohemia. Finally one
might refer to the Comité national d’études sociales et politiques, established
to formulate French peace aims. In 1916, after a prolonged and heated debate,
they decided that it was the federalization and not the dissolution of Austria-Hungary
that was in the French interest.
In the course of 1917, a number of French plans relating
to the concrete arrange-ments of a federalization of Austria-Hungary were
drawn up. One of these shows how keenly aware of the problems the advisers
of the French General Staff were. Their fifty-page compilation stresses that
if the Habsburg Empire fell apart into its elements this would only facilitate
things for Germany. A congerie of small independent states, jealous of each
other and without access to the sea, would compete with each other for the
favours of their powerful neighbour. The slogan must therefore be not delenda
Austria but constituenda Austria, as an association of independent and democratic
states though still under the sceptre of the Habsburgs. The future empire
would consist of four national and one multiethnic territorial units: Austria,
Bohemia (Czech and Moravian regions but without Slovakia), “Lesser” Hungary,
Croatia (made up of the Croat, Slovene, Serbian and Dalmatian parts) and Transylvania.
The Bukovina would be shared between Russia and Romania, and Galicia between
Russia and Poland. It was proposed that the promises made to Italy and Serbia
in 1915 should be kept only in part. Italy would be given the Tyrol and Gorizia
but not Istria or Northern Dalmatia, since these latter were essential to
the Habsburg Empire. The author argued that making a single state out of the
culturally diversified South Slav territories would be a gross error. Serbia
would be given Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Southern Dalmatia, including
Cattaro (Kotor), but not the integral and predominantly Catholic territories
of Austria-Hungary. The material concluded by pointing out that, after three
years of war it was time to give more thought to French interests. The peace
with honour which the French deserved must not be allowed to be delayed by
more or less intransigent Serbian or Romanian demands.
Proposals by the General Staff and other pro-Austrian conservative
monarchists were naturally vehemently attacked by radical free thinkers, many
of whom were Freemasons. Echoing Masaryk and Bene¹, they demanded that Austria-Hungary
be broken up, at the time, however, without much success. Right up to the
end of 1917, the French government hesitated to come to a decision on the
future of the Danubian empire.
From the American vantage point Europe, and particularly
the Danube basin, was of much smaller importance than for the French or the
United Kingdom. That no single European power of alliance should dominate
the whole of the continent and thus the world, was an axiom of American as
much as of British policy. That Germany must not be allowed to win the war,
or to dominate in any other way, had already been stated by Secretary of State
Robert Lansing on July 11th 1915, that is over two years before
America joined the Allies. The point of contention in America was therefore
not the strategic objective but how this—the restoration of the continental
balance of power and the keeping in check of Germany—could be attained and
ensured. President Wilson, in his Fourteen Points, which he issued on January
8th 1918, committed himself not to the break up of Austria-Hungary
but only to extensive rights to autonomy of the nations which inhabited it.
Accordingly, the member of the American committee preparing peace proposals
responsible for Central Europe in April 1918, in a draft proposal, spoke of
a confederation of five states that would make up Austria. It is true, however,
that Secretary of State Lansing at no time shared such notions. A diary entry
dated January 10th 1918 reads: “Germany must not be permitted to
win this war or to break even.”
Late in 1917 and early in 1918 three events put an end to
such hesitations and uncertainties. The first was the October Revolution in
Russia and the March 1918 Peace of Brest Litovsk. This meant the loss of the
major eastern ally and a confrontation with the eastern outlines of the Mitteleuropa
of the future. The essence of this neue Ordnung was the detachment from Russia
of all western territories acquired since the time of Peter the Great, and
the creation in this region of German vassal nation-states. The second new
development was the scandalous conclusion, on April 12th 1918,
of negotiations for a separate peace engaged in by the young Austrian Emperor
Charles, who had succeeded Francis Joseph in 1916, that is the publication
of the fact that Austria was prepared to accept the return to France of Alsace-Lorraine.
This put the Emperor in an impossible position, even more at the mercy of
his German ally. The third was the signing on May 14th and 15th
of an agreement providing for long-term political, military and economic cooperation
between Germany and Austria-Hungary. This was interpreted in Washington, London
and Paris as showing that Austria-Hungary was finally committed to the German
interest, being thus unable to carry out that balance-ensuring which many
still had in mind in 1917–1918. Lord Hardinge expressed this in a diary entry
dated May 23rd 1918, when he noted that all efforts to detach Austria
had failed as the meeting of the two emperors resulted in an ever closer German
dominance. They must carry on fighting, he concluded, and do their best to
encourage the subjugated nations to rebel against German-Hungarian dominance.
After the spring of 1918, the issue for the Entente was therefore no longer
whether or not Austria-Hungary would survive but the location of the new states
that would replace it.
The Allies, first on June 3rd 1918, issued a joint
declaration of support for the independence of Poland. This had already been
mentioned in President Wilson’s January Fourteen Points and in speeches by
French and British statesmen around that time. The Poles had, after the fall
of Napoleon, repeatedly attempted to regain their independence but the hopes
they had put in western support had proved vain. Now, after the fall of the
Russian Empire, they finally obtained this absolutely essential support. In
the spring and summer of 1918 the French asked for a joint Allied declaration
of support for the independence not only of Poland but also of Czechoslovakia
and a South Slav state, and for the recognition of the committee of South
Slav exiles which was about to be constituted as a government. British procrastination
and the stubborn opposition of Italy, which looked on a future South Slav
state as a rival, torpedoed this. Thus, on June 29th, France, acting
alone, recognized the Czechoslovak National Council headed by Masaryk and
Bene¹ as the legitimate representative of the Czech and Slovak nation and
the basis of the government of a future Czechoslovak state. The British only
decided on a like step on August 9th and the United States on September
3rd. Because of Italian opposition the South Slavs were not given
similar recognition before the end of hostilities. This, however, does not
alter the fact that, together with Poland, Czechoslovakia and Greater Romania,
a greater South Slav state figured amongst the peace aims of the Allies. Details
were then settled at the negotiating tables of the Peace Conference in Paris,
and in local wars between the interested parties.
The 1919/20 Peace Conference held in Paris and its environs
established four new states on the territory of Austria-Hungary: Austria,
Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the Kingdom of Serbians, Croats and Slovenes,
the future Yugoslavia. In addition Poland, Romania and Italy received a share
of the Habsburg Empire. The declared principle of the peace treaties establishing
the new states and drawing up the new frontiers was national self-determination.
Other considerations, however, economic, strategic and even plain land hunger
also played a part, so that the final arrangement did not accord with the
ethnic-national principle even in the measure that the notoriously confused
ethnographic demography of the region would have allowed. This too contributed
to a new world war barely twenty years after the end of the first.
Ignác Romsics
is Professor of Modern History at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest.
His most recent book is Hungary in the Twentieth Century, Budapest, Corvina, 1999.
