The First World War And The End Of The Habsburg Monarchy 1914 1918

The origins of World War I were different and varied. But it was Austria-Hungary which unleashed the war. After more than four years the Habsburg Monarchy was defeated and ended as a failed state.

The Final War of a Great Empire "The official history of the Habsburg empire in the First World War ought to enjoy a better reputation than it does." - Sir Hew Strachan In August 1914, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in response to the assassination of their heir to the throne, declared war against Serbia. Their army was multi-national and multi-lingual. Backed by Germany and opposed by an alliance between Russia, France, and Great Britain, the conflict would plunge the entire world into five years of brutal warfare. Started just after the Great War ended and completed only one year before the start of the Second World War, this is a comprehensive history of the final conflict of an empire that only half a century prior had been among the most powerful in Europe. With Russia never completing an official history of the Great War, and Italy, Romania, and Serbia's official histories unavailable in English, this is an invaluable and essential resource for any student of the Eastern and Italian Fronts of the First World War. This volume covers August 1915 to the end of the year, in which Austria continued its war against Russia in the east and Italy in the south, finally defeated Serbia, and came into conflict with Falkenhayn and the German General Staff.

The collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy at the end of World War I ushered in a period of radical change for East-Central European political structures and national identities. Yet this transformed landscape inevitably still bore the traces of its imperial past. Breaking with traditional histories that take 1918 as a strict line of demarcation, this collection focuses on the complexities that attended the transition from the Habsburg Empire to its successor states. In so doing, it produces new and more nuanced insights into the persistence and effectiveness of imperial institutions, as well as the sources of instability in the newly formed nation-states.

A major re-examination of Habsburg decision-making from 1912 to July 1914, the study argues that Austria-Hungary and not Germany made the crucial decisions for war in the summer of 1914. Based on extensive new archival research, the book traces the gradual militarization of Austro-Hungarian foreign policy during the Balkan Wars. The disasters of those wars and the death of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir-apparent and a force for peace in the monarchy, convinced the Habsburg elite that only a war against Serbia would end the South Slav threat to the monarchy's existence. Williamson also describes Russia's assertive foreign policy after 1912 and stresses the unique linkages of domestic and foreign policy in almost every issue faced by Habsburg statesmen.

The conquest of Serbia was only one of the goals of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the First World War; beyond this lay the desire to control much of South-East Europe. Employing previously unseen sources, Marvin Fried provides the first complete analysis of the Monarchy's war aims in the Balkans and tells the story of its imperialist ambitions.