William Tyler
Defeat and Division
William Tyler - Defeat and Division
- Good evening, everyone from Sutton, England. Can I wish you all, well, not all of you, of course not all of you, only the half of you who are female and listening can I wish you a Happy Valentine’s Day? And you may have spotted, I’ve got Valentine’s Day card here because it’s very important for gentlemen of a certain age to make sure they get one. And this is one from great friends of mine. It says, Happy Valentine’s Day. Ashley and all of us at the Donkey Sanctuary want you to know just how incredibly special you are to us. Because I supported donkey called Ashley at the Donkey Sanctuary in Devon and I got this wonderful card from Ashley. So I thought I’d share that with all of you who haven’t had a card. So if you haven’t had one, then support a donkey and you’ll get one next year. Now, I am going to begin the story this evening of the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the World War, which was to lead to the Empire’s demise. And I’m going to begin by reading the words of I guess a writer that many of you will have read, a Viennese Jew, Stefan Zweig, in his great autobiographical work, “The World of Yesterday”. It is a- If you have never read “The World of Yesterday” by Zweig, you should read it. It is a most beautiful book and a beautiful picture of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time of its collapse and just a little bit subsequently. And first of all, he’s writing about the year 1913 and he- It’s in the context. He’s referring to a conversation he had in the street with a musician called Rolland. And this is what he writes. “This was in 1913”, says, Stefan. “It was the first conversation that showed me it was our duty not to confront the possibility of European war passively and unprepared. When the crucial moment came nothing gave Rolland such great moral superiority over everyone else as the way he had already and painfully strengthened his mind to face it in advance. Perhaps the rest of our circle had done something too.
I had translated many works. I promoted the best writers in the countries that were our neighbours, I’d accompanied Verhaeren on a lecture tour all over Germany. And the tour had turned out to be a symbolic demonstration of Franco German fraternity. In Hamburg, he and I, respectively, the great writers had embraced him public. I’d interested Reinhardt in a new play. Our collaboration on both sides have never been warmer, more intense or more unconstrained. And in many hours of enthusiasm, we entertain the illusion that we’ve shown the world the way that would save it.” In other words, the culture and the civilised nature of German society, both in Austro-Hungary, particularly Vienna and across Germany itself. But he adds, “The world however, took little notice of such literary manifestations, but went its own way to ruin.” It went its own way to ruin. In the Austro-Hungarian empire as a whole, there was an increasing feeling as war emerges in 1914. There was an increasing feeling before the war, from 1910 onwards that this was the end of an age. That a world was about to end, not because of war, but because of one man’s age. And Zweig writes in this way, he says this, “In 1910, Emperor Franz Joseph passed the age of 80, the old man, an icon in his own lifetime could not last much longer and a mystical belief began to spread among the public at large.
But after his death, there will be no way to present a dissolution of the thousand year old monarchy.” Now, not perhaps quite as extreme as that, but that view is alive and well in the Britain of 2022 as our Queen is much older than Franz Joseph was. 10 years older when… than Franz Joseph was at his death in 1916. In hindsight and in memory, the war that is to come in 1914, the death of the octogenarian Emperor Franz Joseph in the middle of that war in 1916 and the end of the Habsburg monarchy itself and indeed of the empire and the country of Austro-Hungary in 1918 at the end of the war forms a Greek tragedy. It’s- When you teach it, and of course we teach it in hindsight because you all know the result. I’d love to teach this I think to sort of seven-year-olds who don’t know the result of what’s going to happen. To tell it as a fantastic story. But you all know, and it seems, as I say, like a Greek tragedy, it’s inevitable. I will talk about the acts and the scenes that lead to the end, but the end inevitably will come and the final curtain will fall on Habsburg rule in central Europe and on that great phenomenon, that out of time phenomenon of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
And as we all know, because we all know anyhow, but I’ve spoken about both twice in the last two weeks in talks. The event in Sarajevo in 1914, and this is how Zweig describes it. “Then,” he writes, “on the 28th of June, 1914, a shot was fired in Sarajevo. The shot that in a single second was to shatter the world of security and creative reason.” Interesting you see, he’s back to the intellectual civilised nature of German society. “…and creative reason in which we had been reared where we had grown up and were at home as if it were a hollow clay pot breaking into a thousand pieces.” I hope from those short extracts, you will be, those who haven’t read it will turn to this wonderful book, “The World of Yesterday” by Zweig. And those of you who’ve perhaps read it a long time ago, might return to it now with fresh eyes and read it all over again. It’s one of those books you can dip into and just pick up anywhere. So then war came in June, 1914, as we know. One can’t say it was unexpected anywhere in Europe. Everything had been building towards it. It’s like children who are building up for an argument, for a crisis. You know it’s coming. But what they didn’t know was the horrendous scale of the war that was to come. So how prepared was Austro-Hungary? Well, there are different opinions about that. Some people think it was well prepared. Others like me think it was ill prepared. On the surface, militarily, it was quite well prepared. In terms of its navy, it was very well prepared. In terms of its army, it had three armies. One the common army that was one that united Austria in half and the Hungarian half and that had a figure of just over 400,000 trained troops. There was also a standing army in Austria in the Austrian half and a standing army in the Hungarian half.
And by 1914 they had been on exercises. Remember that Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been in Bosnia to look at exercises, field exercises of the army, and these two national armies, which looked after civil unrest, if you like, in the Austrian half and Hungarian half, had already trained and manoeuvred with the main army. So it had a substantial army. When you looked into it, the army was not quite as good as you thought it was. Of course, the army had a large number of men. Yes it did. They were well armed. Yes they were. But they weren’t very well trained. That’s the problem with it. Let’s just have a think about that army for a moment. It- As war came in 1914, its enemies weren’t particularly, what shall I say, particularly threatening. This is not like the Ukraine facing the Russians. Yes, the Austro-Hungarians faced the Russians, but the Russians of 1914 are not the Russians of 2022. They were ill-equipped, poorly led, very ill-equipped, very poorly led. So the Austrian should have been able to hold. And as for the second enemy, the Serbs, well, they were very tiny in number, however well armed they were with British and French arms. And however well led they were, they were tiny. The Austrians divided their army into six units. They called them army. So there is massive army, and they chopped it into six bits. Four of the bits they send to Galicia. In other words, Austro-Hungarian Poland to face the Russians. The other two, they send southwards to take Serbia. So they’re fighting on two fronts as the war begins. Fighting on two fronts always poses problems. However strong you are, however weak the enemy, a two frontal war is not as easy for obvious reasons. And it was made more difficult in Austro-Hungary because of the difficulties of moving troops from one theatre of war to the other. The railways were incredibly slow in Austro-Hungary, but also the ability of the commanding officers to make quick decisions to redeploy troops was frankly appalling. So there were huge difficulties facing enemies on two fronts. This is what Martyn Rady writes in his book on the the Habsburg Empire. “The Habsburg armies… were poorly trained- only one in twenty adult males had received any military instruction before 1914, and for most this had been perfunctory.
The trains that conveyed the men to the front travelled no faster than bicycles; provisioning was haphazard, and tin lids substituted for spades. Much can be blamed on financial constraints…” Can’t it always. Because the empire had been in financial difficulties, the first thing they cut was the army. We’re about to see that being played out with NATO in the Ukraine. Think Britain, think Germany, two of the largest powers who should be militarily up to it simply had so many cuts. And then additionally, in terms of Germany, a lack of will because of the problem of gas supplies, Germany from Russia. So how was this going to play out? Well, we know it isn’t going to play out well. One of the problems is not only were there two fronts, the Russian and the Serbian. On the Russian front, the Austrians were forced backing Galicia and lost their best troops. Made up with contrary- much as Britain had on the Western front. Now that did not all go well. So they, they had been forced backwards in against the Russians in Galicia. In Serbia, they’re more successful. But there’s a problem. Two fronts is bad news four fronts is disastrous. And by the end, the Austro-Hungarians were fighting on four fronts- against the Russians in the north, against the Serbs in the south. Then from 1915 onwards against the Italians in the Alps, in the south, in the Tyrol. And then finally in 1916 from the Romanians in the east. So they land up by 1916 with four fronts: the Russian front, the Serbian front, the Italian front, and the Romanian front. The news isn’t bad from the Austro-Hungarian point of view because German troops are sent to bolster the Austro-Hungarian troops. Much as in World War II, the Germans sent troops to bolster Mussolini’s Italian troops. With the bolstering of the troops, the Austro-Hungarians won. They occupied Serbia, autumn of 1915, and the remains of the Serbian army had to be rescued by ship, by British, French and Italian ships and transported to safety in Brindisi or in the island of Corfu. Some over 4 million men were transported, and Serbia had fallen by the end of 1915. In 1917, again with German support, the Austro-Hungarians inflicted a humiliating defeat crushing the Italians at the battle of Caporetto.
So bad they moored with the Italians that British, French, and 1917 American troops were sent to bolster up the Italians against Austro-Germans. And the Italians reinvigorated defeated the Austro-Hungarians in June, 1918 at the Battle of the River Piave. 60,000 Austrians and 43 Italian soldiers were killed. These are- We in the west think of the Western Front. This was a dreadful war in the Alps. I went on a coach from Slovenia to Vienna, sorry, to Venice- Slovenia to Venice. And we were going through the mountains and it suddenly dawned on me that this was where the fighting had taken place. And the mountains came in on the road very high, and you were in a small passageway through, and if you looked up, you could see block houses on both sides. Now it’s an exaggeration to say that they could have, they could have linked hands in the middle, but they were very, very close. This was a bloody war. So 60,000 Austrians, 43,000 Italians were killed in this battle. And then finally, the Austrians were defeated by the Italians at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, a great Italian victory. The Italians captured just under half a million, half a million Austro-Hungarian, German soldiers. They captured 24 Austrian generals. They captured five and a half thousand guns- that is cannons and mortars- and 4,000 machine guns. That’s 1918, and the empire is crumbling.
By 1918, the Russians had gone out of the war, of course. Because Lenin had taken them out at the time of the October Revolution, so they weren’t facing the Russians. But the humiliation at the hands of the Italians was the final catastrophe militarily. Romania they’d had some successes with once the Russians are withdrawn. So you might say, but look, William, you said the Russians are withdrawn from the war. They had success against Serbia. They had success against Romanians. They only lost against Italy militarily. So surely that doesn’t lead to the collapse. Well, I said there were four fronts: the Russian, the Serbian, the Romanian, and the Italian. But that of course isn’t true, is it? There were five fronts. The fifth front is the front that defeats Austria, the Austro-Hungary. The final front is the one they lose, that destroys the empire. And that, of course is the home front. And we have to go back to 1916 to begin the story of the collapse of the home front. The collapse of the home front begins- we can date it very precisely- at nine o'clock on Sunday, the 21st of November, 1916. At nine o'clock that night, Franz Joseph passed quietly away. The mighty oak had fallen. The unthinkable and yet also the inevitable had finally happened. The monarchy could not survive his death. The empire- Remember all those points I made, kept making week after week about the personal nature of the empire. With the Emperor dead, you are pulling out the lynch pin, putting it aside, and like a child’s toy the parts of the Austro-Hungarian empire fall. It fragments.
And you’ll remember that the fragmentation has been waiting a long time to happen because of the rise in nationalism. The Czechs, the Poles, the Italians, Hungarians, everybody it all begins to come apart. And its implications are with us still in the 21st century, the destruction of this major empire in central Europe. Well, we know the Ottoman Empire failed, we know the Russian Empire failed, and we know the German empire failed, but none of them had the significance for Europe as the central empire of Austria-Hungary. Germany, because Germany survived. And since 1989 ‘90, Germany has been united once more. The Russian empire survived even though it isn’t called an empire. Putin has an empire. And we know what he’s trying to do now to extend the empire into areas he believes are the empires from this period like Ukraine, Poland, and so on. And the Ottoman Empire? Well, that’s another story because that involves the story of the Middle East rather than of Europe. It’s the collapse of the Austro-Hungarians that’s created problems. The Yugoslav Civil War of this century was a direct result of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Hungarian Revolution against Russia in '56, 1956 was part of the result of this. The division of the Czech Republic and Slovakia is a result of this. The First World War which dropped this boulder into the pool called Europe. The ripples caused by that boulder are still with us today, I would argue- but today it’s not the day to do so- that the ripples caused by the First World War are greater in terms of the length of time than the ripples of the Second World War. It’s the First World War that changes the face of Europe.
Of course, there was a new Emperor, his great nephew Charles and his wife Zita become Emperor and Empress. And in the biography of Emperor Franz Joseph by John Van der Kiste, we read this, “As everyone filed out of Franz Joseph’s death chamber in the Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna, nobody seemed to know what to say or what to do. For a few moments there was complete silence until one of the courtiers walked up to Charles and with tears in his eyes, made the sign of the cross on his forehead.” We’re not looking back and with hindsight saying that there has been this mighty oak that has fallen. Because as Van der Kiste, tells us using the Times of London newspaper, he writes, “It was clearly the end of an era. In London, The Times noted that the death of Francis Joseph removed quote 'a figure that seemed to have become a permanent figure of the political configuration of Europe.’ I can’t read any of this about Franz Joseph, without thinking of Britain in 2022 and the Queen. Okay, it won’t have European ramifications, but it will have Commonwealth ramifications, as well as United Kingdom ramifications. And I don’t think we will know precisely what those ramifications are until the event happens. "It also appreciated”, says Van der Kiste- that’s The Times- “that Austria did the bidding of Berlin and considered it impossible to apportion responsibility for what it called a criminal policy, the outbreak of war on the continent. At his age, Franz Joseph was probably incapable of resisting pressure, which a younger man might have understood…” Might withstood, sorry. “Had the Serbian crisis occurred a few years earlier, a more forceful Francis Joseph could have helped to prevent the inextricable slide into war for which he was surely less to blame than the German Emperor, the military party in Berlin and their accomplices in Austria-Hungary.” Well, that’s debatable, but I think there’s a point there.
I don’t think anything would’ve stopped Germany to be honest. They had set their shoulder to the wheel for war. I suppose that you could argue that if Charles had become Emperor, and Charles is a very religious man- so was Franz Joseph- but he was a religious man in the sense of a man determined to seek peace. And maybe he would not have aligned with Wilhelm of Germany. Maybe. It’s all maybes. And it doesn’t matter because we know what actually happened. Van der Kiste goes on, “When Franz Joseph was laid to rest, which was on the 30th of November, it was concluded everyone would quote- and this is the time today- "everyone would reflect that an era which might have been a great era in Habsburg history, had closed amid ruin, bankruptcy, blood and tears. But in these reflections, there will be placed for human compassion with a lot of man who came as a strickling to the throne. Who saw his brother, his wife, his son, and his nephew perish by violence. The nephew is Franz Ferdinand shot at Sarajevo. The son is Rudolf, who took his own life. The wife is Sisi, who was assassinated by an anarchist on the shores of Lake Geneva. And his brother was Maximilian, made Emperor of Mexico and shot by a firing squad, who lost the various provinces of his empire and who must have ended a long and chequered reign with forebodings of disaster to his house and his dominions, graver than any which even he had known.
1916 and the death of Franz Joseph really I think marks the end of the Habsburg empire. But it still has two years to play out and some would argue longer than that. And most of that story, excuse me, most of that story we will pick up next week. And what did this new Emperor Charles… Let me just read you a short passage just to sort of give you a taste. "He was age 29.” “He was age 29 at the time of his accession, he’d been left an unenviable legacy.” Well, no one can counter that. He’s in the middle of a war. “He was as committed to peace as his great uncle had been.” Franz Joseph. “Yet some of the empire’s elders believed his cause was already doomed. Dr. Lammasch, a law professor in Vienna, thought him unfitted by character to deal with the situation. ‘The young Emperor’, he said, ‘was too good natured and too human. He does not trust himself to use his authority and boldly act the part of traitor today to his country in order that he may be her saviour tomorrow.’” Traitor to his country in order that he may be her saviour tomorrow. Charles was dealt a hand that really gave him little room for manoeuvre. It was the catastrophe on the home front, which began with the death of Franz Joseph in 1916, but in my opinion, finally brought the empire to its knees.“ Rady writes in his book on the Habsburgs Rady says, "The demands of the army, the allied blockade, and the loss of most of the granary of Galicia to the Russians squeeze the food supply. Communications and agriculture were fairly further disrupted by bands of deserters who operated in quasi-military formations in the countryside. Flour and bread were rationed in 1915. Sugar, milk and coffee, the next year, and then potatoes. By 1918, the weekly ration of potatoes was just one pound. Even with rationing, food was frequently unavailable or unaffordable. At weekends, workers poured into the countryside, foraging for food and digging up potato fields. To provide for their own communities, mayors haunted supply trains destined for the big cities and offloaded their cargoes. A shortage of coal in the winter of ‘17-'18 resulted in the closure of many theatres, cinemas, and other places of recreation since they were found impossible to heat.”
The home front is collapsing. The military front is collapsing. The centre is collapsing. Charles is unable to hold the centre. Everything is collapsing. Everything is fragmenting. The government attempted to do things. They held a large festival in Vienna. Fiddling, if you like, whilst Rome burns. Rady describes that and it’s really a sad attempt to raise civilian morale. “The government and military authorities organise a special war exhibition occupying the- occupying a site several hundred metres square in Vienna’s Prater Park. The exhibition comprised 50 halls and pavilions. The exhibits included an open air reconstruction of trenches, a field hospital, and a large trophy hall which showed captured artillery and planes. The exhibition had been set up on the site of the old theme park, and its intention was as much for recreation as instruction. There was a theatre, cinema, several restaurants, and booths selling souvenirs, including the handiwork of prisoners of war.” It doesn’t do any good. Once a country, once a government is unable to feed you, then it’s in serious trouble. If additionally, a government can’t protect you and your property as rioting happens, food riots, and again turning political, international riots, then you seriously are looking at the end. What holds this empire together? The old question resurfaces. Nothing except the person of the empire. Do you know who Charles is? No. People didn’t know. Can he deliver? Well, not really. He’s got very little room for manoeuvre. There’s no Metternich in Vienna. No politician that could take over. It’s failing. In fact, you could say it’s reached the point of no return. There’s no way that it can be pulled back.
It’s going down and it’s going faster and faster day by day, week by week, month by month. The cracks in the empire can’t be pasted over by slogans from Vienna, by exhibitions in Vienna or speeches even made by the Emperor. And then of course, you know the cost of the war to the women on the home front- the wives, the mothers, the sisters, and the girlfriends. The cost is huge and becomes more and more obvious. More and more obvious that the war is not only lost, but has cost so much. Rady says, “By November, 1918…” Which is the end of the war. Austro-Hungary came out of the war just before the armistice on the Western front. “By November, 1918, 1 million of the 8 million men recruited into the Austro-Hungarian armed forces were dead. Almost 2 million had been wounded, 4 million hospitalised through illness and around one and a half million taking prisoner. This was out of a total population of just under 30 million.” A million out of 8 million men recruited were dead. 2 million wounded, 4 million in hospital. What is strange is the army, despite its huge losses, its defeat, eminent- imminent, the army remained loyal to Charles. Now that is an important thing. In any role in life, if you are in charge of something, if you are leading something, you have to have solid support. And the solid support Charles still had was the army and the Catholic church. Could he have done something with that support? Well, that’s a question I’m going to turn to next week when we look. I’m not sure he could. I think that the cracks were now so wide within the empire that the army, although it represented the one central force for the whole empire, was unable to restore peace as the empire collapsed around it. We often describe Vienna as a capital city or an imperial capital city without an empire. I think by 1918 you can describe the Austro-Hungarian army as an imperial army without an empire.
It’s the home front in my view, that leads the total collapse of this empire. As America enter the war, we have a different dynamic. Woodrow Wilson, the American president, comes to Versailles to the peace conference. But he’d already stated America’s position. And America’s position was, as you all know, was that people should be free to choose their own governments. The Americans were very anti-European empires. There was little they could do about the French and the British, but in terms of Europe itself, the Austro-Hungarian empire is within Europe. That was something the Americans could deal with and could understand. And that is what is the final, the final nail in the coffin of the empire. It’s a moment of truth. “The American Secretary of State…” the American Secretary of State, demanded that the Austro-Hungarian empire quote 'be wiped off the map of Europe’. And in June, 1918, President Wilson declared that quote ‘all branches of the Slav race must be completely liberated from German and Austrian domination.’“ It’s gone. Britain, France in no way can resist those calls of Woodrow Wilson because in truth the empire is already disintegrating. He’s just given- Wilson has just given approval to that. America backs you as the empire dissolves. And Charles could not hold his rag bag empire together any longer. And in 1918 it splits apart. And I suppose the comment is not that it split up in 1918, but how surprising it was that it never split apart earlier. This is Gedye writing- And I will come back to all of this next week when we look at Charles and Zita- "The Habsburg Monarchy may be considered to have expired on the 28th of October, 1918, although the Austrian revolution and the abdication of Emperor Charles came a fortnight later in November because on the 28th of October, the distracted, the distracted, the distracted and desperate officers of the derelict ship of state ceased all efforts to control her course and let her drive before the winds and waves and national hatreds.”
In other words, the government in Vienna had lost complete control of the situation. Have another drink. Let’s go for a meal. We can’t do anything. It, the whole thing is collapsed. And it had. “On the morning of the 28th of October, the subjects of the Habsburgs learned that their Emperor had consented at last to that breakup of his empire, which had for so long clearly been inevitable.” My point all along on this course. “His government announced the recognition of the independence of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, denounced the alliance with Germany, and sued for a separate piece with the allies through…” Oh guess who? President Wilson. Wilson is the man dictating the future of central Europe. “On the same day, the meaningless order was issued by the Austrian military headquarters for a general retreat of Austrian troops on the Italian front. But in point of fact, they had been retreating for the last 24 hours in total disorder. The Hungarians had already mutinied, shouldered their rifles and started to march home. A higher command, not only not daring to oppose them, but weakly giving them the order to do what they had begun in defiance, the order to standfast. So now the army itself, the loyalist army has disintegrated. There’s nothing, there’s nothing. Croatian and other non-German regiments followed, and in vain the army group commander appealed to Austria’s finest, most loyal soldiers the guards of the House of Habsburg. As the mutinous Hungarians marched through their ranks. Even the troops declined any longer to be cannon fodder in such a hopeless cause. ‘We shall allow ourselves to be shot down instead of the Hungarians today when everything is lost. In any case, no, no, the war is over for us’ was their reply and appeals for volunteers from crack regimens to stand but a little longer were disregarded by all save the non-commissioned officers.
Two days before, Emperor Charles had telegraphed the German Emperor announcing that within 24 hours, he was determined to sue for a separate peace. He said, ‘Order at home and the monarchical principle will be in grave danger if we do not stop the war immediately.’ He did not exaggerate, but within a fortnight, there was neither a moment nor any order in the territories over which he and his ancestors have ruled for so many centuries.” When the end comes, it comes very quickly. I suppose the analogy would be with an avalanche. You know, or you have known for quite some time that there’s an avalanche up there that one day may come down and when it comes down, everything will be shattered very quickly. That’s what happens with avalanches. And this avalanche falls in November, 1918, and there’s nothing to stop it. The army has now disintegrated. The government in Vienna has disintegrated. The Hungarians have really gone off and done their own thing. The Emperor has washed his hands of the Czechs and the Yugoslavs. There’s nothing. There’s nothing there to stop the avalanche. And the truth is, there hadn’t been anything to stop that avalanche for decades, ever since the revolution of 1848. It had been hovering above them for that length of time. There was nothing to stop it. The empire held together because of Franz Joseph and because well, because the times were not quite right and there was progress. There was social progress in the empire, but the inevitable was to come and remove Franz Joseph from this personal empire and put in Charles.
And it isn’t going to work and it doesn’t work. Nothing could have stopped that avalanche, in my opinion, in November, 1918. Caused by the inherent problems of the empire. One, that it was a personal empire removed the person that had held it together for so long that most of the, well, all the second half of the 19th century. Add into that the growing nationalism. The growing nationalism. Add into that the ineffectiveness of the new personal Emperor Charles then add in the war, the loss of so many lives. For what are they defending? The empire? Yes, but hang on, I’m a Czech, why am I defending the empire? I’m not interested. I want Czechoslovakia. So there were all these problems come together and it’s inevitable. That’s the word one has to use. It is inevitable. And then comes Woodrow Wilson and gives it all a academic veneer, a democratic veneer and says, actually this is all right and proper. The empire and the concept of an empire is nonsense, says Wilson, in the early 20th century. Individual peoples must choose their own, their own futures. And although France and Britain were very suspect about Wilson very, because he threatened their own empires, there was nothing they could do because it was American arms that had won the war on the western front. Well, it was American arms that had defeated Germany in the end, Russia out of the war.
There was nothing, nothing to stop Wilson’s views, except of course, the American people. And when he goes back to America, his great dream of the League of Nations is not supported by Congress. But that’s another story. Wilson was on the side of the future and his comments about empires were well made. And by the end of the century, another 40 years, 50 years, the French and British empires are to disappear. When you put it like that, 40, 50 years is nothing, is it? Wilson was right. I wonder what Wilson would think about Russia today. Well, we know what Wilson would think. That the Ukraine should be defended. Its right to make its own decisions defended by NATO, by the western allies, including America. Wilson’s view will be quite clear. I know Wilson has come in for criticism in more recent times in America, but in truth, there isn’t anyone of Wilson’s stature in the Western allies at the moment. So to Wilson goes the credit for finally sealing the end of the Austro-Hungarian empire. If indeed you think the end of the Austro-Hungarian empire is an important moment in history, and if you think it’s gone forever. Now, on a later talk, I shall look at the question of whether it hasn’t gone forever and exists within the concept of the European Union. Now that’s a very different sort of question, but I’m- I will leave that for another time. I want to finish by reading you from Rady’s book on the Habsburgs It’s his very last paragraph. “The Habsburg empire fell because it tied its fate to Germany because it was unable to extract itself from the war. Germany’s military defeat became its own defeat, but Germany survived the war, as did Bulgaria, and a greatly reduced Turkey shorn of the trappings of the Ottoman Empire. The Habsburg empire disintegrated completely, its lands being divided up into six states and its ruin was the greatest.
The glue of the dynasty…” That was my talking about Franz Joseph, as the lynch pin. “The glue of the dynasty had been found thin. And by 1918 it was insufficient to hold the parts together. Identities and allegiances had formed around nations and they and not the dynasty became the containers in which people increasingly vested their hopes and loyalties. As the reputation of the dynasty tottered, there was no sense left of a common bond to keep the people of the Habsburg empire together in some sort of political union or collective enterprise. The collapse of the Habsburg empire in 1918 was for this reason, final and entire.” But just with that P.S. maybe not quite as final and entire as Rady suggests. In the European Union of the 21st century, this game, Kipling would describe it as a game. This game has yet to play out its final act. We don’t yet know how all of this will one day end. We still haven’t reached Putin, Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus. We still haven’t reached a sense of settlement across the whole of Europe. We are uncertain still of what the future holds. And we live today in very difficult political times when liberal western democracies themselves have threats from inside, not outside only. It remains to be seen how this story ends. But next week I’ll tell you the story of Charles and Zita and how Charles is to die a very young man on the island of Madeira. And some of you may have seen where he is buried. But that’s next week’s story. Thanks for listening and my huge apologies, but for this retched COVID and coughing, I’m so sorry about that. It’s- I can’t do anything about it. Thank you for sticking with me anyhow. I guess there’s some questions, aren’t there?
Q&A and Comments:
Oh, that’s very nice of you, Susan. Thank you. That that’s very nice of you. Yeah, I I will get over it. Don’t worry. I’m not dead yet. That’s very nice of you.
I’m sure we’re- Oh dear. Let me get to some questions.
I shouldn’t have mentioned it should I? I shouldn’t have mentioned the COVID at all. Oh, here’s a question, Carol. Well done, Carol.
Q: How come the World War I carried on for four long years with no real results during this time. Were there no attempts to end the ridiculous state of affairs?
A: The attempt to end it was the one within days of the ending of the Western front. The attempt made by Charles, well, not the attempt but to do the deal. No, America did not seek to end the war. Russia ended the war because Lenin had too many problems at home. No, this was- there isn’t an answer to your question. It had in Britain and France’s case, they were just determined to fight to the end, to defeat Germany.
“The Lost Café Schindler” by Meriel Schindler gives a good account in the expense of her family in the Austro-Hungarian army. Thank you,
Adriannene. That’s wonderful. What exactly is woke? You have to wait and find out. That’s a seven o'clock talk.
Q: What about Turkish troops?
A: Yes, there were some Turkish troops used on the Romanian front, but very few, the Turks are engaged in the war in the Middle East with Britain advancing through the Sinai up towards Constantinople. And of course, Gallipoli.
Q: Wasn’t Hemingway in the Italian theatre?
A: Yes, it was “Farewell to Arms.” And you can read that book as well.
I’m I, I’m sorry. This is my, we all have our likes and dislikes. I’m not a great fan of Hemingway. They’re okay. There are people listening to me that are saying, my God, how ignorant you are, how unintelligent you are. I’m not to like Hemming- I’m sorry I don’t take to it, but it is a, it is a very good account. Last Roman Holy Roman Emperor. Well, that was back we’re you are going back centuries to the end of the Holy Roman empire with Francis in Napoleon’s times.
Oh yes, Joan. We went over the Dolomites in a bus from Venice to Innsbruck in the middle sixties.
Q: Aren’t troops still there checking the buses?
A: How interesting. How many or better yet? Well, yeah, sorry, I I shouldn’t have said just Yes, Joe. Joe, you’re right. But what is interesting about that comment, that’s the 1960s. Now within the European Union, there are no such barriers between Venice and Innsbruck. It’s all one again. And so that is why one can talk about the Austro-Hungarian Empire existing in a new form. That’s what a number of Austrian, Austro-Hungarian historians today would argue.
How many or better yet, which parallels can you draw from that centrist circumstances, previous to war to what is happening now between Russia, Ukraine, USA England, Germany, France later, et cetera. It’s very difficult to draw exact comparisons. Human nature doesn’t change. The basic problem is remains as it has always done in European history, to find a way of resolving problems diplomatically. The large countries of Europe attempted that at the Congress of Vienna in 1814, 1815. The congress system, a system in modern language of summits, and they largely held the thing together until they couldn’t, which is 1914 because of nationalism. 1918 ‘19 Woodrow Wilson comes up with the League of Nations, and that was meant to be a, a much wider than European thing to keep the world. You would talk through problems. The League of Nations failed to stop Hitler We are then established the United Nations. And the United Nations you have your own views about, but it certainly isn’t dealing with the issue of Ukraine and Russia in any way that looks as though it would resolve the situation. So we still need some European settlement, European mechanism for talking rather than going to war. But the problem is, if you deal with somebody like Hitler or you deal with somebody like Putin, you’re not dealing with, you’re not dealing with like and like. Britain may have disagreements with America, America with Britain, but in the end you talk those differences through. The same with Britain and France, America and France, France and Germany, Germany and America, Germany and Britain.
But that is not Putin. Putin is- Putin is not someone that you can, well, he’s very difficult to read. If you’ve been following the story in the press with comments from politicians, but more importantly from political commentators, everyone says he’s impossible to read.
Oh, bless you. I don’t know what your first name is, it comes up as R. Dale, “The World of Yesterday’s are brilliant books. Flag was a wonderful writer. Yes, absolutely. That’s nice view. Thanks.
The operas continued until at least 1917. That’s true. They stopped in the winter of 1917-18 when they couldn’t heat the opera houses. Thanks.
Q: Oh, which Habsburg is buried in Monte Madeira?
A: That’s Charles, that’s Emperor Charles. For those of you who’ve been to Madeira. If you go to the capital Funchal if you went on, for example, a cruise, you go to Funchal the takes you up the hillside to Monte. Monte, mountain hill. And there is a huge Catholic church in that church is Charles is buried. The extraordinary thing.
Oh, Linda, that’s you. Sorry, Linda. I know Linda very well. Lin and the in, in the, the fascinating thing about that today is it’s surrounded not with Austrian flags, not with Austro-Hungarian flags, but it is absolutely festooned in Hungarian flags and why that is we’ll come to next week. Thank you for all your recommendations for my throat. I’m doing all the things I should. It’s, it’s, sometimes something gets stuck. Then you, you are in trouble. My grandfather who said Wallace, my grandfather Jewish, lived in Galicia. That’s, that’s Polish, Austria Hungary and was in the Austrian army. He was wounded and recovered in Austria and his family living in the area of the major battles with the Russians was evacuated and housed in Czechoslovakia. After the war, they wanted to stay there as life was better there than at home, but were required to return home, which then became part of Poland. Yes. Czechoslovakia, at least the Czech part of Czechoslovakia Prague was, was a very for, I mean that’s the, that’s both a wonderful and sad story. Czechoslovakia was a huge success story in the inter-war years, largely because of the Czech part. It then, of course, after World War II becomes part of the Soviet Empire. And at the moment is, well, it’s a, it’s not a, it’s not an entirely happy story in Czechoslovakia. The Canadian government Trudeau to our bad joke and autocrat. You see, that’s the problem. What I’m saying about Western European liberal democracy, it we are in difficulties.
Q: What prompted the Americans to enter to the war?
A: Oh, well, because in the end, the, the, the, the Germans were sinking American shipping and because they were dealing as somebody death says with the Zimmerman Telegram where the Germans were attempting to get Mexico to go to war, to open up front, they, they, the Germans were massively wrong about America in both world wars. It was terrible mistakes.
Q: Oh, Irene, it seems that from what you’ve been saying, Wilson was sowing the seeds of World War II, not by the punitive measures against Germany, but also by the fragmentation internationals, small countries in Europe. Is that so?
A: No, the seeds of World War II are the way that the allies dealt with Germany. If Wilson had had his way, Germany would’ve been dealt better with than it was. It was dealt badly with the French wanted to deal with it even worse. The British in the end supported Wilson, no surprise there, but it was still very punitive. The problem is, is the rise of fascism, which is not the same as nationalism, is the rise of fascism in, in all German speaking Europe. That is to say in Austria as well as in Germany itself. Remember the troop Nazi troops entering the are welcome in the streets of Vienna. Thank thanks.
Q: Do you think, Susan, do you think things would’ve been different had Rudolph survived?
A: No. No. I, no, I don’t think they would.
Q: How much is the British monarchy held together by the personality of the present queen?
A: That is a question we’d all like to know the answer to Mary Ellen. A great deal. She has enormous support on any, on, on any social survey. The monarchy as such does not amongst the young in particular, nor does Charles amongst a wider group of people there, there it is held together by her. And I think we are entering a Franz Joseph situation. I’m a monarchist because I think the alternative would be far worse. Shall I ignore, shall I annoy all my American friends and say we, we don’t want a Trump elected here. If you could get, if you could get really good people elected and you could make sure they were fine, but our system operates relatively well because we can, we can get rid of prime ministers. At least some of us hope we can.
We must not forget says Peter. Peter. Oh, Peter Price, we must not forget. No, you are absolutely right. The Thomas Masaryk was a leader in waiting for the Czechs. Yes, yes, yes. And had influenced Wilson.
Yes. Masaryk is a key figure in this post Austro-Hungarian empire. He is an outstanding figure in, in much the same way that, that we have Havel as an outstanding figure after the collapse of Eastern Europe.
Q: What happened to Charles after his abdication?
A: Basically dies. But I dear, but I’m going to tell that story because there’s a real Hungarian story to tell in that. Dreams of a great small nation. "The Mutinous Army That Threatened the Revolution,” by Kevin McNamara says Howard. Great book on Wilson. The breakup and Czech. Worth the read. Dreams of a great small nation, The Mutinous Army That Threatened the Revolution destroyed an empire founded in Republic and remade the map of Europe by Kevin McNamara. Great.
Oh yes. The the another book yet Mira you are absolutely right. “The Brave Soldier Schweik” another book that’s well worth reading and funny. You are right. I said Sandy funny. It is funny. There are some good, there are some great books. I think I’m coming to an end. People are thanks very much for I I’m, I’m sorry I I really shouldn’t, I’m not dying. It’s just annoying.
This Richard, don’t any of you. If you please avoid it because you might not get it as likely as I’ve got it. My wife has been quite poorly with it. Will China be the answer to the question if you raised, oh God. Oh Thelma, you caught me there. I can’t re I dunno what question you’re referring to. I don’t think China’s going to be the answer to any question, frankly. Oh, what was the name of the book? The book is called the, oh, the, let me get rid of that. “The World of Yesterday”. “The World of Yesterday” by Stefan S T E F A N Zweig Z W E I G, “The World of Yesterday”. You can see I’ve got a paperback edition there, there. Get it on Amazon, eBay, wherever. It’s, it’s everywhere. This is, I just think it’s a brilliant book. I I hope you do. But of course some of you will read it and say, what is William on? This is dreadful. No, I don’t think you will. I I really don’t think you will. This isn’t the sort of book, this is a classic, this is a European classic right up at the top of European literature of the 20th century.
I think I probably come to an end, haven’t I? It’s about quarter past six. I think I should come to an end, have a cup of tea before I begin again with Trudy. We’re doing, we’re doing a sort of double act in a way, I’m going to do an introduction about wokeism, and then we’re going to throw it open and, and Trudy will keep order. We will throw it open for a discussion about wokeism.
Whichever country you live in, We have examples of it daily and it’s- Well, I’ll tell you when we get there, but I’ve cut out just I thought I, just as a silly exercise, I took today’s Times newspaper. Now I look very carefully through it and I found four different woke stories, some of which, a couple of which are mad. Well, you may think they’re not. So we’ll have a discussion about that. So thank you for joining me tonight. Next week voiced fully restored, COVID gone full of Vim. I should be talking about Charles and Zita. And that’s a fascinating story and it will bring in absolutely right Peter. It will bring in the story of Masaryk. It will bring in the story of Horthy in Hungary, and it will begin to set the scene of this post-war inter-war period.
So thanks ever so much for listening tonight. Apologies again. See you next week and see you soon.
[Judi] Thank you, William
at seven o'clock. Yes.
[Judi] Thank you so much. See you everybody shortly. Thanks. Bye-bye.
Bye bye.