William Tyler
Karl and Zita: The End

William Tyler - Karl and Zita: The End

- Okay, thank you very much indeed, Wendy, and welcome to everyone. And before I get any further, apologies for last week, I wasn’t actually going to die on screen, that would’ve been dreadful, and I didn’t feel that bad. I had about two days where I was a bit off colour, as they say, but I’m through it now and hopefully that’s all in the past. Now, my story today is of the very last Hapsburg Emperor, Charles and his wife Zita, Z-I-T-A, who was a Bourbon princess. Charles inherited the throne of Austria-Hungary on the death of his great uncle, Franz Joseph, in November, 1916. And reigned until his own abdication, although he refused to call it an abdication, because he felt that he was appointed by God and only God could take the throne away, but he left Austria in November, 1918. So it’s two years almost to the day that he was emperor. Now I’m going to begin again with Franz Joseph’s death. And before you say, oh, for goodness sake, we’ve talked about that. Well we have, but I think it’s a sensible point to start. And I’m using a book I haven’t used before, which is by Steven Beller. This is “A Concise History of Austria”. And Beller writes in this book, the following, “Francis Joseph’s funeral on the 30th, November, 1916, was a great demonstration of Habsburg pomp, but it could not distract from the traumatic effects of the loss. For all his mistakes, Francis Joseph had gained through his longevity and the omnipresence of his image throughout his monarchy an authority that was based on familiarity and custom.” I could almost be writing, could I not, about the British Queen, Elizabeth II. “And this authority was largely affixed to his person alone. His successor, Charles, did not have the same authority.” There are terrible parallels between where Britain is now and where Hungary was in 1916 in relation to the monarchy.

He also did not have his predecessor’s experience of the Monarchy’s complexities at a time when that monarchy was in a severe life-threatening crisis. And I suppose that’s true of any monarch or dictator or whatever, that has ruled for so many years. Remember, Franz Joseph had come to the throne in 1848. Our present Queen had come to the throne in 1952. And people got accustomed to it. In fact, most people in Britain today have not known a monarch other than Queen Elizabeth. And in Austria-Hungary, most people hadn’t known another emperor except Francis Joseph. And if things inevitably over that passage of time have changed as they were with Austria-Hungary. Moreover, Austria-Hungary was in the middle of a World War in 1916, then the transition is going to be difficult. And in Austria-Hungary’s case, particularly difficult, because his son, Franz Joseph’s son, Rudolph, who committed suicide, his next heir, Franz Ferdinand had been assassinated, which had kicked the whole war off. And now it was Charles that became Emperor. Charles wasn’t a ditherer. But, in hindsight, looking at the two years of his emperorship, it looks to me as though he was simply waiting for the tide of history to sweep him, his family, and his empire away. We’ve spoken on earlier meetings about how ramshackle the Austro-Hungarian Empire was up into 1914, how there were tensions within the empire because it was not based on anything other than one man.

And that man that was now taken out of the picture, another one put in his place, and it’s never the same. As an adult educator, I’ve faced this countless times, when a tutor has resigned or left and I’ve appointed another tutor in their place and I’ve always tried to get the very best I could and tried to get a better tutor then the last one. And inevitably, even if you’ve got a better tutor, the students don’t like it, because it’s change. They were used to the person they had and they don’t like to have anyone different. And it’s no different with an absolute monarchy like that of Austria-Hungary in 1916. Charles had two aims and they were laudable aims when he took the throne, first, in terms of the war, he was by nature a man of peace. He was a religious man. And that doesn’t mean he would be a man of peace, but he so happens to be both religious and a man of peace. And he wanted to take Austria-Hungary out of the war. But that was easier said than done. And secondly, he realised that there had to be change in the empire and he wanted to make his monarchy a constitutional monarchy. And that was easier said than done as well. In fact, the two goals he set himself of getting out of the war and of having constitutional change were really incompatible. You couldn’t have constitutional change in the middle of the war, and it wasn’t his war to end, as we shall see. In fact, Beller writes this, “Charles, influenced by his wife Zita and with the advice of his foreign minister, set upon a course of seeking peace abroad and returning to constitutional rule at home. This was a good policy on paper and disastrous in practise.” So what could he have done better?

I’m not sure that there was much that he could do. I think it was really a question from the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and empire that it was too late, too late even with the greatest person in charge of the empire, it was just too late to stop and reverse course. It’s not true to say that Charles only wanted peace when he became emperor, because we know that he wanted peace before he became emperor. And Martin Radey writes this, “Charles visited Emperor Wilhelm of Germany and agreed not only to the first,” sorry, “before he visited Emperor Wilhelm, he seemed resigned to failure. On a visit to his own general staff headquarters,” not the German, “his own German general staff headquarters in the spring of 1915.” So that’s over, that’s 18 months before he became emperor. “He was reported to have said that he did not understand why we make so much effort, since everything is, in any case, pointless, for the war cannot be won.” He was right in his assessment. Now, his brother-in-law was the Prince Sixtus of Parma, a Bourbon. And they attempted a family solution to the problem of coming out of the war. Charles sent his brother-in-law to Paris, France being, of course, one of the allied nations, to see if Austria-Hungary could sign a separate peace. Now, this was not necessarily a good move, because he didn’t even inform his own foreign secretary. In fact, in April, 1918, the foreign secretary said that Austria-Hungary had no intention, of April, 1918, had no intention of seeking a separate peace. Now that wasn’t true, but the foreign secretary didn’t know it wasn’t true. In May, 1918, a month later, Charles himself went to see Wilhelm in Germany. And at that meeting he assured the Emperor of Germany that they would continue fighting. But he really had no choice, because Germany was now taking over the execution of the war fought by Austria-Hungary. Austria-Hungary became a pawn in the hands of Germany in the last months of the war in 1918.

He had run out of room for manoeuvre, had Charles, he couldn’t really negotiate a separate peace, and he’s now tied to Germany, militarily and financially in ways that is really, totally constrains what he can do. Too late, had he become emperor… Had he been emperor in 1914, well, he might well have striven for peace. He might have done things differently. Remember, I think from last week, Franz Joseph was simply pushed, I mean the man was very old, he was pushed around by politicians. Now a young emperor might have been able to stand up to that. I think he might. Maybe Franz Ferdinand might have done, had he lived. But that of course is not what happened. And by 1916 the die has been cast, if you like. And there’s no way that Austria-Hungary can seek peace, and having sought peace, can attempt a constitutional reform that will keep this ramshackled empire together. He made an attempt, of course, shortly after he became emperor May, 1917, but six, seven months after he became emperor, he recalled parliament after three years when Franz Joseph had not called parliament. And what’s interesting, what’s very interesting about the parliament he called, this was his step towards constitutional monarchy. When parliament was recalled, you would’ve expected the members of parliament, rather like the time that Charles I is forced to call parliament, that they would demand the end of the monarchy. They did no such thing. In fact, they bought the idea of Charles, that they could transform the empire into a federation of states. There was no serious move in the parliament, this is in Austria, there’s no serious attempt to get shot of the monarchy and go for nationalism. The nationalists, the Czech nationalists, the Polish nationalists, Romanian, they’re all living, basically, they’re all living in London, they’re not there. The politicians who are there and are elected are looking for, I suppose we would say, a middle way, a federal Austro-Hungarian Empire. Well, I think that’s true.

So why, that’s May, 1917, they’re out of the war by the end of 1918, 18 months later. So why did the position change so much and so radically that by 1918, the end of 1918, there was no chance of holding the empire together? Because if you had been a neutral observer in May, 1917, attending parliament in Vienna, you would’ve said yes there’s every chance of it holding together. Well, the answer is partly given in a book written in 1925 by the leader of the Austrian Social Democrats. And he wrote a book in 1925 called “The Austrian Revolution”. And he says in that book that the final collapse of the Habsburg monarchy was caused by two external events. Now, he was there, he lived through it and he was a politician. So you’ve got to take notice of what he says, even if you were to disagree. Now the two external events that he marks up are firstly the Russian Revolution of 1917. And remember, the first Russian Revolution of 1917 was a democratic revolution. The second revolution was a Bolshevik one. But it gave nationalists, right across the empire, really a green light. If this can happen in Russia, then it can happen here. And so the book, “The Austrian Revolution”, says it was like switching a green light on saying now you can go, go for it. The second reason is also from 1917 and there’s another major country, the United States of America entered the war in 1917, and that ensured, even with Russia out of the war, which Lenin took Russia out of the war, with America in the war, it was merely now a question of time until the Second Reich was defeated. And with the Second Reich’s defeat is obviously the defeat of Austria-Hungary, even though the fighting on its Russian front has ended, as we talked about last week. Nevertheless, America coming into the war means Austria-Hungary definitely going to lose the war.

So those two reasons, the Russian Revolution and America’s entry into the war, both in 1917, were catalysts for the final collapse of the monarchy. Now, we’ve said in previous weeks the reason for its collapse are many and varied and deep back in history. But that’s talking about why there was little chance in 1917 to be able to sell the idea of a federal state. Now, I would add a third point to those two points. My third point comes later, after the war has ended and the allies meet at Versailles, Woodrow Wilson, the American president, arrives, he’s the academic from Princeton, and in a very academic way, he had written 14 points to put Europe, and to some extent, the world into a proper shape as he saw it. You remember that when he produced the 14 points, Clemenceau, so the prime Minister of France said, “14 points? Even the good Lord only had 10 commandments!” But Woodrow Wilson was operating in a different level than either Lloyd George from Britain or Clemenceau from France, he had this overview, this huge vision. His first point of the 14 can be summarised as, open diplomacy without secret treaties. His last point, point 14, was the creation of the League of Nations, an attempt to ensure peace forever. But it was point 10 that put the knife in to the Hapsburg Empire. Point 10 says, in effect, Austria-Hungary, which is named specifically, to be provided an opportunity for self-determination. This was Woodrow Wilson’s great phrase, self-determination. This was not well received necessarily in Paris and London, because they did not want self-determination applied to their overseas empires. But here in Europe, they could do little about it. And here’s Woodrow Wilson saying, all those nationalities within the Austro-Hungarian Empire should have a right of self-determination.

Now, you could argue, and if I was being difficult and you were doing a post-doctorate course in history, my essay title would be, “The Americans defeated Austria-Hungary in World War I. Comment.” Now having said that, in that sort of stark way, you’ll remember I hope in the future that the whole ending of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was complex. But you have to take it in the context, I think, and I agree, of 1917-18: the Russian Revolution, the American intervention in the war ensuring ally victory, Austro-Hungarian defeat, and thirdly, self-determination. Now you are a Czech in exile in London dreaming of a free Czechoslovakia, and now you know, one, that the Austro-Hungarians going to lose the war, so there’s an opportunity here. Secondly, you know you have the blessing of the United States, and France and Britain won’t intervene. And thirdly, and thirdly you know, you just know that the Germans will be defeated and you follow the Russian example of revolution at that moment of German and Austro-Hungarian defeat. And you’ll win. And ideas of federation and nice comfortable talks are never going to happen in that context, not with a young untried ruler like Charles. It is certain, I think, to be a, I think it’s right to say it is now certain that when the war ends, Austria-Hungary will fragment. Now another difficult question to answer is has that fragmentation been for good or ill in the Europe of the 20th and 21st centuries? That’s not such an easy question to answer. How did it all end? Well, it ended like this. 16th of October, Charles issues a manifesto. 18th of October, Woodrow Wilson rejects Austria-Hungary’s overtures for peace, 26th of October, Charles withdraws unilaterally from the German alliance. 28th of October, Czechoslovakians declared their independence in Charles Square in Prague. In Zagreb, on the 29th of October, Croatia declared union with Serbia, later to form, of course, Yugoslavia.

In Budapest, in Hungary, the Hungarian Parliament declared the 1867 Compromise null and void, and on the 1st of November declared Hungary had split with Austria. On the 3rd of November, Austria-Hungary seeks an armistice, and within a fortnight it’s all over and Charles abdicates, except he doesn’t use that word ‘cause God wouldn’t approve, leaves Vienna for Switzerland on the 11th November, 1918, the very day that Germany surrenders on the western front. When the collapse comes, it comes very quickly, almost in a blink of an eye, from the 18th of October to the 11th of November, it’s less than a month. And this is an empire that straddles centuries and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. It’s like a great stone rolling down a hillside. You simply cannot stop it. It’s too late, it’s gone. Even before you may acknowledge it’s gone, it’s gone. All these countries, Czechoslovakia, Croatia, Hungary, declaring it gone. And what does it leave Charles with? Truth to tell, very little. He wrote a second manifesto, which he essentially left behind in Vienna, when he left Vienna for Switzerland on the 11th November, 1918. And in this, these are his words, I’ll read you the beginning and I’ll read you a middle bit as well. It’s worth listening to 'cause as an important point in terms of wider European history to make at the end of this, this is Charles leaving. “Abroad,” Charles’ words, “no one understands this corner of Europe or its special super-national mission,” super-national mission. This isn’t Germany or France or Britain. This is a whole range of nationalities, owing allegiance to one man, the Habsburg Emperor. Austria’s neither a German nor a Slav state.

The Germans were, it is true, the founders of the Danube Monarchy. But today they are a minority, surrounded by ambitious companion races over whom they can rise as welcome leaders only if they give an example of higher culture, respect and generosity. I have not the slightest fear of self-determination,“ he says. Wilson’s phrase. "I have not the slightest fear of self-determination of small nations in a spiritual sense. If we guarantee to individual groups the utmost hope for self-expression, for exercise of their cultural created gifts, joy in their own language and a word for their personal aspiration to be recognised as a valid nation, they will unite with us as never before and forge and forget exaggerated grievances.” He’s in cloud cuckoo land at this point. He says, look, he’s basically saying, be a federation. We respect you. You don’t have to speak German, you can have your own laws, your own culture, your own language, everything. But you are better with us than you are on your own, is what he’s saying. “Let the young be taught in this spirit, the old mischief making textbooks in our schools must be replaced by new ones in which German children are shown the great talents and virtues of the Slav and Magyar races, while correspondingly the latter learn what cultural benefits Teutonic energy has brought to the Danube region.” It’s wonderful stuff, but it’s a century too late. Later he writes this, “I wholeheartedly favour an alliance among all countries after the peace is settled, there is no other salvation. I also approve any international scheme for disarmorment,” which was another of Woodrow Wilson’s intentions, “the instigators of war are either people without heart or fools who don’t know what war means. But I’ve lived through battles with men blown to bits beside me. This affects one’s point of view.

Now, the first and most urgent form of disarmament would be the cessation of mutual insults and accusations between nations.” Wonder what he’d think about Putin. “We all share the guilt of war, therefore we all feel responsible for the peace. Let us mend internal affairs so that no single state may offer a provocation for fresh disaster in days to come. Let our own Austria-Hungary in particular solve her problems and gain the confidence of Europe so we may offer an example of true unity among nations.” Well, of course, they didn’t. Because by then his Austria-Hungary had gone, it had gone by the time he’d written that. But why it is important and why that manifesto is referred to today by historians in what was Austria-Hungary is because you can read it, you can read it as a argument in favour of the European Union. And if you are in favour of more political unity within Europe, then you can absolutely accept it, because what it is saying is that each country will be respected for its own values, its own language, its own culture, but within an overarching, in the EU’s terms, an overarching European Union, may be towards a European president, may be towards a European foreign policy and a European army, all of which I think he would’ve approved of, because that’s how he saw Austria-Hungary. And that’s why Austro-Hungarian historians in the 21st century look at that and say, this is a model for the Europe of the 21st century, because no one reading that can object to it. The calls for peace, to discuss, not to go to war, all of it is absolutely, absolutely right and proper and we’d all vote for it. Interesting. And that’s why, I think, that people are still interested in Charles today, not because of what he did or failed to do, but in what his thoughts were about Austria-Hungary in particular, but on a wider scale what will be possible within Europe. But it had gone, it had all disappeared by then. So we got a look at what happened.

Now the first successor state we’ve got to look at is Austria itself. Now, if you look at Austria from 1918, it becomes a republic, yes, we know that. And the monarchy is dead and buried. Although interestingly, when his wife died, Zita, at a very advanced age, much later, she died in 1989, she was given a full Habsburg funeral in Vienna. And the Viennese make a lot, those of you been to Vienna know they make a lot about the Habsburg. It’s a tourist, but it’s more than that. It gives Vienna a sense of still being an imperial city in what is otherwise a small alpine nation. And that’s a point I shall take up in a later talk. So Austria ceases to be a name of the great countries of Europe, because Austria itself represented, right through to 1867, the whole of the Habsburg Empire, Austria, then it became Austria-Hungary, but it’s still Austria that people thought about in Paris, Berlin, London, and so on. And the story of Austria since 1918 has been a strange one. And the story of Austria Post 1945 has been a strange one. But I think you can divide it between 1918-1945 and 1945 and the present day. Now, if we take 1918, you only have to add 20 years to that to reach 1938 and the Anschluss, when Hitler’s Nazi troops not only marched through Vienna, but you remember only too well, greeted triumphantly in Vienna, greeted triumphantly in Vienna. We must also not forget that Hitler himself was Austrian and so were other Nazi leaders Austrian. We’re back to Austria being a German country, and of course after 1918, as the rump of the old Austria-Hungary, that’s a rump of that Austrian half of Austria-Hungary, it is German. It is German.

Let me read you one little piece from Steven Beller’s, “A Concise History of Austria”, which I think is important and it’s to emphasise what I’m trying to say. Beller writes, “Austrian history from 1918 to 1945 is a history of people struggling and failing to resolve the profound issues raised by the Habsburg monarchy’s collapse.” If you are American, you may well say, well, that’s exactly, exactly the problem that Britain has faced since 1945, lost an empire and failed to find a role. And you could use the same phrase over Austria in 1918, it had lost an empire and failed to find a role. You might even say Vienna had lost an empire and failed to find a role. And you might say, well, its role today is tourism. And you might well say, if you’re American, well, is that not what Britain is, just a tourist destination? Beller says, “Austrian history from 1918 to 1945 is a history of people struggling and failing to resolve the profound issues raised by the Habsburg monarchy’s collapse. This is a story not only of the Republic of Austria failing to create a new Austrian identity, but also the destructive consequences of the political logic that insisted on the nation as the primary political unit. Austrians so easily became Germans in 1938 because they already saw themselves as part of the German nation.” And that’s the key. Nobody knew what it was to be Austrian. They’d never thought of themselves as Austrians.

They thought of themselves as Germans, within this loose grouping of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. To think of themselves as Austrian? Well, of course, from Vienna, people would’ve thought of themselves as German Viennese. And this was extremely difficult for them to come to terms to, because if you break away from another state and you are clearly identifiable as different back in the 17th century when Portugal broke with Spain, yes, you can see that. But Austria breaking? No, no, no, they’ve been reduced in size. And in 1938 Hitler, from an Austrian perspective, and we will look at that of course in much more detail next time we meet, Austria sees Germany and the Third Reich as the German Empire to which it belongs. And given the rise of right wing politics in Austria, that’s another issue post 1945, how Vienna remains socialist, but the rest of Austria goes at times neofascist. And that’s a problem that the EU has to live with. We haven’t yet resolved these German questions in Europe. German nationality is still a confused nationality. It’s as though Switzerland was full of English people who saw themselves as English. Well, you said, that’s ridiculous. Well, it’s just as ridiculous to think that the Austrians should think of themselves as Austrians and not Germans. They think of themselves as German. And that is so important.

Now, really interesting, when the First Republic is established in 1918, after Charles has left, what do they call it? They don’t call it the Republic of Austria, they call it the Republic of German Austria, the Republic of German Austria. Thus, to my mind, leaving open the question of whether the Republic of German Austria, could merge, as of course it did in Anschluss, into the Greater Germany. shorn of all its Czechs and Slavs, Hungarians, and all the others, it is now German. That Republic of German Austria was formed on the 12th of November, 1918. But it didn’t survive longer than just under a year. It came to an end on the 21st of October, 1919. Why? Because the allies would not accept the term, German Austria. Why not? Because of the obvious reasons I’ve stated why not. And so it then becomes the Republic of Austria in October, 1919. Now, it never resolves that, unless you feel that the Anschluss and Nazi occupation resolved it. But in 1945, it had to start out all over again, with the defeat of Nazi Germany and all the horrors of Nazi Germany, perpetrated in Austria as much as in Germany, German Austrians have been just as anti-Semitic as German Germans. In fact, Charles, the last emperor, was decidedly anti-Semitic and refused to have Jewish advisors, which Franz Joseph had had. And some historians believed that the incompetence at the end, in Austria, in the Imperial regime was because there were no Jews in it, because he wouldn’t have Jews in it. And that probably has more than a grain of truth in it. But anti-Semitism is deep and we got to look at that. And I think Trudy is going to look at some of that for you as well, not me.

So just remember, this is a German state. I’ll talk more about all of that next week. And we’ll begin with German Austria, the Republic, turning into the Republic of Austria and the gradual drift towards the acceptance of Anschluss as exemplified by the folks in Vienna waving flags and throwing roses and goodness knows what at the German occupying troops. This is not, this is not the Germans entering Paris or the Germans entering Amsterdam. This is very, very, very different. And we’ve got to pick up that story. And much further on, one of the days when I’m speaking, we have to look at how Austria subsequently dealt with the defeat of Germany, the threat of Russia, and its gradual acceptance by the West and its gradual acceptance of the West. But yet, neofascism is alive and well in the Austria of the 21st century. Austria… I was going to say Austria shouldn’t logically exist. I’m not sure I want to say that. I’m not sure I should say that. But it’s something we are going to have to explore and you’re going to have to meet your own minds up in due course about Austria. There is a success story. People often complain and say, William, you are always so depressing about history. Everything’s always getting worse. Well, I can only tell it as it is, but there is at one success story, it only lasts, it only lasts for the interwar years. And that’s Czechoslovakia. Now, Czechoslovakia was another non-country. Today, of course, it’s the Czech Republic and Slovakia since the Velvet Revolution, or shortly after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. And that’s clear, why?

Because the Czechs and the Slovaks are very different people. If we take 1918, their economic, technological development was very different. Slovakia was very backward. The Czech part of Czechoslovakia was very advanced. It was the industrial heartland of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a whole. The Czechs attempted to create a concept of being a Czechoslovak. Now there’s no such thing as a Czechoslovak. There’s a Czech and there’s a Slovak. Now how you manage to put the two together? Well, I can give you a story that… I had a colleague in adult education who was a Slovak. And when Czech Republic and Slovakia split he invited me to a conference in, just outside Bratislava, in the Carpathians, which I went to, and it was very, very interesting. Now, he had served in Havel’s government in Czechoslovakia after the Velvet Revolution, before the two countries split into two. He’d served as in the Ministry of Education. He was an academic, but he served as a politician because Havel asked him to. He was a friend of Havel’s and he was a Slovak. And so I asked him, because he was being very damning about education in Slovakia. And I said, well, why didn’t you stick with Havel? Why didn’t you stick in Prague? And his answer was very illuminating. He’d been brought up all his life in Marxist Czechoslovakia. That’s all he knew. But when the split came, he said, “You see, William, I couldn’t do that. I was very tempted to, because I was a huge admirer of Havel and I thought we could do wonderful things.” But he said, “I’m a Slovak. And I felt my duty was to come back to Bratislava.” So despite the interwar democratic Czechoslovakia, and despite the attempts of Marxist Czechoslovakia after the Second World War, they couldn’t create a Czechoslovak nation. You were a Czech or you were a Slovak.

And the discrepancies economically between the two was still as great in 1989 as they had been in 1918. But they did establish, the Czechs established a proper democracy. And the democracy had a written constitution, of course, in which it referred to the Czechoslovak nation. But there wasn’t such a thing. But they were determined to create such a thing. But when push came to shove in 1989 and shortly after, they couldn’t do it, they couldn’t do it. But for a period of time, between the two wars, Czechoslovakia was politically stable. It was making great industrial and economic strides. And by 1933 or after 1933, Czechoslovakia remained the only democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. And that, it was some achievement. That was an enormous achievement. The man behind it, of course, at the beginning, was Tomáš Masaryk, who was declared president on the 14th of November, 1918. And they managed to bring all the disparate peoples, because there were Hungarians in Czechoslovakia in the interwar years as well, to bring them all together. They made huge reforms in terms of housing, social security, workers’ rights. It was a model European democracy. And what happened, we know. Britain and France had washed their hands as Hitler went in to this democratic state. Hopefully your Czechoslovak story will not be told again with Ukraine in 2022. History doesn’t ever repeat itself, but there are lessons to be learned from history. There were lessons about how you deal with bullies. There was an article in The Times which said that of Western leaders, no one is accusing any of the Western leaders of being Neville Chamberlain. But on the other hand, none of the Western leaders are Winston Churchill either. And Putin is aware of that. So is Ukraine going to go the way of Czechoslovakia? Watch this space, isn’t it?

Now, the other part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was Hungary. Hungary is the only place I’ve ever never been really in Europe where people were decidedly anti-British, and they were anti-British because of the settlement at the end of World War I, which left Hungary as a rump state. Now you remember, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Austria ruled one half, the western half, Hungary ruled the other half. We’ve talked about how Austria fragments, but Hungary wanted to hang onto all of its part and it wasn’t allowed to. Well, we’re back to Woodrow Wilson’s points, aren’t we? They must have the right to self-determination, but the Hungarians have never accepted that. Moreover, there are Hungarians living outside of the borders of modern Hungary, and they blame, well, they blame Britain largely for that. I mean, entirely fairly, because France and America, and if anybody is to blame, it’s Woodrow Wilson’s to blame. But I don’t think blame is the right word because there was no way that Hungary was going to act as a Hungarian empire over parts of Romania, parts of the Balkans… Galicia, it had gone, it had gone, it had gone. But they wouldn’t accept it gone. And they still don’t really accept it’s gone. Czechoslovak attacked Northern Hungary, Romania advanced from Hungarian-held Transylvania… There were various governments at the end of 1918 and 1919. Democratic, social democratic governments, prime ministers assassinated… And there was a Marxist government for a time, partly, at one time in collusion with Social Democrats, then on its own, led by a Jew, Béla Kun, K-U-N, which is a Hungarian version of Cohen.

They led a red terror, murdering people in the streets. It was horrendous. The whole country was falling apart in Hungary. And stability doesn’t come until the 1st of March, 1920, when there’s a counterrevolution organised from Vienna by the former admiral and commander in chief of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, Admiral Horthy, H-O-R-T-H-Y, Admiral Horthy. It was said of Admiral Horthy, this, there was once a kingdom without a king, a country without a sea, ruled by an admiral without a navy. Because Horthy declared himself regent for Charles in exile. And Horthy ruled as regent of a kingdom that didn’t have a king, because he wouldn’t allow Charles back in. In fact, Charles made two attempts to regain the Hungarian throne in 1921 because he was backed by Hungarian royalists. On both occasions it was a disaster. And it is said that he would’ve won, had Horthy backed him. And he thought Horthy would, after all, he declared himself Regent in 1920. But in 1921, Horthy refused to support the restoration of the king for whom technically he was a regent. If you want to defend Horthy, it’s realpolitik, the time of the Habsburgs is gone, but it’s handy still to have the concept of the Kingdom of Hungary, Hungarian’s are very backward in terms of the empire. And the idea of it being a kingdom still meant something. The crown of St. Stephen, Hungarians still had the crown of St. Stephen on the national badge. And Horthy was playing politics. He had no intention having Charles back as King. And I mention Horthy on and off in the coming weeks when we look at what happens with Austria. What about Charles? Well, it’s a sad story. Following his second and also failed attempt to regain the Hungarian throne, he and his wife, Zita, who was pregnant, were arrested, and on the first November, 1921, were taken to the Hungarian Danube, the river harbour of Baja.

And they were put on board a Royal Navy vessel, because the allies, Britain, France, America were sorting the problem out. And Britain took him from these Hungarian ports on the Danube in HMS Glowworm. They sailed down the Danube into the Black Sea, and he and his wife were transferred to a cruiser, HMS Cardiff, and HMS Cardiff sailed out of the Black Sea, sailed west along the Mediterranean, he thought, and his wife thought, they will be landed at somewhere like Marseille and be able to go into exile in Switzerland. That’s what they believed. But it didn’t happen. Remembering Bonaparte, the allies decided to dump them on the Portuguese island of Madeira in the North Atlantic on the grounds that Madeira could be easily protected from his, any chance of him escaping. And so he went to Madeira, his children joined them in Madeira. And I think he gradually realised that there was no future for the Habsburgs or no future for him, at least. He arrived in Madeira on November, 1921. On the 9th of March, 1922, he caught a cold in Funchal, the capital city. From that cold developed bronchitis, from the bronchitis developed severe pneumonia. He suffered two heart attacks and died of respiratory failure on the 1st of April, 1922. His wife, by his side, pregnant with their eighth child. And the nine-year-old Crown Prince Otto. More of Otto Habsburg on a later date. He was 34 years old. His whole world had crashed. They were short of money, the family. They existed on handouts from friends and supporters. If you go to Funchal today in Madeira, you can go up on the funicular railway to a village called Monte, because it’s on top of the a, M-O-N-T-E.

And there there is a huge Catholic church, a huge stair, steps leading up to it. And if you go into that church, on the left hand side, which is the only reason really people go, on the left hand side is a chapel in which the mortal remains of Charles lie. His heart isn’t there. His heart is with his wife’s heart in an abbey in Switzerland. But his body lies above Funchal. And if you go today, and I did when we were in Madeira, and it’s a fantastic site, because, I don’t know, I knew it was a place of reverence for supporters of Habsburg monarchy. And I expected to see Austrian flags. No, everything is Hungarian. Hungarian colours, Hungarian flags, everything is Hungarian, not anything Austrian in sight. He’s buried as the King of Hungary there. And although presumably Austrians come to the tomb, it’s the Hungarians who dominate totally this tomb. It is an amazing sight. It’s like something out of the Middle Ages, to be honest. The church is quite modern. It isn’t all incense and candles. It’s a very open, spacious place. But this particular chapel is mediaeval. It’s like the tomb of Thomas Beckett must have been like. It is an extraordinary thing. Now I’ve just got a moment to tell you the end of Charles’s story. He dies 1922, his wife dies 1989. In 1954, the Catholic church declared him a Servant of God. In 2003, the Catholic church awarded him the title of The Venerable Charles. A year later, he was named by the Catholic Church, The Blessed Charles. Now to be named blessed, somebody has to have prayed for a miracle at his tomb in Funchal, and a man was cured of varicose veins by praying to Charles. So the church beatified him, which means he’s The Blessed Charles. And that means eventually, given the right number of miracles, he will be St. Charles. Really?

How on Earth or how in Heaven does he become The Blessed Charles? Well, the church, the church said that he put Christian faith before political decisions and that he was a dedicated seeker of peace. And because he was a seeker of peace and because he put his Christian faith over that of political decisions, he’s on the way to becoming a saint. Make of that what you will. I think that has no significance for the rest of us. What I do think Charles has significance for is his idea of a federal Austria-Hungary, because that, that looks like a federal European Union today. And I’ll leave you, ladies and gentlemen, with that thought. And I think it’s, I’m spot on, 6 o'clock, I’ll stop, and then I’m sure there’s lots of questions and I may not be able to answer them all by any means, but I’ll give it a go. Okay.

• [Judi] That’s great, William, you go ahead.

Q&A and Comments:

• Right. That’s very nice of people. Welcome me a speedy recovery. You can all cancel the order for wreaths now. Oh, that, nothing at all to do with this, but an interesting piece of information for those of us who are not American, Sandy writes, Michigan is giving the fourth jab to needy people now. Well, Britain is behind Michigan.

Q: Why were all the Parliament members in London?

A: No, not that. Sorry, you misunderstood. I’m saying that the nationalists were in exile in London because if they’d stayed in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they would’ve been arrested. So they’re in London, because that’s a place that all exiles go in the 19th and 20th centuries. And what’s left are the politicians who are looking at it and will accept this idea of federation. The ones who are here are the more extremists, if you like, who want nothing but an independent nationalist state or merger with Serbia or in Transylvania’s case, merger with Romania. Yes.

That’s, who says? Michael, sorry to digress. No, you don’t. And I agree with you. Is not Putin’s tactics in East Ukraine frighteningly similar to Hitler’s in the Sudetenland in ‘38? Yes, exactly. That is my point. We let the Crimea go. We’ve let parts of East Ukraine go. Are we to let West Ukraine go?

Q: Why did the Croat side with the Serbs?

A: That is a very good question. The fallout between Croats and Serbs really comes in World War II. At this juncture they are looking for Yugoslavia. Now they were hoping, because the country’s not called Yugoslavia, it’s the Kingdom of the Croats, Serbs and Slovenes. They were hoping for equal treatment and better fellow Slavs in terms of the Serbs than Italy or Austria or Hungary or any other party. That was, the whole thing fell apart in World War II. It then falls apart completely in the Yugoslav wars. But remember that Tito himself was a Croat. So that’s another and very complicated story in its own right.

Q: How do the Austrian see themselves today?

A: Well, I think you have to ask Austrians. I think they will call themselves Austrians today, but we we’ll look at that. I promise that I will do that. No, I think, they don’t see themselves in quite the same way today, but you have to always make the exception in Austria between the Viennese and the non-Viennese.

Michelle. Interesting how Wilson’s concept, the self-determination was only applied in Versailles in 1919 to the vanquished nations, when the Irish made formal representations for self-determination, they were turned down. Yes, because Wilson in the end would not take on France and Britain. That’s the truth. But in all intents and purposes, Ireland’s has gone by then, 1922, it’s gone. But no, he would not challenge Britain and France. After all, not everything, for the Americans listening, not everything is absolutely zip-a-dee-doo-dah in terms of American imperialism in 1918. Think of the Philippines, for example.

Q: What was the motivation of Czechoslovakia being one country as opposed to two?

A: Because the Czechs thought that it would make the country more viable as a nation. And they saw linking with the Slovaks perfectly possible. They wanted to bring Slovakia up. It was self-interest to have a larger country, but also I think there were some positives about that. Slovakia would never have made it on its own.

Myra, in 1972, my husband attended a conference in Vienna and I accompanied him. You validated my, oh God, you have validated my reaction at the airport when we departed, I filled my mouth with sputum and said, “That’s what I think of Vienna.” I simply felt the anti-Semitism and would never set foot there again. Well, you are in luck because Trudy is going to talk about the anti-Semitism of Vienna in a separate talk. But we know anti-Semitism is everywhere. But on the other hand, German anti-Semitism has a long, long and awful history.

Q: Given that, who says, Alan, given that Austria considered itself German through language and culture, why then did Switzerland, German speaking, remain at arm’s length from the rest of German Europe?

A: Now that is another very interesting question, because the Swiss, the Swiss are really, sorry, I hope there’s no one Swiss listening. But the Swiss are really odd as a nation. Remember, they are in cantons, and it’s the nature of the geography, which affects Switzerland. And yes, of course there are German Swiss, I think every Swiss thinks themselves superior, they’re rather English in that way, thinks themselves superior to everybody else. And there’s never been that sort of demand for it to join Italy or to join Germany or whoever. They are very, very distinctive.

But I think geography… Irene, Masaryk was too successful to be acceptable to the USSR. Yes, of course. A great book going into the Czech situation, Howard, a great book going into the Czech situation and Wilson’s part in it, and much more about the concept of why the Slovaks were included as “Dreams of a Great Small Nation: The Mutinous Army that Threatened a Revolution and Destroyed an Empire” by Kevin McNamara. Highly recommend.

P.S., Tom Stoppard’s recent play, “Leopoldstadt”, it’s also something amazing to experience.

Helen, my dad, who lived in Prague until he fled in November '39, told me of the dreadful day he stood silently on the street with fellow Czechs, watching the invasion of the Nazi tin army, as they called it. Yeah. And that is the difference between Prague and Vienna.

Q: What kind of role do you think Victor Orban is playing today? Is he taking Hungary gift wrapped for Putin?

A: Orban is a neofascist. What is interesting how neofascists in Europe are courted by Putin. You, Putin, well, Putin is himself, I would’ve thought, could be described as neofascist, not as neo-Marxist. Orban is very dangerous.

In 1899, when I moved, no, sorry, I beg, oh dear. In 1899, my grandparents moved to New York from Galicia, now in the Ukraine, all of their documentations said they were from Austria. Yeah, yeah. Tell us about his nine children. No, they’re not interesting. Only one is interesting and that’s Otto, but I’ll mention that when we get to Otto in due course. I’ll mention the other… Have lots of children, good old Catholics.

Oh, somebody said some people in England, vulnerable people started to get a jab a few weeks ago. I didn’t know that. If you were on the vulnerable list. Oh… Oh Sharon, that’s very clever. I have to read that. Excellent. You cured yourself with COVID. Thank you, Blessed St. Tyler. No, St. William, it would be, oh dear. That’s very…

Q: Could you again briefly explain why Hungarians and not Austrians identify with Charles as their King?

A: To the Austrians, the Habsburgs had previously been emperors of the Holy Roman Empire and emperors of the Austrian Empire. But when they had been crowned as kings of Hungary, separately in a separate coronation service in Budapest, and Hungarians thought of a quite distinct relationship. That relationship was underlined by Sisi and her attraction to tight-trousered Hungarian cavalry officers, and to, indeed, to Franz Joseph’s interest in Hungary. So the Hungarians thought of themselves as with a king, while the Austrians thought, well, this is just an emperor, because they don’t think of themselves as Austrian. This is another German emperor.

Oh, Michael, I corresponded with Zita and Otto, that’s mother and son, Otto had attempted a plebiscite before the Anschluss with the constitutional monarchy in place. Yes, I’m going to talk about Otto. He ends up as an MEP in Brussels. Reparations after the war. I will look at that next week for you. Widow and children. They simply went into exile. And the widow dies, as I said, in 1989, totally restored and buried in Vienna. The children is, I’ll tell you about the other children as well, but Otto is the important one. He was MEP for Germany, by the way. I’m Swiss actually. The only things that keep the Swiss as a country is the banking system, which is becoming… Yeah, I when I said it was the geography, I’m serious about that. If you look at the earlier history of Switzerland, it’s fascinating. Some of you know, I’m a numismatist, which means I collect coins. And there are some fantastically interesting coins from Switzerland, which are from each individual canton, like Bern, which has a bear on the coins. It’s quite distinctive in that way. And of course it’s not just Catholic, it’s also deeply Protestant. In fact, some Republicans from England in the 1660s, when Charles II returns as King, fled to Switzerland. And I was in a Swiss holiday town called Vevey, V-E-V-E-Y, on the shores of Lake Geneva. And Vevey has three Republicans buried in its Protestant church. Very interesting to visit, I have to say, there are no union jacks on their tombs, but absolutely fascinating. And they were always petrified of assassins, because the government sent out assassins in the 1660s from London, and they sort of searched through Switzerland for these in exile.

My father fought for Hungary, says Judy, in World War I, he always had a deep suspicion of British intentions, two-faced was how he describes them. Well, I don’t know which nationality Judy you are, but if you are British, you know that the British are always two faced when it comes to diplomacy. But the Hungarians very seriously are quite anti-British and will be openly anti-British in a way that I have absolutely not encountered elsewhere. Not even in Cyprus, where I was shown, I went on an educational trip to Cyprus and my opposite number in Cyprus, in Greek Cyprus, he took us on a trip on our Sunday and we came through this village and he said, when I was at the grammar school in this village, of course, the British ruled here, but I was a lookout. I was about 15, 16. I was a lookout for EOKA to tell them when a British patrol went through the village. And he said, I got one British patrol. We shot a lot of them. And he was quite jolly about it. And off we went to have lunch. But the Hungarians, and that’s a true story, but the Hungarians are quite different, in my experience anyhow, they’re also quite touchy if they, I had a Hungarian student about 10 years ago who was a man in his sixties, seventies. And we were talking about Hungary today and so on and so forth. And he said, “I will have nothing to do with them,” he said, “I have a title from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.” And that was the end of it. There’s so many counts in Hungary, but he was a count, and he was terribly posh and very British actually.

I think I’ve come to the end of the questions now. We’re remarkably good for time because it’s 6:15 on the dot now.

• [Judi] Well, thank you so much, William.

• That’s fun. And I hope everyone enjoyed it. I enjoyed talking about it and I especially enjoyed not coughing and driving you all mad all the way through it.

• [Judi] Well, we glad that you’re feeling so much better. And so thank you so much for this evening. And we will see you next week.

• You will, you will. We’re towards the Anschluss next week is the title and then we’re into war years.

• [Judi] Thank you so much, William, and thank you everybody, bye bye.

• [William] Bye bye. Bye bye.