Anonymous ID: 68c536 Dec. 31, 2019, 2:40 p.m. No.7677008   🗄️.is 🔗kun

>>7676812

End of the Habsburg empire

 

As World War I raged and the national independence movement reached its final stage, another destabilizing development manifested itself. From 1915 on, the supply situation had worsened increasingly, and by January 1918 there were dangerous shortages, especially of food. Prompted by the difficult food situation and inspired by the Bolshevik victory in Russia (see Russian Revolution of 1917), a strike movement developed in the Habsburg lands. Demands for more bread and a demand for peace were combined with nationalist claims resulting in open opposition to the government. The strikes among the civilian population were followed by mutinies in the army and navy. In January and February 1918 the army and the government succeeded in suppressing the social unrest and antiwar demonstrations. But, from the same date, the national opposition movement gathered momentum.

 

The hopes that the government soon placed on peace settlements with the eastern states were not fulfilled. The treaties of Brest-Litovsk with Ukraine (signed in February 1918) and with Soviet Russia (March 3, 1918) as well as the Treaty of Bucharest, which established peace with Romania (May 7, 1918), did not alleviate the supply situation and irritated the Poles because of certain provisions of the Ukrainian settlement.

 

In April 1918 Czernin was replaced as foreign minister by Burián. This change resulted from the conflict between Czernin and Charles over the desirability and possibility of Austria’s concluding a separate peace with the Allies. When Charles’s secret overtures to the Allies in 1917 were revealed by French premier Georges Clemenceau, the Germans were outraged, and Czernin was dismissed on their orders. Burián returned to the foreign office on April 16 and immediately reported to the German high command at Spa (Belgium), where he and Charles had to assure the German emperor, William II, of their unchanging loyalty. While this act of submission satisfied the German Austrians, it further incensed the Slav opposition.

 

In May 1918 a Slav national celebration in Prague demonstrated the strength of the independence movements. But Charles and the German elements in the central government were still not aware of the extent of the disintegration. In July 1918 Prime Minister Seidler resigned, and his successor, Max Hussarek, Freiherr (baron) von Heinlein, began a belated effort to reorganize the Habsburg monarchy. Hussarek’s efforts to federalize the empire in the moment of imminent military defeat unintentionally turned out to provide the basis for the formal liquidation of the Habsburg monarchy. On October 16, 1918, Charles issued a manifesto announcing the transformation of Austria into a federal union of four components: German, Czech, South Slav, and Ukrainian. The Poles were to be free to join a Polish state, and the port of Trieste was to be given a special status. The lands of the Hungarian crown were to be excepted from this program.

 

The Great Interregnum was the period of crisis when the Holy Roman Empire and the German Kingdom did not have a king. This gap lasted for some time—until the Habsburgs rose to power.

 

https://www.britannica.com/place/Austria/End-of-the-Habsburg-empire