Austria-Hungary breaks off relations with the US

On Easter Sunday, 8 April 1917, the foreign minister of Austria-Hungary, Count Ottokar Czernin, informed the American chargé d’affaires in Vienna, Joseph Grew, that diplomatic relations between the monarchy and the United States had been broken off. He handed him passports for himself and the entire embassy staff. The short note stated that since the United States had declared that it was in a state of war with the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, “as an ally of the German Empire”, had decided to break off relations with it, and that the embassy in Washington had been instructed to inform the State Department accordingly. Czernin assured the Americans that they could leave the monarchy whenever they wished and that every courtesy would be shown to them. The break came two days after the United States declared war on Germany. Washington, however, did not declare war on Austria-Hungary, and that was to take another eight months.

The ambassador who was not received

For two years Austria-Hungary had had no ambassador in Washington. Konstantin Dumba had had to leave the United States in 1915, when it came out that he had proposed to his government fomenting strikes in American munitions factories, and since then the embassy had been run by the chargé d’affaires, Baron Zwiedinek. In November 1916 the emperor appointed as the new ambassador Count Adam Tarnowski, a Pole from Galicia, son of the leader of the Kraków conservatives Jan Dzierżysław Tarnowski (PL) and until then minister in Sofia, who is credited with a large part in drawing Bulgaria into the war on the side of the Central Powers. Tarnowski waited a long time for a British safe-conduct and reached the United States only at the turn of January and February 1917. According to Lansing, on the very day the ambassador arrived in Washington the State Department received the Austro-Hungarian note of 31 January, almost identical to the German announcement of unrestricted submarine warfare.

Immediately afterwards the United States broke off relations with Germany, but not with Austria-Hungary. Washington believed that Vienna had backed the Germans under pressure from Berlin rather than of its own free will. Secretary of State Robert Lansing, however, told Tarnowski that a government which had just sent the German ambassador home could not receive an Austro-Hungarian one as long as Vienna did not withdraw its note. Tarnowski therefore waited in Washington for an audience with the president, and the State Department allowed him to send coded telegrams to Vienna through the American embassy. In February Washington asked Austria-Hungary for a clear explanation of how it would conduct submarine warfare. The reply of 2 March, however, upheld the principles of the January declaration and added only that Austro-Hungarian submarines operated exclusively in the Adriatic and the Mediterranean, so that a threat to American interests was “hardly to be feared”. Washington concluded that in this situation receiving the ambassador would inflame public opinion even further.

Czernin, for his part, asked the United States ambassador in Vienna, Frederic Penfield, every day why Tarnowski had still not been received. Penfield warned in March that the pride of Emperor Charles I, for whom Tarnowski was the first ambassador he had appointed, was at stake, as was the press, which could no longer be held back. He added that Austria-Hungary could not break with Germany, because its enemies would crush the monarchy within weeks. On 28 March Lansing instructed Penfield to return for consultations and leave the embassy to Grew, and to tell Czernin that the president, against his will and without any ill feeling towards Austria, could not receive Tarnowski since Vienna had openly adopted the policy that had led to the break with Germany. Tarnowski was informed of this on 29 March.

A choice that did not exist

When the United States entered the state of war with Germany, nobody in Vienna doubted that the monarchy could not maintain normal relations with it. Czernin, who since taking office in December 1916 had been seeking peace and knew of the emperor’s secret efforts, just then put before the French in the letter to Prince Sixtus, could not afford an open rift with Berlin. After the war he explained in his memoirs that Vienna’s consent to submarine warfare had been forced, because the Germans needed the Austro-Hungarian ports on the Adriatic and a refusal would have broken the alliance. When America declared war on Germany, a conflict with the monarchy was in his view inevitable, because Austro-Hungarian troops and artillery were also serving on the Western Front. “We were compelled to enter into war with America, since Germany was already fighting her,” he wrote. It was different, he noted, with Bulgaria, which was not involved in the submarine war.

The departure of the diplomats

On 9 April in Washington the Austro-Hungarian chargé d’affaires asked for his passports. During the war the American embassy in Vienna had looked after the interests of several states fighting the monarchy. American, British and Japanese interests were now taken over by the Spanish embassy, and Romanian, French and Italian ones by the Swiss legation. On 11 April Grew reported that the Austro-Hungarian government had put a special train at the disposal of the embassy staff and would send an official to accompany the Americans to the Swiss border. In return Czernin asked that someone from the State Department accompany Tarnowski as far as Halifax in Canada, because he had heard that the British had treated Ambassador Bernstorff badly there in February. American citizens were given four weeks from 9 April to travel through the monarchy to Switzerland.

Lansing decided that about 125 Austro-Hungarian diplomats and consuls had to be sent off by 25 April at the latest, and asked the British and French for safe-conducts for the ship on which they were to sail to Europe. He also asked the British ambassador to let Tarnowski’s group travel as quickly as possible in return for Vienna’s courtesy towards the Americans. Tarnowski, who had never presented his credentials, left the United States at the turn of April and May and, through the Swedish minister who had taken charge of Austro-Hungarian interests in America, thanked the State Department for the courtesy shown to him.

War only in December

The break in relations did not mean war. Austria-Hungary did not declare it, and Washington saw no reason to do so throughout the summer and autumn. This changed only at the end of the year, after the defeat of the Allied Italians at Caporetto. On 4 December 1917 President Woodrow Wilson argued before Congress that Austria-Hungary was not its own mistress but simply “the vassal of the German Government”, and on 7 December the United States declared war on the Habsburg monarchy. After returning to Europe Tarnowski devoted himself to Polish affairs, and in the autumn of 1917 the Regency Council of the Kingdom of Poland wanted to make him prime minister, to which the Germans did not agree.