Austria-Hungary in the First World War

Austria-Hungary started the First World War: on 28 July 1914, a month after the Sarajevo assassination, it declared war on Serbia. The multinational Habsburg monarchy fought Serbia, Russia and Italy, but from the first months it suffered heavy defeats and depended more and more on Germany. Hunger, war-weariness and the drive of its nations for states of their own broke it apart in the autumn of 1918. On 3 November it signed the Armistice of Villa Giusti, and fighting ended the next day.

The road to war

From the Compromise with Hungary of 1867 the realm of Franz Joseph I was divided into two equal parts, Austrian and Hungarian. In 1879 the monarchy concluded a secret defensive alliance with Germany against Russia. Its policy focused on the Balkans. In early October 1908 Vienna announced the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, occupied since 1878. Serbia then called up its reservists and the Bosnian crisis began.

Entry into the war

On 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo Gavrilo Princip shot the heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand, and his wife Sophie. On 14 July Vienna decided on a hard line towards Serbia, and on 23 July the monarchy handed Serbia an ultimatum with a 48-hour deadline. On 25 July the envoy Giesl judged the reply unsatisfactory and broke off relations. On 28 July the monarchy declared war on Serbia by telegram, and that night the first shells fell on Belgrade.

Vienna counted on a short, local war. According to one account the war’s only goal was to punish Serbia and to halt the break-up of the multinational state. But Russia stood behind Serbia, and Germany behind Austria-Hungary. On 31 July, in response to Russia’s mobilisation, the monarchy ordered general mobilisation, and on 6 August it declared war on Russia. The monarchy’s main front moved to Galicia.

At the fronts 1914–1916

The first year of the war was a disaster for the monarchy. In August 1914 the Serbs defeated the troops of General Oskar Potiorek on Mount Cer, and in December, after they had taken Belgrade, drove them out of the country a second time on the Kolubara. In the Serbian campaign of 1914 the army lost 227,000 out of 450,000 men.

At the same time the Russians defeated the main forces of the chief of staff, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, in the Battle of Galicia, took Lviv and pushed them back beyond the San. Attempts to relieve besieged Przemyśl in the Winter Battle in the Carpathians cost hundreds of thousands of men, and on 22 March 1915 the fortress capitulated. About 120,000 men went into captivity.

Rescue came from Germany. In May 1915 German and Austro-Hungarian troops broke the Russian front at Gorlice. On 23 May Italy declared war on its ally from the Triple Alliance and opened a new front. On the Isonzo the Italians attacked the defences of General Svetozar Boroević eleven times but took only Gorizia. In the autumn of 1915 Austria-Hungary, with Germany and Bulgaria, occupied Serbia.

In January 1916 the monarchy conquered Montenegro, and in the spring Conrad attacked from Tyrol to descend onto the Venetian plain, but got stuck on the last ridges. From 4 June the Brusilov Offensive broke the Austro-Hungarian front in Volhynia and Bukovina and took hundreds of thousands of prisoners. At the end of August Romania invaded Transylvania, from where it was driven out only by the troops of Falkenhayn and Arz. In September the Central Powers agreed to a joint supreme command under Emperor Wilhelm II, in practice under the German Supreme Army Command.

Charles I and the last years of the war

On 21 November 1916 Franz Joseph I died after reigning for almost 68 years. The throne passed to his great-nephew Charles I, convinced from the start that the monarchy had to leave the war as soon as possible. In 1917, through his brother-in-law Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma, he secretly sounded out the possibility of peace with France. When in April 1918 the French published his secret letter, the compromised emperor had to agree to a close alliance with Wilhelm II at Spa, military and economic.

On the Italian front in the autumn of 1917 the Germans and Austrians broke the front at Caporetto and drove the Italians back to the Piave, taking nearly 300,000 prisoners. In June 1918 Austria-Hungary attacked for the last time. On the Piave its troops crossed the river, but the swollen Piave and counter-attacks forced them to retreat.

The home front and the nations of the monarchy

The cities lacked bread, flour, fat and coal, queues formed outside the shops, and prices rose month after month. The Austrian parliament had not sat since the spring of 1914, and the government ruled by decree. On 21 October 1916 the Social Democrat Friedrich Adler shot Prime Minister Karl Stürgkh. In January 1918, when flour rations were cut by half, a strike for bread and peace spread across Vienna and the monarchy, and on 1 February sailors at Cattaro hoisted red flags and demanded peace.

The nations of the monarchy increasingly sought their own way. In April 1918 in Rome a congress of the nations oppressed by Austria-Hungary adopted a joint declaration. On 16 October Charles I announced the transformation of Austria into a federal state of nations, but the nations of the monarchy rejected it. On 28 October the National Committee took power in Prague, on 29 October the Croatian Sabor cut its ties with Austria-Hungary, and on 31 October in Budapest Mihály Károlyi took power, while soldiers shot István Tisza.

Poles in the Habsburg monarchy

Under Franz Joseph Galicia gained wide autonomy, and Poles held the highest offices of state. During the war the Polish Legions were formed under the monarchy’s patronage, and Galicia became a scene of heavy fighting and Russian occupation. In February 1918 the Central Powers made peace with the Ukrainian People’s Republic and promised it the Chełm region, which outraged the Poles. The II Brigade of the Legions under Colonel Józef Haller broke through the Austrian front at Rarańcza, and the Polish Club brought down the government of Ernst Seidler.

According to Andrzej Wrzosek’s estimate more than 220,000 Poles were killed in the Austro-Hungarian army. On 31 October 1918 Polish soldiers disarmed the Kraków garrison without firing a shot, and on 1 November Polish volunteers in Lviv took up the fight against the Ukrainians.

The end of the war and the toll

On 24 October 1918 the Italians and their allies attacked at Vittorio Veneto and routed the Austro-Hungarian army, which disintegrated together with the monarchy. On 3 November near Padua the commission of General Viktor Weber von Webenau signed the armistice, and fighting ended on 4 November at 3 p.m. In the last 36 hours the Italians took about 300,000 prisoners. On 11 November Charles I renounced any part in affairs of state but did not abdicate. On 12 November the Republic of German-Austria was proclaimed, and on 16 November the Hungarian People’s Republic.

The peace treaties sealed the break-up. In the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye of 10 September 1919 Austria ceded lands to Czechoslovakia, Italy, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and Romania, undertook not to give up its independence, and had its army limited to 30,000 men. The Treaty of Trianon of 4 June 1920 left Hungary 93,000 km² out of 325,000 and 8 out of 21 million inhabitants.

During the war the monarchy mobilised between 7.8 million soldiers according to the US War Department and 9 million according to the Austrian government. Between 1.1 million of them according to Urlanis and 1.49 million according to the Austrian official history, which includes 478,000 who died in captivity, were killed. Together with civilians, losses came to between 3.0 and 4.0 per cent of the population.