Meeting at Spa

On 12 May 1918 the Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, Charles I, came to Spa, the Belgian spa town where the German headquarters had been located since March. He was accompanied by his foreign minister, Baron István Burián. On the German side the talks were attended by Emperor Wilhelm II, Chancellor Georg von Hertling, the Foreign Secretary Richard von Kühlmann and the heads of the Supreme Army Command, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff. Some American newspapers of the time gave the date as 10 May, but the British chronology of the war and historians give 12 May.

It was a visit forced by circumstances. A month earlier the French Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau, had published a letter in which Charles in 1917 had supported France’s “just claims” to Alsace-Lorraine. The Sixtus affair had cost Minister Czernin his post, and in Germany it had made the Emperor, and especially Empress Zita, suspected of betraying the alliance. Charles himself proposed the meeting to explain the monarchy’s position, and the Germans accepted the proposal eagerly and prepared for it well. In Berlin it was understood that the monarchy, weakened by hunger, strikes and the disintegration of its army, had no room for manoeuvre. Commentators at the time and later compared the journey to Spa to a penitential road to Canossa.

The decisions were not published. It is known that the two monarchs agreed to expand the alliance of 1879 and extend it for many years, to supplement it with a military agreement, called in Germany the Waffenbund, or “union of arms”, and to tighten economic ties, which were to lead to a customs union. The British chronology of the war speaks of a military treaty being signed that day. Most historians speak rather of an agreement on principles, since the details were still to be worked out by commissions of experts. Burián gave assurances on 16 May that the new alliance would be, as before, purely defensive, and the Hungarian Prime Minister, Sándor Wekerle, argued in parliament that the agreement of the military men could not be called a military convention and that in economic matters Hungary would not surrender its right to decide for itself. Many historians nevertheless see Spa as the moment when Austria-Hungary lost the remnants of its independence and became Germany’s junior, subordinate partner, and when the German plans for Mitteleuropa, a common economic area under Berlin’s leadership, were closer to realisation than ever.

The Polish question remained unresolved. Vienna still hoped for the Austro-Polish solution, that is, binding the Kingdom of Poland to the Habsburg monarchy, while the German army and some diplomats wanted to rule it out. According to reports at the time, the Germans agreed at Spa to the solution Austria wanted, but in return for concessions. Burián sought to make the validity of the new agreements depend on Austrian interests in Poland being taken into account, while Berlin made everything depend on a final settlement of Poland’s fate. The compromise proved short-lived: when the emperors met again at Spa in August, the Germans were already pressing for Archduke Charles Stephen to be placed on the Polish throne.

The Entente quickly learned of the results of the meeting and drew its conclusions. If Austria-Hungary was binding itself to Germany for many years, there was no longer any point in seeking a separate peace with Vienna. In the following weeks the Allied governments increasingly openly supported the aspirations of the Czechs, Slovaks, Poles and Yugoslavs to independence. The expert talks on an economic union, held later in Salzburg, got stuck in disputes and by the autumn had not led to the signing of any treaties.