Nationalism DOESNâT explain WHY Austria-Hungary collapsed
VloĆŸit
- Äas pĆidĂĄn 2. 08. 2020
- The go-to answer is that national or ethnic divisions caused the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But is this really the case? Using multiple sources, it's time to provide CZcams with a narrative which doesn't confirm nationalist beliefs. The Habsburgs survived the collapse, with Emperor Karl / Charles trying to reclaim his throne later on before being exiled. However, by about mid-November 1918, he had lost all power. The fact that there is no specific date when Austria-Hungary collapsed, and the fact that the 'national revolutions' were met with relatively little opposition, speaks volumes. As does the fact that the new states were all multinational, which undermines the narrative that nationalism was the reason why Austria-Hungary collapsed. Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
đ Subscribe for more History content: / @theimperatorknight
âČïž Videos EVERY Monday at 5pm GMT (depending on season, check for British Summer Time).
- - - - -
đ BIBLIOGRAPHY / SOURCES đ
Judson, P. âThe Habsburg Empire: A New History.â Belknap Press, Kindle 2016.
Kiste, J. "The End of the Habsburgs: The Decline and Fall of the Austrian Monarchy." Kindle 2019.
Macgregor, J. & Docherty, G. âProlonging the Agony: How the Anglo-American Establishment Deliberately Extended WW1 by Three-and-a-Half Years.â Trine Day LLC, 2018.
Marx, K. âCapital: A Critique of Political Economy: Volume III.â PDF, English edition, 2010. (Originally written 1894)
Mises, L. "Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis." Liberty Fund, 1981. 1969 edition (roots back to 1922).
Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford University Press, Third Edition 2010.
Rady, M. âThe Habsburgs: The Rise and Fall of a World Power.â Perseus Books, Kindle 2020.
Watson, A. âRing of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914-1918.â Penguin Books, 2015.
Cornwall, M. âPropaganda at Home (Austria-Hungary).â 1919. encyclopedia.1914-1918-online....
Online Latin-Dictionary www.latin-dictionary.net/defin...
Online Etymology Dictionary www.etymonline.com/word/public
Full list of all my sources - docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...
- - - - -
â SUPPORT TIK â
Want to ask a question? Please consider supporting me on either Patreon or SubscribeStar and help make more videos like this possible. For $5 or more you can ask questions which I will answer in future Q&A videos. Thank you to my current Patrons! You're AWESOME! / tikhistory or www.subscribestar.com/tikhistory
âïž If you like Stalingrad, you may also enjoy historian Anton Joly's CZcams channel "Stalingrad Battle Data". Link: / @armageddon4145
- - - - -
đœïž RELATED VIDEO LINKS đœïž
National Socialism | Destroying the Denialist Counter Arguments âą Hitler's Socialism | D...
The REAL Reason why Germany HAD to go to War in WW2 âą The REAL Reason why Hi...
The MAIN Reason Why Germany Lost WW2 - OIL âą The MAIN Reason Why Ge...
BATTLESTORM STALINGRAD S1/E1 - The 6th Army Strikes! âą BATTLESTORM STALINGRAD...
My âWhy I'm Passionate about HISTORY and What Got Me Into itâ video
âą Why I'm Passionate abo...
History Theory 101 âą [Out of Date, see desc...
- - - - -
ABOUT TIK đ
History isnât as boring as some people think, and my goal is to get people talking about it. I also want to dispel the myths and distortions that ruin our perception of the past by asking a simple question - âBut is this really the case?â. I have a 2:1 Degree in History and a passion for early 20th Century conflicts (mainly WW2). Iâm therefore approaching this like I would an academic essay. Lots of sources, quotes, references and so on. Only the truth will do.
This video is discussing events or concepts that are academic, educational and historical in nature. This video is for informational purposes and was created so we may better understand the past and learn from the mistakes others have made.
I would guess the whole "losing the largest war in history and being partitioned by irridentist powers" thing was a big part of the reason.
@RĂ€n There were certainly some dangerous tensions to it, but not of the same existential extent.
Largest war in history *so far*.
Austria lost three key wars back to back: against Napoleon, against Prussia and ww1
@@ekekonoiseTracing a parallel: the U.S. has lost at least five of the five last wars it got involved with and, nonetheless, it standsâŠ
Austrian here. Thanks for giving our country some attention.
Sad thing is; people here can usually tell you lots about different dynasties of Westeros but know pretty much nothing about the Habsburgs. It's really sad.
@SmashRockCroc So important that you as well as many other spells them incorrectly (It's Habsburg with b, name of a castle (Burg in German) in Switzerland) and Austria regularly gets confused with Australia lol.
But yeah, if you talk to everyday Austrians they may be able to tell you that Habsburgs were good at marrying their cousins and Sissi was a princess (which is also incorrect); that's it.
@Ricky Moore The downfall started with the turkish wars, in that time relevant and important regions at Rhein fell to city-states, were conquered by France or become independent, like flandern. At same time international economy changed and mediterran sea became kind of irrelevant. It wasn't only Habsburg's fault, it was geography and the problem other kingdomes didn't understand the beauty of HRE or later Austria-Hungary. They were many centuries ahead their time.
Well to be fair, you can probably tell me more about the wildlings beyond the wall, than you can about the clan structure of the Icelandic commonwealth.
History is vast, very vast and every corner, field and tiny rock has millenias of history behind it.
While most people can tell you about their own history in fair detail, it is simply alot easier to study the lore of a fantasy world spanning a handful of books than it is to learn about all of human history.
The Habsburgs make for fantastic reading material, but so does most of history and unfortunately most people need to simply prioritise some corners of history to be passionate about.
@@FifinatorKlon Baratheons>>>Habsburgs.
Reason:no incest
@@hsgame4088 Where's the fun in that?
The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, like the collapse of the Roman Empire, is a lot more complex and multifaceted story then it looks when you just scratch the surface. There's rarely a single or just a few reasons for why empires and nations have fallen throughout history.
Personally, I think hyperinflation was a huge factor in the collapse of the Roman Empire. Debasing your money and turning it into fiat currency is never good
â@@TheImperatorKnight Hyperinflation was certainly a large part of it. Then we had other factors such as agriculture exhaustion (expect Egypt), multiple waves of plauge, 'barbarian' invasions, the lack of competency of the Roman Emperors, the undermining of civil institutions vis-Ă -vis military institutions, multiple civil wars, declining administrative efficiency and so forth. The reasons for the fall can be made endless. It was not like the Empire suddenly collapsed one day, it was slow process that took hundreds of years. Heck, modern studies have shown that even climate change may have played a large part in the collapse.
@@LightxHeaven Ethnicity was still a very important factor. Don't forget that pan-Slavic movements were very strong at the time and the dual German/Hungarian dominated monarchy was resented by most Slavs.
"Hyperinflation was certainly a large part of it. Then we had other factors such as agriculture exhaustion (expect Egypt), multiple waves of plauge, 'barbarian' invasions, the lack of competency of the Roman Emperors, the undermining of civil institutions vis-Ă -vis military institutions, multiple civil wars, declining administrative efficiency and so forth."
True. But which came first, the chicken or the egg? Hyperinflation or all these other factors? Did the hyperinflation lead to these, or the other way around? Or both!
@TIK more like the international trade that cause Roman gold to siphon to India, then the plague of 168 AD disrupt the entire international trade, killed lots of Roman population (potential tax payers) and the Military, and then you have incompetent Emperors who inherited a troubled Empire, a fear of military mutiny and constant Civil War, all rise the upkeep of the Roman military and therefore make hyperinflation possible. My source from this is Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean
I've have studied the Habsburg Monarchy for most of my life. Austria Hungary is very overlooked when people speak about it. For once people ignore that Austria-Hungary was not just Austria and Hungary. Austria Hungary was composed of many Kingdoms such as the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, the Kingdom of Croatia and many other realms, many of these realms followed the demographics they were seted in. Nevertheless to say this Kingdoms had all their own Diet's/Parliaments [Also, It's not christian Socialists, but Christian Social, it refers to Christian Integralism]. Though I would argue Kaiser Karl was not that irrelevant. Kaiser Karl was more de facto sidelined by the Social Democrats who assumed power in his back and forced him out of power. And once the Kaiser was away, well, the other Kingdoms within the Habsburg Empire started going away since the key factor who united the whole state was the Kaiser. The War also caused a huge famine through the Empire and both supplying the people and the army was a very hard job (also considering that Austria had been fighting in Galicia and Transylvania (fertile lands and historical agricultural camps) heavily affected the Empire's food production. Though the War Grain Agency did not apply to the entire empire. Austria had no authority over Transleithania and other de facto independent structures. However, the social democratic party was very influential in the runing of the late war Habsburg Empire administration (some argue it wa son purpose sinde Karl Renner was a republican and orchestrated the end of the Monarchy in Austria at least). After the end of the Russian War in 1918 austria asked desesperatly for ukranian grain and the fact it came very very late (if it actually came) is subject of some controversies. There was also the beurocratic apparatus witch was.... quite a problem since there was no real central authority but the already mentioned many identitys. About the slavic civilians thats not really that simple. The radicals in the Governament did yes blame them... but both Kaiser Franz Joseph I and Kaiser Karl I neither gave authorization for that. During the war, the figure of both Kaiser's were actually a unifying factor for the people since they were very active with helping the poor and hungry. Kaiser Karl I did also try to ask for peace, but the allies rejected (Sixtus Affair) and Kaiser's Karl many attemps to bring peace gave Kaiser Karl's the Blessed statue. As you rightly said, the end of the Empire was tied to Germany, not bcs of an internal or "huge revolution". Though, in 1848, the Hungarian people sided with austria. The problems in Hungary at the time came more bcs of the historical ruling hungarian class vs the Habsburgs conflict. In 1848 atually the empire's peoples who werent hungarian like croats, slovaks, romanians.. etc etc.... actually sided with austria, one known case was Josip JelaÄiÄ.
Kaiser Karl also made more than one peace offer, since his first days in the throne in 1916 he had been trying to reach peace, offering compromises and concessions. In the end, Austria-Hungary reason to collpase was, as you said, the will of foreign powers (and I would even add people like Karl Renner). I don't necessarily agree with the Empire being internally deslegitimize (since even in 1918 there were many people like in croatia who was still loyal to Kaiser Karl and even the people of Hungary who helped Karl two attemps to regain the crown from the political hungarian elite (and irony when you consider the historic Habsburg conflict with the Hungarian elites).
Great analysis, bottom line in my view is that the empire was blown up by the victorious allies and by succesfull lobby of Czech and Slovak emigrants in US ( Benes) and by some British scholar s who wrote exaggerated studies about repression of ethnic minorities in the monarchy, like Seton Watson.
@@denest3435 Edvard Benes was not that anti Empire honestly. He supported the federalization of the empire at first actually. He really went for actual independnece when the war was proven lost for Austria (kinda like most politicians from areas like czechia and transylvania).
@@denest3435 I mean what exaggerated repression. Tik doesn't bring this up, but two countries aren't the same just because they have minorities. Austria Hungary was basically a police state for a pretty long time after 1848 and when war started the repression came back (people arrested for even suggesting problems, even though it wasn't possible later on). Not to mention the only way to communicate with authorities using letters was in German (which many of the peasants didn't speak). Then you have all the cultural repression which although mostly ineffective by this point was still an annoyance (for example not being able to play Czech plays in government theaters). All of these problems were addressed in Czechoslovakia. Of course people wanted gradual change but that pragmatism doesn't mean they weren't nationalistic. Most didn't revolt because basically all revolutions beforehand were brutally crushed. Underlying causes don't disappear just because it's the pragmatic time to leave.
@@pavliksin123 Austria Hungary and the Habsburg Monarchy as a whole were never a police state after 1848, actually after 1848 the country saw the Historical Reactionary politics failing out of favor. Alongside that, you claim czech plays couldnt been shown in governament theathers, something you should back up bcs the Bohemian Diet spoke Czech and the Czech Political Class was very favourable of the Habsburgs, soo much soo they came up with the idea of Austro-Slavism. While German was definitly a common language (since the Kaiser was in Vienna and most Imperial Officials in Austria (When I say austria i mean the Austrian de facto auhtority, not the whole empire since theres a different there) spoke german). And to say peasants didnt spoke german is kinda overlooking they didnt knew how to write in the first place, thats why churches had such an important role in the communication between authorities and the common folk. What you describe as revolutions being crush was something that was not unique for the Habsburg Empire, nor was something that affected only minorities (Austrian Liberals tryied many times to rebel in Vienna and etc etc). The XIX century had many stages on Austria, you had the post-Napoleonic restoration of reactionary politics under Metternich, than you had Bach Faction with the moderate conversatives and than you had the liberalisation . It's not something simple to refer, and when speaking about it it's important not to exclude both the overhaul political spectrum of Europe, and unique conditions of the Austrian situation and the political reasons that played in the making of many of austria's decisions, some of witch make sense like Ferdinand attempt to make german the universal administrative language, something at tfirst hand looks bad, but when you consider most austrian administrative officials in the empire were austrians and that there was a serious beurocratic problem with the many realms that plaged austria to it's very end, it gives a different picture from a "opressive germanophile reform" to what it was de facto, an attempt to uniformize the beurocratic apparatus of the Empire.
@@wolfgang6517 I have to say it's difficult to find how many germanization practices were kept after the failure of it but it definitely lived in people's memory.
Bach absolutism was a result of the failed Czech liberalization efforts and a small revolution in 1848 and was as close to a police state as a monarchy can get.
During WW1 being able to read was not the same problem it was in the 19th century. All revolutions were supressed,
well yes, so why wasn't every country constantly fighting revolutions. Was it because the people in those countries weren't liberal enough. Surely you can't say that about every country. Why did many liberals only actually achieve reforms after the world order had shifted towards more liberal ideas. You can't say that the decolonization would have happened if all those people thought of themselves as British and if no one in Britain was liberal, hell there are still British colonies that haven't decided to split. The same way you can't say that Austria-Hungary would just stay happily alive forever. Even if there was no war gradual liberalization and nationalism would see it eroded. This has happened in numerous places.
I'm a high school student in Korea, and seemingly the only Korean high schooler who is interested in Austro-Hungarian empire's history. Your valuable insights and research that is shown in the video have really expanded my understanding of the last days of the empire, and I wholeheartedly agree that the empire's fall was not because of the nationalism and multiethnic society or lack thereof. Thank you for making this video.
its an ok video but i have to disagree on many things with him. production of food for example or other goods didnt decrease because of how it was reorganised but because the empire was fighting one of the largest wars in human history where many peasants and workers that produced these goods in peace time where conscripted, fertilizer couldnt be imported, a big portion of chemicals for fertilizer production that where produced inside austria hungary wherent available for that but where needed for the production of explosives, the polish regions of austria hungary where extremely important for food production but where basically destroyed in the war and with that you also have the problem of moving the food to the regions and to the frontline with additional millions of tons of supply needed for the war that wherent straining the infrastructure in peace times. all these issues where extremely important and instead of talking about them properly he just brushed it of and simplified it beond believe into "state economy" when that is what happened in some ways in basically all countries during the war and continues to do so because a war cant be supplied with a peace time economy and it requires intervention to mobilise. is it good for the economy? hell no war usually in general isnt. is it required to reshape a countries economy to feed the war effort for some time that a normal economy never could? yes
if you have questions about austria hungary, information or so on or just need a translation feel free to ask i have my own little library about hte subject and the amount of books and information available in austria about it is immense.
Nice to hear!
@kreg857 - I don't agree with TIK on this (as a Pole, knowing my history and desires of nations under the rule of Habsburgs. The US demand to divide Austria - Hungary was maybe caused by desire to destroy empire, but for all other nations living there, it was a good opportunity to at last regain independence. Do you remember what started the WW1? The war between A-H and Serbia, because A-H wanted to conquer also Serbia, while Serbia wanted to get more lands were Serbian and Croat people lived (the assassination of P. Ferdinand was a good excuse to start the war). Habsburgs just failed to create a multi-national state, where every nation was happy. Look what happened later on to UK empire - Ireland got independence soon after WW1, and later on they lost all colonies, including Australia and India.
â@@l.h.9747Do you have any suggestions of sources that can explain the decline and colapse of Austria-Hungary? I'm a Brazilian person who really enjoys the History of the 20th ceuntry and AH was an interesting case of a decaying country trying to reform politically and militarily. I didn't even see this video, went right into the comments and yours called my attention. I saw other videos about Austria-Hungary, mainly in relation to the Ausgleich, its proximity with Germany and, of course, WW1 and how their army sucked. I've always wondered (and it's because of Kaiserreich đ ) how would be the US of Greater Austria and how useful this country would be to the West against the expansion of Bolshevism/Comunism. What was the view of various people about Kaiser Karl? And can we say it's a tragedy the demise of AH?
Conrad von Hötzendorf: "Ahh some of my finest work"
I see a man of culture there
He was a military genius tough!!!!
@Mars Attacks Actually don't think the rest of the high command tought he was, he was a oppurtunist warmongorer that was put on his post by Franz Ferdiand (who they praise for being the man to save the empire, actually it was his inner circle and desicions, especially this decision, that sealed the deal for A-H)
@Mars Attacks Don't want to be harsh now, but if A-H would not have reacted on the provocation it would have been better, as Franz Ferdinand was loathed by everyone but the Slavic population (which was in minority). Funny tough that he was killed by a slav nationalist, so that is probably also kinda a myth, the Bohemians loved him, pretty much everybody else hated him. The Habsburg family, Austrian ruling politicians and the Hungarians had a hellish loathing especially.So he would have fucked up everything. Franz Joseph should have taken Charles under his wings eairlier and decided that since his marrige he can not accend to the throne. Think that would have been possible, it has happened before in history, and they could take the desicion that his children would never get a claim on the throne. Well, this is just my opinion.
@@therealignotus7549
Franz Josef was a stickler for legality, and correctly imo since The Empire had nothing else to hold it together.
"Emperor Karl hadn't been overthrown. He'd become irrelevant." TIK That's a nice quote.
I mean kinda yes, but when such a thing happened to France during the French revolution it took them not too long to just get together again. Austria-Hungary might have collapsed because of hunger and war but it stayed separate because of nationalism or lack there of I suppose, historical justification helped too. It's generally difficult to keep democratic nations with people who don't want to be ruled by each other together, Czechoslovakia, for example, split apart pretty naturally.
@Caliban777 Which languages in particular?
@Caliban777 They managed it poorly. Among the warring states in World War 1, the Austria-Hungary Empire and the Ottoman Empire were the most plagued by desertions. There were times in 1915 an 1916 in particular when entire battalions would just desert. The Austria-Hungary army was ripe with confusion, chaos and logistical failure because of the huge language barriers. Couple with that the fact that most higher officers and high ranking military personnel were, for the most part, either ethnic Hungarian or German, thus they did not speak the languages of other nationalities, you had a logistical nightmare. Relaying orders had to be done through intermediaries, each having to translate the orders to the many other nations. That explains the very, very poor performances of the Austria-Hungary military in World War 1. Case in point, their war with Serbia. For 1 year, Serbia humiliated a much larger military force, until the Germans came in and finished the job, temporarily.
Also, in typical chauvinist fashion, Austrians and Hungarians pushed the national minorities to the vanguard, taking the brunt of enemy offensives, causing even further resentment against them. They saw this as a very opportune moment to also get rid of potential ethnic tensions, by disposing of men of other ethnic groups in the war.
@Caliban777 "mutually exclusive languages" is an utterly wonderful expression i am going to try to remember
@Caliban777 I was speaking particularly about their overall conduct in World War 1. I know that they have been a Kingdom and an Empire for sometime before that, however, it was clear since the mid 19th century that its construction was unsustainable on the long term. At the first spark, it collapsed, particularly when there was no one to save them. In 1848, Russia saved them. In 1867, Germany saved them. In 1918, nobody was left to save them.
I do think though they managed the transition to the Industrial Age, particularly the western half of the Empire. The problem was that the very foundation of the state were based on constraint and authoritarianism, having the army as the backbone. As soon as the military and administration collapsed, there was nothing that could keep the state afloat.
The French actually massacred/genocided the separatists. It is easier to liquidate political opponents in the revolutional/ideological zeal. The same happened to Czechs after 1621 and Hungarians after 1849.
With the German Hegemony over the Central and Continental Europe the solution was only one. WWI Austria-Hungary got dissolved, WWII was next on the chopping block.
I want a âIs this really the caseâ T-shirt
I want a "But as always, Socialism destroyed the economy." T-shirt.
@@juliancate7089 but but true socialism has never been tried
I want a "is this really the case" suitcase.
There should be a whole line of
"But is really the case"
Shirts
Mugs
Posters
Ect
@@kevinbrown4073 LOL. I thought of posting that as a separate post, but I then I realized many people would think I was serious instead of mocking Socialists. I've learned to expect the worst from the Internet.
"the Russian army marched into Hungary in 1849" - yeah, to help the Habsburg empire to put down the Hungarian revolution.
Exactly. The exact opposite of what is implied in the video.
Probably exacerbated the food crisis though
Franz Joseph kissed the hand of the Tzar in order to ask some 30.000 men to help the Royal-Imperial army. He got 230.000
Exactly. Man TIK is absolute garbage unless heâs showing micro movements of military battles. Anything that requires more intuitive thought he just cherry picks and shows massive bias. Shame really, he gets picked apart quite often in r/badhistory
Agree my point
There are tons of clues like this, calling Austria-Hungary the "prison of peoples" and both the Russians, French and English had plenty of reasons to want to break up Austria-Hungary. It also ran counter to the prevailing narrative of the time which was nationalism, so many felt like it was an "unnatural" construct.
In July 1849, the Hungarian Revolutionary Parliament proclaimed and enacted the WORLD's FIRST laws on ethnic and minority rights. It gave minorities the freedom to use their mothertongue at local administration, at tribunals, in schools, in community life and even within the national guard of non-Magyar councils. However these laws were overturned after the united Russian and Austrian armies crushed the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. After the Kingdom of Hungary reached the Compromise with the Habsburg Dynasty in 1867, one of the first acts of its restored Parliament was to pass a Law on Nationalities (Act Number XLIV of 1868).
The situation of minorities in Hungary was not even comparable to the contemporary pre WW1 Europe. Other highly multiethnic /multinational countries were: France Russia and UK.
See the multi-national UK:
The situation of Scottish Irish and Welsh people in "Britain" during the English hegemony is well known. They utmost forgot their original language,only English language cultural educational institutions existed. The only language was English in judiciary procedures and in offices and public administrations. In Wales Welsh children were beaten by their teachers if they spoke Welsh among each others. This was the infamous âWelsh Notâ policy... See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Not
The contemporary Irish question and tensions are well documented. The situation of Ireland was even a more brutal story. It was not a real "United" Kingdom, it was rather a greater England.
See the multiethnic France:
In the era of the Great French revolution, only 25% of the population of Kingdom of France could speak the French language as mothertongue. In 1870, France was still similar-degree multi-ethnic state as Hungary, only 50% of the population of France spoke the French language as mothertongue. The other half of the population spoke Occitan, Breton, Provençal, Catalan, Corsican, Alsatian, West Flemish, Lorraine Franconian, Gallo, Picard or Châtimi and Arpitan etc... Many minority languages were closer to Spanish languages or Italian language than French) French governments banned minority language schools, minority language newspapers minority theaters. They banned the usage of minority languages in offices , public administration, and judiciary procedures. The ratio of french mothertongue increased from 50% to 91% during the 1870-1910 period!!!
The situation in German Empire was well known (Polish territories)
Just look some Eastern countries in the oreintal so-called Eurasian (aka. Orthodox) civilization : The legal system of pre-WW1 Kingom of Serbia did not know minority rights. Also, the legal system of pre-WW1 Kingdom of Romania did not know minority rights, morover, Kingdom of Romania applied strong dicriminative laws against Jewish people similar to Tzarist Russia.
Just examine the high contrast between Kingdom of Hungary and contemporary pre WW1-era Europe:
The so-called "Magyarization" was not so harsh as the contemporary western European situation, because the minorities were defended by minority rights and laws. Contemporary Western European legal systems did not know the minority rights, therefore they loudly and proudly covered up their minorities. 1.Were there state sponsored minority schools in Western European countries? NO. 2. How many official languages existed in Western-European states? Only 1 official language! 3. Could minorities use their languages in the offices of public administration in self-governments , in tribunals in Western Europe? No, they couldn't. 4. Did the minorities have own fractions and political parties in the western European parliaments ? No, no they hadn't. 5. What about newspapers of ethnic minorities in Western Europe? They did not exist in the West.... We can continue these things to the infinity.
The Austro-Hungarian compromise and its supporting liberal parliamentary parties remained bitterly unpopular among the ethnic Hungarian voters, and the continuous successes of these pro-compromise liberal parties in the Hungarian parliamentary elections caused long lasting frustration for Hungarians. The ethnic minorities had the key role in the political maintenance of the compromise in Hungary, because they were able to vote the pro-compromise liberal parties into the position of the majority/ruling parties of the Hungarian parliament. The pro-compromise liberal parties were the most popular among ethnic minority voters, however i.e. the Slovak, Serb and Romanian minority parties remained unpopular among their own ethnic minority voters. The coalitions of Hungarian nationalist parties - which were supported by the overwhelming majority of ethnic Hungarian voters - always remained in the opposition, with the exception of the 1906-1910 period, where the Hungarian-supported nationalist parties were able to form a government.[48]
I'd say they had exactly two reasons.
1. That The Dual Monarchy had in effect been assimilated to the German Reich and it was hard to see how the two could be separated again.
2. President Wilson wanted it.
@@alanpennie8013 In July 1849, the Hungarian Revolutionary Parliament proclaimed and enacted the WORLD's FIRST laws on ethnic and minority rights. It gave minorities the freedom to use their mothertongue at local administration, at tribunals, in schools, in community life and even within the national guard of non-Magyar councils. However these laws were overturned after the united Russian and Austrian armies crushed the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. After the Kingdom of Hungary reached the Compromise with the Habsburg Dynasty in 1867, one of the first acts of its restored Parliament was to pass a Law on Nationalities (Act Number XLIV of 1868).
The situation of minorities in Hungary was not even comparable to the contemporary pre WW1 Europe. Other highly multiethnic /multinational countries were: France Russia and UK.
See the multi-national UK:
The situation of Scottish Irish and Welsh people in "Britain" during the English hegemony is well known. They utmost forgot their original language,only English language cultural educational institutions existed. The only language was English in judiciary procedures and in offices and public administrations. In Wales Welsh children were beaten by their teachers if they spoke Welsh among each others. This was the infamous âWelsh Notâ policy... See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Not
The contemporary Irish question and tensions are well documented. The situation of Ireland was even a more brutal story. It was not a real "United" Kingdom, it was rather a greater England.
See the multiethnic France:
In the era of the Great French revolution, only 25% of the population of Kingdom of France could speak the French language as mothertongue. In 1870, France was still similar-degree multi-ethnic state as Hungary, only 50% of the population of France spoke the French language as mothertongue. The other half of the population spoke Occitan, Breton, Provençal, Catalan, Corsican, Alsatian, West Flemish, Lorraine Franconian, Gallo, Picard or Châtimi and Arpitan etc... Many minority languages were closer to Spanish languages or Italian language than French) French governments banned minority language schools, minority language newspapers minority theaters. They banned the usage of minority languages in offices , public administration, and judiciary procedures. The ratio of french mothertongue increased from 50% to 91% during the 1870-1910 period!!!
The situation in German Empire was well known (Polish territories)
Just look some Eastern countries in the oreintal so-called Eurasian (aka. Orthodox) civilization : The legal system of pre-WW1 Kingom of Serbia did not know minority rights. Also, the legal system of pre-WW1 Kingdom of Romania did not know minority rights, morover, Kingdom of Romania applied strong dicriminative laws against Jewish people similar to Tzarist Russia.
Just examine the high contrast between Kingdom of Hungary and contemporary pre WW1-era Europe:
The so-called "Magyarization" was not so harsh as the contemporary western European situation, because the minorities were defended by minority rights and laws. Contemporary Western European legal systems did not know the minority rights, therefore they loudly and proudly covered up their minorities. 1.Were there state sponsored minority schools in Western European countries? NO. 2. How many official languages existed in Western-European states? Only 1 official language! 3. Could minorities use their languages in the offices of public administration in self-governments , in tribunals in Western Europe? No, they couldn't. 4. Did the minorities have own fractions and political parties in the western European parliaments ? No, no they hadn't. 5. What about newspapers of ethnic minorities in Western Europe? They did not exist in the West.... We can continue these things to the infinity.
The Austro-Hungarian compromise and its supporting liberal parliamentary parties remained bitterly unpopular among the ethnic Hungarian voters, and the continuous successes of these pro-compromise liberal parties in the Hungarian parliamentary elections caused long lasting frustration for Hungarians. The ethnic minorities had the key role in the political maintenance of the compromise in Hungary, because they were able to vote the pro-compromise liberal parties into the position of the majority/ruling parties of the Hungarian parliament. The pro-compromise liberal parties were the most popular among ethnic minority voters, however i.e. the Slovak, Serb and Romanian minority parties remained unpopular among their own ethnic minority voters. The coalitions of Hungarian nationalist parties - which were supported by the overwhelming majority of ethnic Hungarian voters - always remained in the opposition, with the exception of the 1906-1910 period, where the Hungarian-supported nationalist parties were able to form a government.
Huh figures, âpropagandaâ won in the end not the peopleâs desires. The Habsburg shouldâve focus on their own propaganda to win in that case
Yes, the only problem with the "prison of peoples" is that it's not true. It was a propaganda even before WWI for decades. Against a country which really had rights of minorities. While others didn't have. That's why the minorities had words too, and even these lies. (And btw the empire had totally different areas, and even calling it an empire is not precise, it was the Austrian empire and Hungary which suffered under Austria. It was not a happy marriage.) While after the treaty there was no propaganda, Austria and Hungary didn't have words. Althought the winner states were really prisons of people. Many people were persecuted, the minorities's properties were simply taken, minorities didn't have rights, millions of people died in genocides. Just one example: in the Czech and Slovakians constitution the whole Hungarian and German minority have collective sins (I dont know why... well I know, they could stole everything with such laws from the people of minorities, and they still actually have these laws in 2023).
I'm so glad this channel exists, thank you for your hard work!
Thank you for watching!
The only argument to support that the Czechs and Slovaks had to fight for their independence but not from Austria but rather the Bolsheviks who would not let them leave Siberia the reason why the Czech and Slovak armies were in Russia was due to the Czech pows in the Russian military captured in ww1
Here's a question: Why did rationing work in Britain during WWII? In fact it worked so well that life expectancy went up, since everyone had a proper diet
It worked partly because the country was the centre of s world empire and had plenty of food available if it could ship it across The Ocean, which the u - boats could never prevent it from doing.
Because tik is full of shit. He is a rothbardian and basically instinctively blames socialism
Those whom resort to petty name calling; never had anything worth stating in the first place XD.
@@steamstrategy7670 The UK had - prior to WWII - imported much of their food; whilst WWII gave the incentive to heavily invest in building up domestic farming. The atlantic convoys from Canada & the US were chiefly of warmaking material.
@@jimtaylor294 nonsense. I call tik names because i have called out his bullshit so many times and he stopped responding
Comisariat in German simply means commission so to use the wording as a sine of "socialism" is a bit of a reach and you heave to remember that every war economy employed some form of rationing and state control on production
To be honest, what is the difference? A Commission is normally a body (Group/organization) put in charge of a specific state task. A Commissariat is pretty much the same thing. If you just look up the definitions for the term Commission a vast majority are administrative uses.
@@Alte.Kameraden my point is it is the same thing but you would say use the existance of "the boundary commission" as a creeping communism/socialism in britsh politics so why is is when Commiserate is used inspite of it being just a normal word for commission it seen as a sine of creeping socialist or communist politics?
@@Tommy-5684 tik has on many occasions an anti-socialist, libertarian agenda in his videos. So for him a commission of any kind is a sign for proto socialism and thus inferior to the unregulated forces of the free market.
Of course, a Commissariat is not a REAL Commissariat!
I should have known...
@@TheImperatorKnight thats not the argument being made hear at all the issue comes down to one of semantics and translation also Austra at the time was quite obviously an Autocratic state the equal of Czarist Russia and that desire for bureaucracy very much stems from an imperial bureaucracy rather then a socialist one i think in some sense your political bias is showing hear though over all the video was good
You can't argue that it is not true that the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed because of multi ethnic problems because it successor states were also multi ethnic. Because Yugoslavia failed as well. Czechoslovakia failed as well.
Same as perhaps the allies realising that maintaining Austro-Hungary would be the same as maintaining a lit match in a room full of nationalist gunpowder.
"Because Yugoslavia failed as well. Czechoslovakia failed as well."
Only at the end of the Cold War (and also WW2 obviously, but they were then reconstituted)
@@TheImperatorKnight In the long run it's nothing. Nationalist sentiments are also an enabler for ambitious people to get in power. If you have marginalized groups, that means you have pool of people where ambitious ones are almost guaranteed to have separatist motives - they have zero chance to realize their ambition within the empire. Their motives may be personal power, wealth or ideal, but you deprive yourself of chance for them to have motive to be on your side. Tito was an unifying personality, and MiloĆĄeviÄ was not, and in any case circumstances have changed.
As for Czechoslovakia, it's dissolution was partially matter of personal ambition of two prime ministers, and it is not clear that independence referendum would succeed in Slovakia at the time. However in retrospect it was probably for the best, even if I regret it.
@@TheImperatorKnight Austro-Hungary survived for a long time as well. Takes time to fail. But you are right, nationalism isn't the only factor. But it is one of the leading ones.
what about Spain, France, the UK or the US?
AH didn't collapsed the same way as Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia. Yugoslavia collapsed in a civil war which was ignited purely based on ethnic tension, without foreign involvement. Czechoslovakia "collapsed" in a democratic referendum, that wasn't very popular in either side, and also after ww2 Czechoslovakia was made much less multi-ethnic.
"Same as perhaps the allies realising that maintaining Austro-Hungary would be the same as maintaining a lit match in a room full of nationalist gunpowder." No, that's not true. The entente wanted to weaken Germany by crushing it's former ally and they wanted to make strong friendly countries that could help contain german aggression(which failed spectacularly). If it was true they wouldn't have made 3 multi-ethnic countries and they wouldn't have given other countries territories where there were large number of ethnic minorities.
@@TheImperatorKnight Slovenia would be independent state in 1918, but only a fool would go alone, that's why all small countries group together to be somehow strong enough to survive in imperialistic Europe.
Hmmm... Food rationing, government control of industry and economy...it sounds like TIK is making the case that Churchill was a Socialist in WW2.
Or just maybe it's that those actions were a necessity in 20th century warfare? Kind of hard to keep farm production up when there's battles on them.
Yeah he doesn't really understand much aside from battlefield lines. No wonder he couldn't get a job with his degree
@@GhostKiller755 BUT IS THIS REALLY THE CASE? :D
I laughed when he spoke of "distribute goods fairly among those who contributed most to the economy". Did he thought that the soldiers on the field were "contributing to the economy"? Did he forgot that soldiers on the field do not produce, that horses and mules used to drive supply trains do not plough the fields?
Maybe he could read a book or two that explain modern war in depth.
Not to mention the fuss he makes about TWO (2!) Socialists being appointed to an ADVISORY board, and the fact that an organization was called "Kommisariat".
The UK did have socialism in WW2.
He lost me with Utopian Libertarianism vs Central Planning. The Achilles heal of all that thought is people will do the right thing given freedom. But unfortunately enough never will.
15:34
The Russian army marched into Hungary to prop up the Austrian Empire. You make it sound like Russia was invading, not helping out.
Good point. It still confirms my point at the end - that the external powers wanted to save Austria in 1848, but not in 1918
@@TheImperatorKnight I absolutely agree with your conclusion, for the record.
@@TheImperatorKnight As much as I disagree with some of the economic points, I do agree with the global political ones. Also, Austrians lost A LOT of wars, but usually had a lot of diplomatic success, during the entire 19th Century.
@@Alex.HFA1 Was there however a real sustained success against first-class power? I mean, Austria did OK at times, as part of larger coalitions, but on it's own the successes were long time ago(and fewer territories ago yet) and there were quite a few defeats.
They , the rusdians, were invading, because Hungary wanted to break free. After the revolt was put down, many Hungarian leaders were executed at Arad, I don't think this can be qualified as " helping out".
Nice video, it's great to see such a rare more nuanced take on this extremely complex topic. I would like to further emphasize that it was truly a combination of many factors that resulted in the Empire's dissolution (a word I prefer over "collapse"), because while the food shortages did delegitimize the government and some imperial institutions, the monarchy itself was still, even by the war's end, quite popular among the population, as was the idea of the Empire still existing after the war. Even with all the deprivations of war, it was still generally assumed by the various ethnic and national groups that the survival of the Empire was in their own best interest, as they *all* feared losing territory to their preying neighbours in the event that the Empire disappeared.
As you rightly pointed out, the utter determination of the victorious powers that the Habsburg Empire was to be dismantled was key in it's dissolution, because it's fall was only reluctantly accepted by the politicians and populations of its territories once the French, Americans and the British all made it abundantly clear that any continuation of the monarchy was out of the question. With the massively preferred outcome of a slightly reduced but fully federalized Empire decisively removed from the table by the Entante, the states and peoples that made up Austria-Hungary all sought the next best possible refuge - Croats and Slovenes were left with no choice but to accept defacto unconditional annexation by Serbia in order to save as much territory as they could from the rapidly encroaching Italians, the Czechs and Slovaks banded together to protect their territories from Poles, Germans and Hungarians, and Austria and Hungary all sought extreme options to preserve as much of themselves as they could - Austria discarding it's ancient monarchy and fledgling nationhood in favour of annexation into Germany, and Hungary jumping from political extreme to political extreme in frantic attempts at finding an impossible solution to preserve its large territories.
bravo, you win the comment of the video award
The Austro-Hungarian Empire was inherently unstable since its inception in 1867. Before that the Habsburgs ruled in personal union over all the different people in the Austrian Empire in an equal way. The Austro-Hungarian Empire to the contrary favoured two of its many ethnicities over all the others (germans and hungarians). Which of course did not go well with all the other ethnicities who now were subjugated to either Austria or Hungaria. So it was not multiethnicity iself, but putting two of them over all the others, which fueled disharmony.
So, why do you think that the Austrians and Hungarians didn't stick together after the collapse?
TIK didnt the allies forbid them from uniting thus creating new countries like yugoslavia romania czehcslovakia etc
Yeah, it is a bad case-example for a multi ethnic country given how unequal representation and participation in government was. Also I wouldn't call Austria too stable given that I don't think Austria turned into Austria-Hungary just because Austrians wanted so. It probably turned into that because that was the best way to placate the strongest member territory, and also get them on Austrian side by dangling over them the possibility of Slavs also being elevated to their level.
@@TheImperatorKnight They did not stick together because "thing" holding them together was monarch, and there were great many angry Czechoslovak, Romanian and Yugoslavian divisions bordering in case that Habsburgs would try to come back. Without the monarch (and ww1 was started by the monarchy, and brought ruin to all its nations including Austrians and Hungarians, I don't think there was great love for it except that there probably was even greater feeling of loss and humiliation in Hungary due to territorial losses and that's perhaps why Hungary kept "regent" in charge), what was there to keep them together? In any case some of the new states would probably consider such union a threat.
@@llllib Hungary going communist, invading czechoslovakia and uniting nations around them against them didnt help with foreign relations either.
I didnât know any of this. I truly had the whole ânationalismâ narrative in my mind when thinking of Austria Hungary. Thank you gotta love these videos.
Which is true to some extent. The borders are still drawn by many Allies. Nationalism was one reason why the dissolution of that Empire worked that well.
â@@SchmulKriegerIt worked so well that it sparked several wars like between austria and yugoslavia, hungary and czechoslovakia, hungary and romania, not to mention countless uprisings in every successor state all of which lead to poverty, divide and ultimately a weak central europe that was easily swallowed by the nazis just 20 years later.. the dissolution of austria hungary was one of the greatest mistakes in recent history
Absolutely no one:
Tik: But is this really the case?
TIK is the heroe that we need.
@@gryf92 He really fails here. If you follow his own maxim.
>My parents breaking up
Tik: But is this really the case?
nope, i asked the question. and fun fact; it's not as much as the empire collapsed but that the Habsburgs were FORBIDDEN on thread of outside intervention to return to the throne in Hungary or Austria. secondly, Woodrow Wilson that piece of shit made his famos 14 points and than virtually ignored them cause you know, a large portion of eastern europe and mediterranean had already been promised...
Brits wanted to keep the empire, and americans - always ignorant, biased and shortsighted - disagreed.
result was a clusterfuck in eastern europe, with holochaust as one of it's consequences as well... because one A-U stopped existing there was no power to balance out the germans. and this balancing of power was a historic role of habsburg empire. so yea.
@@bluemoondiadochi AH countered Germany really well in 1860ties and especially in 1914...
The Austro-Hungarian Empire was held together by a nobility that was generally loyal to the Emperor. Aside from that, there were few uniting institutions.
Just because most Poles in the Empire (for example) were loyal to the Emperor and therefore loyal to the state, doesn't mean they wouldn't have taken the first opportunity they got to join a Polish nation (which is what they did when the end of the war provided them that opportunity. In fact, the Poles withing the A-H Empire were the driving force for a new Polish nation).
Same for the Romanians (who had serious grievances against the Hungarians), same for the Czechs (who always wanted more autonomy) and same for the Slovaks (who also had grievances against Hungarian rule). Most of the south Slavs followed Serbia because of problems with Italy after the war and not due to any particular animosity towards the Austrians. But by that time the empire was already dissolving into its smaller ethnic components.
In the end, nationalism was the most important factor. The war simply made leaving possible.
Which nobility? Most members of the lower house in the parliament were not even noblemen. And lower House had the real power who created the laws. MAny prime ministers had no noble origins. What are you talking about?
@@chriswanger284 and who led the revolutions that eventually led to the creation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire? In Krakow, in Galicia, in Hungary? Peasants? No, it was the nobility. Especially in the Polish lands. And if this nobility were not eventually appeased, the Austro-Hungarian state would have never been created, let alone functioned. So yes, it was the eventual support of the nobility for Franz Joseph that played a major role in keeping the Empire as stable as it could be.
@@zedxyle The revolution was sparked in the Pilvac cofeehouse by 4 intellectuals, none of tem was noble. The new suffrage law (Act V of 1848) transformed the old feudal estates based parliament (Estates General) into a democratic representative parliament. This law offered the widest suffrage right in Europe at the time.[28] The first general parliamentary elections were held in June, which were based on popular representation instead of feudal forms. The reform oriented political forces won the elections. The electoral system and franchise were similar to the contemporary British system.[29]
Read about April laws: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Laws
And read this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_Constitution_(Austria)
@@zedxyle In July 1849, the Hungarian Revolutionary Parliament proclaimed and enacted the WORLD's FIRST laws on ethnic and minority rights. It gave minorities the freedom to use their mothertongue at local administration, at tribunals, in schools, in community life and even within the national guard of non-Magyar councils. However these laws were overturned after the united Russian and Austrian armies crushed the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. After the Kingdom of Hungary reached the Compromise with the Habsburg Dynasty in 1867, one of the first acts of its restored Parliament was to pass a Law on Nationalities (Act Number XLIV of 1868).
The situation of minorities in Hungary was not even comparable to the contemporary pre WW1 Europe. Other highly multiethnic /multinational countries were: France Russia and UK.
See the multi-national UK:
The situation of Scottish Irish and Welsh people in "Britain" during the English hegemony is well known. They utmost forgot their original language,only English language cultural educational institutions existed. The only language was English in judiciary procedures and in offices and public administrations. In Wales Welsh children were beaten by their teachers if they spoke Welsh among each others. This was the infamous âWelsh Notâ policy... See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Not
The contemporary Irish question and tensions are well documented. The situation of Ireland was even a more brutal story. It was not a real "United" Kingdom, it was rather a greater England.
See the multiethnic France:
In the era of the Great French revolution, only 25% of the population of Kingdom of France could speak the French language as mothertongue. In 1870, France was still similar-degree multi-ethnic state as Hungary, only 50% of the population of France spoke the French language as mothertongue. The other half of the population spoke Occitan, Breton, Provençal, Catalan, Corsican, Alsatian, West Flemish, Lorraine Franconian, Gallo, Picard or Châtimi and Arpitan etc... Many minority languages were closer to Spanish languages or Italian language than French) French governments banned minority language schools, minority language newspapers minority theaters. They banned the usage of minority languages in offices , public administration, and judiciary procedures. The ratio of french mothertongue increased from 50% to 91% during the 1870-1910 period!!!
The situation in German Empire was well known (Polish territories)
Just look some Eastern countries in the oreintal so-called Eurasian (aka. Orthodox) civilization : The legal system of pre-WW1 Kingom of Serbia did not know minority rights. Also, the legal system of pre-WW1 Kingdom of Romania did not know minority rights, morover, Kingdom of Romania applied strong dicriminative laws against Jewish people similar to Tzarist Russia.
Just examine the high contrast between Kingdom of Hungary and contemporary pre WW1-era Europe:
The so-called "Magyarization" was not so harsh as the contemporary western European situation, because the minorities were defended by minority rights and laws. Contemporary Western European legal systems did not know the minority rights, therefore they loudly and proudly covered up their minorities. 1.Were there state sponsored minority schools in Western European countries? NO. 2. How many official languages existed in Western-European states? Only 1 official language! 3. Could minorities use their languages in the offices of public administration in self-governments , in tribunals in Western Europe? No, they couldn't. 4. Did the minorities have own fractions and political parties in the western European parliaments ? No, no they hadn't. 5. What about newspapers of ethnic minorities in Western Europe? They did not exist in the West.... We can continue these things to the infinity.
The Austro-Hungarian compromise and its supporting liberal parliamentary parties remained bitterly unpopular among the ethnic Hungarian voters, and the continuous successes of these pro-compromise liberal parties in the Hungarian parliamentary elections caused long lasting frustration for Hungarians. The ethnic minorities had the key role in the political maintenance of the compromise in Hungary, because they were able to vote the pro-compromise liberal parties into the position of the majority/ruling parties of the Hungarian parliament. The pro-compromise liberal parties were the most popular among ethnic minority voters, however i.e. the Slovak, Serb and Romanian minority parties remained unpopular among their own ethnic minority voters. The coalitions of Hungarian nationalist parties - which were supported by the overwhelming majority of ethnic Hungarian voters - always remained in the opposition, with the exception of the 1906-1910 period, where the Hungarian-supported nationalist parties were able to form a government.[48]
The question if it was nobility or not is misleading - it is rather the question of economy and power structures, no matter of nobility status.
To say that nationalism, without explaining what is meant, was the most important factor is distortion by mixing notions and oversimplifying.
The problem was less "nationalism" and much more aggressive "anti-nationalism" - cultural and language hegemony and homogenization, i.e. disrespect and oppression on ethnic ground. Quite aggressive germanization and magyarization has led to broad mistrust and grievances which at the same time solidified the idea of ethnic nationalism.
That's the impression I've got from my parents and ancestors who actively participated in rediscovery, development and preservation of ethnic languages and cultures.
The empire was relatively self-sufficient in grain before the Russian invasion of Galicia which caused a significant drop in grain production that you didnât seem to account for, it also looked like the harvested grain you used as a comparison was from before many of the farmers were drafted and before much of the things that increased crop yields like fertilizer became harder to acquire partially due to the blockade, or at least these statistics would have been from a time before many of these things ran out. I disagree with the idea that if they had just left the market to deal with the fact that there was not enough food, or that the hardest working would get all the food and not just the people with the most money like the nobility. Besides that, I agree with the general conclusion and agree that its dissolution was not inevitable and I agree that the main cause for the dissolution seems to be that foreign powers decided it would dissolve.
note: I'm not saying that the government's management of the situation regarding food did not contribute because I don't know enough about the specifics to make that judgment im just noting that when there is not enough deciding distribution based on wealth will not magically replace the grain from Galicia or the farmers fighting or the imports that increased crop yield.
"Besides that, I agree with the general conclusion and agree that its dissolution was not inevitable and I agree that the main cause for the dissolution seems to be that foreign powers decided it would dissolve." Except the foreign powers were persuaded by dissenting nationalists from the empire/exile groups, on idealistic principles and on realpolitik factors.
Sorry but Hungary was the second largest grain and flour exporter of the world after the United states..
@@chriswanger284 you mean before farmers were conscripted, horses and other animals were also conscripted, part of farmland become battlefield and fertilizers could not be imported?
@@llllibThere were no lack of food in Hungary during WW1 or WW2. Famine arrived always after the war was ended. You confused Austria and Germany with Hungary. Austria and Hungary were not one country and one economy! There were no battlefields in the territory of Hungary during the WW1, except a short period 10km deep Russian breaktrough under Brusilov. (10km is nothing in a country like Kingdom of Hungary, which was bigger than the combined territory of the two big British isles.
I agree.
You could think of The Dual Monarchy (and its German ally) as besieged fortresses.
All the authorities could do was manage the inevitable shortages as best they could.
It's funny; I'm currently reading Prit Buttar's four volume history of the WW1 Eastern Front. I'm half way through. My conclusion so far is that Conrad Von Hotzendorf is one of the most breathtakingly incompetent strategic thinkers in human history. But there was obviously innate, bubbling ethnic tension. As early as late 1914, there were already mass surrenders of Slavic units to Russians to the extent that the kuk started breaking up ethnically homogeneous units. The unnecessarily repressive measures taken by the government to control this supposed disloyalty didn't help. Finally, two of those successor states did split up further on ethnic lines... eventually. Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were created for pragmatic purposes; the Entente and the leaders of the successor states thought smaller independent states would be easy prey and useless allies.
One of the big differences between 1848 and 1918 was 4-5 million casualties and four years of
delegitimizing humiliating defeats; people were aware of the kuk's performance compared to Germany's. So the Hapsburgs were militarily incompetent, unable to feed its citizens, and often questioned the loyalty of large portions of its own population based purely on ethnicity. Its breakup was caused by many ingredients mixed into a toxic witch's brew. Real historians and scholars have never denied this by the way.
My grandfather was a Croatian AH soldier fighting the Russians , the first chance he got he was off joining the revolution , when he came home the Yugoslav government arrested him as a communist .
I think the fact that the successor states were multiethnic is not an argument in the way the video presents it as. It only demonstrates that the Empire itself was multiethnic and that chopping it up on ethnic lines was basically impossible, well, not while retaining a nice map shape for the successor states.
@@bezukaking6860 it's also hilarious to belive that the empire fell because of socialism. Hungary also collapsed, was also splitted in different parts occupied by Yugoslavia and Romania + all the rutenians declared independance and joined Checozlovaquia this failure of hungary state was also because of socialism? The entente had already in mind a repartition of AH empire...they promised some lands to the serbs, poles and romanians and that was all. Germany was also starving, ready for Revolution (spartaquist league...), No socialism there? Or just because the entente didn't have such ethnic minorities as a substrate to dynamitate the country in multiple identities?
I find your explanation far more persuasive that that of TIK.
@@sanchez231996 nothing was occupied by "yugoslavia", it was occupied by Serbia, which latter adopted name "yugoslavia" for PR purposes
Okay, I'll have a go at answering your rhetorical question. The reason why nationalism is considered the reason for the collapse of the Author-Hungarian empire, is because the successor states had fewer national minorities than the empire as a whole; and, as we see in the case of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, the composite national states with significant minorities did indeed "collapse further".
So your rhetorical question does not invalidate the 'Nationalities caused the collapse of Austro-Hungary' narrative. The successor states were indeed founded on ethnic lines.
There's a difference between 1848 and 1918 that you overlook: the Austrians won the war against the Czechs, and then the war against the Italians. They did lose against the Hungarians, but the Russians supported the monarchy. In 1918 the Austro-Hungarian army lost its battles against Russia.
Right? "Why didn't the new multi-ethnic states collapse further?" Uh...they did, it just took them 50 years. That was one of the shittiest arguments I've seen TIK put forth in a video and he doesn't address it at all.
@@BoxStudioExecutive Wtf? First, it's more like 70 years. Second, these countries like Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia survived the initial chaos of their formation; then were conquered and later "liberated" during WWII; then survived the entire Cold War under communist control, and only then broke apart once the Iron Curtain fell. You're trying to tell me that all of that history, including decades of communism, had no impact. That they broke apart in the 1990s because of what happened when they were founded in 1918? Yeah right!
Michael Meo i made the same point.
His argument is like swiss cheese... holes everywhere.
And his logic is inconsistent.
He also only likes comments that agree with him.
He is no better really than those he criticizes
BoxStudioExecutive also:
The soviet union kept a lid on the issue in some places.
And on top: austro hungaria didnt collapse or disintegrate immediately either.
Its just so stupid what he is doing here...
Otto von bismarck saw this coming from a mile away while tik cant even see it had happened afterwards.
Its kinda funny.
He is a contrarian and we love him for it when it comes to certain topics.
This however...
BoxStudioExecutive i mean: we love that he points out that germany couldnt have had the best soldiers, best tech and best leadership when they ultimately failed.
However: while making that argument he also often fails to admit that if they indeed hadnt had the best soldiers and never had the most nor the best leadership, nor the best tech than how did they beat france and england in western europe so fast?
Or how did they even compete with the soviets while having a western front?
He sometimes overdoes it and that leads to us being dumber in the end.
We want to learn from what happened in history.
And coming nearer the truth is essential for that. If you just go against the orthodoxy 100%, you are likely to overshoot.
And sadly this supposedly so critical channel has its own fanbase that religiously hailes every word tik says
Though I agree that there were more reasons to the collapse other than nationalism, but, I disagree with the notion that nationalism wasn't the primary purpose for the empire's dissolution. His own argument points the ethnic view of the discussion. First of all the state's that where formed out of the Austria Hungarian remain, those being Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, both did collapse due to their ethnic divides and the only reason for their prolonged existence was due to the authoritarian control of their people for a lengthy amount of their time on the planet. He also forgot to mention that the only reason Yugoslavia came to be united was out of the idea of a pan Slavic state, due to the uniting force of the collapse of the Ottomans. Secondly, as he forgot to elaborate, that the only reason the Russia where called in after the 1848 people's spring was to quell the Hungarian separatists and revolutionaries, which actually caused the empire's name changing from he empire of Austria to that of Austria Hungary. The Third point is that the reason other multinational empire's weren't dismantled, are as follows: France, had a colonial empire, and due to imperial prejudices a d also due to them being victorious meant the French weren't going to be divided, Britian: the same applies to their colonial possessions in africa, though in their home islands their was no real internal pressure to disunity among the Scots and welsh. Though the Irish where rebelling throughout their history and the war, as one sees with them getting their independence during the Easter uprising, and most of the commonwealth wasn't that rebellious at the time, though they would be soon and would lead to the collapse of the bridge empire. Spain: beside some trouble with the Carolinians where okay with the ethnic problems at the time. Russia: was kind off going through a huge civil war which the allies wanted the commies to lose, so dismantling the realms of their allies wasn't such a good idea, also a common language helps alot. The United States: killed through mainly disease and some genocide all of the native people that would want independence and the rest of the ethnicities where the descendents of immigrants and where ripe to americanization. To sum it all up the Austro Hungarian empire collapsed due to the new rise of nationalism which, ( which was spread by the Napoleonic wars), and the gradual degradation collapsed the empire, and practically caused the collapse of any other multinational States though not at the time of the great war, and this was really caused through the fact that Austria hungary just had a larger amount of ethnicities than almost every single other nation this it's earlier collaspe, and you can even combine that with the realization that it was comparably, weak due to its lack of colonies and dependence of other great powers to help it survive in its consistently more and more troublesome times.
- Sam B Hansmann
its irrelavent that they later divided. if they wanted ethnic independance then they wouldn't have settled for the new ethnically mixed states in the first place. instead you have relative peace in these multiethnic states for a few decades.
â@@matthiuskoenig3378 Late reply but the world isnt as simple as "they would have simply become completely independent!" especially when militaries are involved...
As far as the south Slavs go their unification was purely a thing of convenience, Slovenia was much more germanized than any other part of it and the language was significantly different, Croatia was catholic unlike Orthodox Serbia or the Muslims in Bosnia etc.
They united out of necessity, no real standing armies, empire collapsed, no international recognition while neighbouring countries wanted more land and had actual armies etc.
Yugoslavia was formed due to the Slovenes and Croatians wanting international recognition to prevent themselves being annihilated and to do that they joined up with the internationally recognized Kingdom of Serbia to form the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
The tensions only grew throughout the lifetime of Yugoslavia and the state lasted less thsn 50 years in reality (Post WW2 Yugoslavia is a whole different deal to pre war) and would have collapsed much sooner with a worse dictator at the helm.
Slovene literature is absolutely filled to the brim with distaste for the Germans and is resentful of the repression of the Slovene culture snd language and thats the MOST germanized part of former Yugoslavia so imagine the others..
Nationalism was a major part of the collapse no matter how you slice it, people want to go "BUT THEY GAVE THE MOST RIGHTS TO MINORITIES OUT OF EVERYONE!" thats like saying "racial tensions werent the cause of the 1960s race riots in the US because... at that point they had the most rights they've ever had!" still werent free and likewise Austria Hungary wasnt some union of like minded countries but a union created via conquest and oppression of the cultures of said countries.
Ethnicity and Nationalism was, in fact, a colossal piece of the puzzle but it obviously wasnt the only one.
If the Hapsburg Empire was so riven by ethnic tension and lacked patriotism, why did so many men die for it over the course of four years?
Ehhhh.
Sure, A-H didn't fall apart SOLELY because multietnicism. But it was a big part of the reason. And furthermore it's not a good showcase for a stable multiethnic state to show how they are impossible given how disenfranchised many of it's nationalities felt. Even granting Hungarians equal status took BIG upheavals. But that didn't mean much for other nationalities, mainly the Slavs. And Emperor (the old one) was very much looking for any way he could find not to grant Slavs equal status. Even the often vaunted Ferdinand was mostly for dangling the chance of equal representation in front of Slavs as a way to get them on board while the German part maintained the supremacy.
Bigger problem was that this was an old Empire largely running on old feudal ideas of loyalty in the age of national countries. France and Britain might have enslaved large parts of the world, but their core territories had a national identity that could hold them together as they lorded over their colonies. In A-H German parts were still the core as far as power was concerned with junior stuatus given to Budapest, but even though most of Empire's industry was in Chzek lands they weren't given nearly the same treatment as Austrians. People were still willing to put up with it as a price of living in an European country with a relatively good living standard (certainly FAAAAR better than living in the Ottoman Empire), and with knowledge that if they rebelled the rebellion would just be stamped out by central government.
But by 1918 pretty much all things that would be there to oppose separation were gone. The army was pretty much gone with the breaking of Itallian front, breaking of Thesaloniki front which also removed Bulgaria from the equation and Romanians pretty soon rejoined the fight. Pretty much everyone could see that with foreign enemies advancing on all fronts and the living standard in shambles there was not much reason to stay and not much that could prevent them from leaving. Like, even before this Hungarian forces were already following their local overall general's orders only because the Hungarian Parlament said they should. The moment Hungarian Parlament said they should withdraw they left the fight and nobody really tried to stop them.
Additionaly, at that point in time the intellectual elites on Slav side still hoped greater Slavic idea could take hold. This is why Czechoslovakia happened. This is also why Yugoslavia happened instead of just Serbia grabbing Bosnia, Herzegovina and Krayina. The idea of a big state fro all South Slavs was intriguing, it would solve the problem of reuniting all our people for us Serbs, and it would keep Croats and Slovenes away from getting gobbled up by Italians or new Austrian state. So the country was a national country of Southern Slavs, new identity pending. Hungary was de facto a country already within A-H given that the entire country was a union between Austria (Austria, Slovenia (probably), Dalmatia, Bosnia and Czechia) and Hungary (Hungary, Croatia and Slovakia (probably)) and has wanted to do it's own thing for quite some time. They were mostly placated for the time by the threat of Slavs getting elevated to their level in power to stick with the Austrians.
TLDR: A-H dissolved because without the stick of the army and the carrot of relatively stable country even without proper representation, nobody really cared much for sticking around.
Well said. TIK completely ignores the factor played by the then popular pan-Slavic nationalist ideas. I guess it's easy to forget the appeal of these ideas in 1918 considering the ethnic hatereds that soon erupted between Orthodox, Muslim and Catholic Slavs...
@@BoskoBuha99 Yeah. Also in the areas outside of Serbia and Montenegro the whole idea of national identity won't really settle before the end of WWII. Now that VERY violently determined who was what.
ĐĐ»Đ°Đ¶ĐŸ ĐŃŃĐŸĐČĐžŃ this video is sadly riddled with logical errors and simply being very selective about historical events to proof the point.
Guess thats the price to pay at some point when you make a career out of being a contrarian?
But is this really the case... can be overdone
He says "Is this really the case?" well this time it is
Hungary had more rights before 1848 revolution than after the compromise of 1867. Austrians were forced to restory Hungary's hictoric rights. READ: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austro-Hungarian_Compromise_of_1867
I agree with all of the factors in the video, but I would also say the significant external pressure of the war was also a differentiating factor between 1848 and 1918. If anything, the internal pressure in 1848 was much more severe, being that they were no longer in control of many of the major population centers of the empire, but the central government could more readily draw on the army to use as it wished. In this way it was more of a question of how to best deal with the crisis, rather than whether it can deal with it at all. For an example of this: the Prince of Windisch-Gratz and the siege of Prague; wherein he enforced martial law, and threatened to bombard the rebels into submission, rather than negotiate and compromise with them as emperor Ferdinand had. Emperor Karl does not seem to have enjoyed this option.
This I think hits the nail on the head. The Habsburgs if anything received massive amounts of external help in 1848. What TIK doesn't mention is that the Russian army marching into Hungary was doing so as an ally of the Empire, to crush the Hungarian Republican revolution. The other great powers were either also allied (in the case of Prussia going German Republican stomping) or neutral, allowing the Habsburgs to regain their footing and crush the Italian and Hungarian revolutionaries.
Things had really changed in 1918, where you had massive, well armed, wel ltrained, and technologically advanced Western Allied armies (British, American, French, Italian, Greek, Serbian, etc) forces advancing on the Empire on three fronts after wiping out the last front line worthy troops at Vittorio, and an estranged and also-beaten Germany incapable of helping. So the Habsburgs were diplomatically isolated just as their empire was being eaten up from the inside and out. That I think is what did them in.
@@vandeheyeric Technology and balkan states? What did you drink?
@@chriswanger284 Diet Coke mostly. And you think the Balkan States couldn't into technology? They had troubles sure, but not as much.as to make them stone age.
@@vandeheyeric Since the 7th century the arts, the artistic taste, dressing, culture and architecture of Byzantine Empire were heavily influenced by non-European cultures like Persians Syrians and other oriental influences, which is called as the Asianization/orientalization of the Greco-Roman heritage/culture. Persians not only influenced the Byzantine arts and taste, but the public administration system of Byzantines.
Unlike the center of Roman Catholicism the Papacy, the Byzantines did not really care and/or did not put so much effort for the artistic cultural, economic and technological development of their christianized Orthodox "barbarians": the Eastern Slavs and Balkan Slavic or Vlach people. It was enough for them to spread their Othodox religion and their influence among these people. It was no wonder, because many of these Orthodox people have various wars and serious conflicts with the Byzantine Empire in the past.
Thus the Orthodox region developed its Eurasian civilizational / cultural caracteristics long before the Mongol invasion of Eastern Slavs and long before the Balkan conquests of Ottoman Empire.
Culturally, both islam and the semi-asian orthodox countries became traditionally west-hater civilizations. After the Great schism (1054), Orthodox priests taught to their believers, that the Western Christians are the "servants of the Satan". That belief system caused long lasting suspicion, distrust and hatred towards the West in the Orthodox countries and their populations since the early stage of their history and development. This attitude and their weak relationship with the western civilization deeply and negatively effected their societal, cultural, legal, economic and infrastructural development through the centuries.
The Western civilization includes four major European regions: Western Europe: France, the British Isles, and Benelux states. Central Europe: Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Czech lands, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia, Southern Europe: Italy, Spain and Portugal, Northern Europe: Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
THE WESTERN (Catholic-protestant) WORLD is depicted in dark blue on the map of prof. S. Huntington:
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Clash_of_Civilizations_map.png
What is Western Civilization?
It is not a secret in history, that countries civilizations are/were not in the same level of development.
It is well-known that Western and Central Europe, ( the so-called Western civilization) was always more developed than Orthodox Slavic or Eastern European civilization.
The differences in culture (material and verbal), legal constitutional, societal, political, economical, infrastructural, technological and scientific development, between Orthodox countries and Western Christian (Catholic-Protestant) countries were similar great, as the differences between Northern America (USA Canada) and Southern- (Latino) America.
MEMENTO:
Western things which were not existed in orthodox world:
1. POLITICAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL development: Medieval appearance of parliaments (The parliament is a legislative body(!), DO NOT CONFUSE with the âcouncils of monarchsâ which existed since the very beginnings of human history), the estates of the realm, the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners,
2. Local SELF GOVERNMENT status of big royal/imperial cities, which are the direct ancestors (the continuity) of modern local self governmental systems. Do not confuse the local self governments with the so-called city states. Sovereign city states were the earliest form of states in Human history ( For example: Sumerian city states), and that legal concept has nothing common with the self-governments/local governments of cities within a country or within an Empire.
3. ECONOMY: The medieval appearance of banking systems and social effects and status of urban bourgeoisie, the absolute dominance of money-economy (when the vast majority of trade based on money and the taxes customs duties were collected in money) from the 12th -13th century, instead of the former primitive bartel-based commerce (barter dominated the economies orthodox world until the 17-18th centuries.)
4. HIGHER EDUCATION: The medieval appearance of universities and the medieval appearance of SECULAR intellectuals,
5. CULTURE: Knights, the knight-culture, chivalric code, (and the technological effects of crusades from the Holy Land,)
Music and literature: courtly love, troubadours, Gregorian chant, Ars nova, Organum, Motet, Madrigal, Canon and Ballata, Liturgical drama, Novellas,
medieval western THEATER: Mystery or cycle plays, morality and passion plays, which developed into the renaissance theater, the direct ancestor of modern theaters.
Philosophy: Scholasticism and humanist philosophy,
6. The medieval usage of Latin alphabet and medieval spread of movable type printing,
7. TECHNOLOGY: The guild system is an association of artisans or merchants, which organized the training education, and directed master's exam system for artisians. Due to the compulsory foreign studies of the artisian master's candidates, the guilds played key role in the fast spread of technologies and industrial knowledge in the medieval Western World.
8. The defence systems & fortifications: The spread of stone/brick castle defense -systems, the town-walls of western cities from the 11th century. (In the orthodox world, only some capital cities had such a walls . The countries of the Balkan region and the territory of Russian states fell under Ottoman/Mongolian rule very rapidly - with a single decisive open-field battle - due to the lack of the networks of stone/brick castles and fortresses in these countries. The only exception was the greek inhabited Byzantine territories which were well fortified.)
9. FINEARTS and ARCHITECTURE: western architecture, sculpture paintings and fine-arts: the Romanesque style, the Gothic style and the Renaissance style.
The orthodox church buildings and âpalaces(?)â were very little, they had primitive structure and poor decorations, their style were influenced by oriental non-European arabic, persian and Syrian influenced Byzantine ornamentics.
10.The renaissance & humanism , did not influenced/affected the Orthodox (Eastern European) countries.
11. The reformation and the enlightenment also did not influenced/affected the Orthodox (Eastern European) countries.
12. Before 1870, the industrialization that had developed in Western and Central Europe and the United States did not extend in any significant way to the rest of the world. In Eastern Orthodox Europe, the industrialization lagged far behind, and started only in the 20th century, mostly during the communist era.
13. INFRASTRUCTURE and Economy: The Orthodox infrastructural and economic development was also very very slow, and many determinant factors of modern civilization - as we called them as civilized way of life - (railways, the electrification of cities, drain & sewer systems, water pipe systems, spread of tap water and bathrooms, telecommuncations etc... spread many-many decades (60-80 years) later.
14. Medieval and Early modern Urbanization did not have signifficant effect in Orthodox countries. The real urbanization boom started in Orthodox countries only in the mid 20th century. Most of them experienced real urbanization with the socialist ferro-concrete block-of-flat programs in post ww2 period.
It is no wonder that their contribution in science technology and innovations are completely negligible in Human history by the WESTERN standards.
@Steven Samuels I agree Italy was the main factor, but the British and French did fight quite a bit about the Habsburgs. People tend to forget the KuK's troops on the Western Front and Sinai, and Anglo-French ones in Italy and the Balkans.
It's silly to say "socialism doesn't work and so the economy collapsed" when Austria-Hungary had centralised planning for only a few years while the USSR and many other emerging socialist nations implemented it and did just fine and even won their wars and went on to compete globally against the USA.
In 1848 the Habsburgs played the other minorities against the Hungarians and encouraged them to rebel for gains, which is a huge difference from 1918 which is completely overlooked in this as well.
Lastly, Blessed Karl wasn't able to get out of the war because no one would accept a separate peace, not at all that he was too tied to Germany to get out from their grasp. He even sent a telegram asking for peace that was published and made Germany furious because of it but all of his efforts to get his country out of the war were rejected and the Germans had no idea and couldn't stop him.
Effort was definitely put into making this but I can't say I agree with almost any of the points, it's like a summary understanding of some books and guessing for fill-ins and being wrong about them
However you forget the central planing was during the war, and nobody wanted to exterminate Austro-Hungarian people, but Hitler wanted to clean out the Slavs from Soviet territories. Huge difference.
@@chriswanger284 Both nations had it implemented during a war, and the side that didn't want its own people to die had the economy collapse while the side that supposedly didn't care for the people it ruled over didn't have its economy collapse
@@4fallschirmjager Soviet economy was kept alive by the US during WW2.
@@chriswanger284 and then nearly fifty years of planned economy under sanction by the US before being illegally voted out of existence (and the economy collapsing during privatisation *not* before) but couldn't last only a few years?
Please do more of these videos that are outside of WW2. There's alot I would love to see you cover.
What precisely would you like me to cover?
@@TheImperatorKnight People say Napoleon's invasion of Russia was doomed to fail but I wonder if that really was the case since Russian generals and the emperor stated the need to give battle for the morale of the army. There's also instances where Austria offered a favorable peace to Napoleon which would've prevented 200,000 men joining the war in 1813. The main question being was Napoleon really doomed during and after the Russian campaign? Were there instances where he could've kept a majority of his winnings?
@@TheImperatorKnight anything that made your eyebrows twitch when you were reading them in the Uni or since. Stuff that are explained like they are because of political reasons. I'm interested in anything post-Napoleon that you can question and recover the truth. :)
These new multiethnic states did not fall apart after:
Ah yes, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, two great unified states, even in the modern-day.
Those two states only split after the Cold War ~70 years later (with a brief split in WW2, but then rejoined)
pokecrafter2201 serbia is popular everywhere bcs no further conflicts were had đ
No nato interventions were necessary đ€Ł
TIK well...
What a surprise.
The collectivist soviets reinstated them and prevented their disintegration.
That must proof your point...
Especially because austria hungary collapsed a minute after its creation?
Oh wait, it didnt...
It took time and crisis to further all the conflicts to the surface. Also a weakening of the central power.
Just look at what keeps russia alive?
I mean...
You literally can see in ukraine, in the middle east the same thing happening right now.
And you can also see what happened throughout the former soviet union when strong central power collapsed.
Even chechnya...
Multi ethnic states depend on huge centralized force or very small administrative systems-decentralization ( which can work in some cases if the cultures arent too different )
This is a historically proven fact just like that socialism/communism doesnt work.
It has been repeated so often over and over again...
@@TheImperatorKnight As you know, History looks at end results and doesn't consider short time periods as significant. The Kingdom of the Vandals in North Africa lasted from 435 AD to 534 AD (a full century). We do not consider it a stable Kingdom. The Ostrogothic Kingdom lasted from 493 AD to 553 (60 years) and is considered nothing but a small 'blip' in the History of Western Europe. The First Kingdom of Jerusalem lasted from 1099 to 1187 (88 years) and is seen as ephemeral. So a timespan of less than 70 years only shows how weak and impermanent such States were.
@@TheImperatorKnight split on national ethnic lines mind you
both in ww2 and after the fall of communism
Hi TIK,
Just wanted to say that iÂŽm a big fan of your videos. This video in particular was very interresting for me, because iÂŽm a decendant of ethnic germans from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Lots of the points you were talking about reminded me of a letter (rather a form of diary) of my great-grandmother, who was living in Dobschau/ DobĆĄinĂĄ in Slovakia around the time of the First World War. She also described in that letter, how much the economy was bad in the Austro-Hungarian Empire during and after the war (for example it was according to her so bad that the trains werenÂŽt coming anymore because of the lack of coal). But after the collapse of the Empire there was also a lot of upheaval, especially in Slovakia. For example Hungary tried to reinstate their power over Slovakia and the hungarian and german minoritys in Slovakia were marching towards the hungarian troops waving hungarian flags. In the meantime the slovakian and czech officials were hiding in the carpathian mountains and laughed about how the Hungarians and Germans were making fools of themselves . When the hungarian troops retreated to Hungary again, the Slovakians and Czechs were like "we told you this wouldnÂŽt work out!". I wish I could tell you more; but I fear, this comment would be too long. All in all I wouldnÂŽt mind if you were making more videos about the First World War or the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Finally I want to say: Keep up the good work and iÂŽm looking forward for your next video.
Best greetings from a fan from Bavaria/Germany
TIK always beaks common misconceptions and thats why i love his vids
Hercule Poirot of wartime history
This video created misconceptions rather that anything else.
@@tentypek5295 Elaborate pls
@@FifinatorKlon Austria-Hungary collapsed because the nations of the monarchy did not want to live in Austria-Hungary anymore. The Polish, Czechs, Slovaks, Romanians, Ukrainians, Slovens, Serbs, Croats and others did NOT want to live in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The fight for liberation lasted for a long time. The year 1918 was special because Austria-Hungary was at last not strong enough to keep the nations in its monarchy by force. And yes, USA and France did help, but the process was irreversible.
It is not true there was no fight against Austria-Hungary by the nations that were liberated after WWI. Since the outbreak of WWI, the Czechs and Slovaks fought against Austria-Hungary on Serbian front and on the eastern front. Some units of Czechs and Slovaks fougth also Germany on the western front in WWI. The desertions from Austro-Hungarian army were massive. This was one of the reasons why the Austro-Hungarian army was so ineffective. The Czechoslovak legion formed in Russia to fight Austria-Hungary had 60.000 men. After the bolshevik revolution, it occupied Siberia and later was evacueted from Vladivostok to Czechoslovakia to FIGTH A WAR WITH HUNGARY in 1920.
It is not true that the administration in the newly established countries did not change. In Slovakia, the Hungarians were relieved from civil service and replaced by Czechs and Slovaks, whole Hungarian universities were dismanteled and new Czechoslovak ones were establised.
Similar severe supply shortages were also in Germany aftter WWI. But Germany did not collapse into several states. Gues why. Because it was not multiethnic!
@@tentypek5295 The so called "Czechoslovak legions" were czechs and slovaks living outside of the empire for years and having no actual clue of how life was inside the empire.
I really enjoyed this video. I know I'm very late to the party, I only just found your channel.
I live in Hungary and there's a very real love/hate relationship with the Empire and there's still very strong feels amongst people here.
When discussing a potential restoration of the Monarchy ( in a pub, naturally) I pointed out that Hapsburgs were the most legitimate claimants and it split the group in two straight away.
sounds like how it is seen in austria. its an integral part of austrian identity and many look at it fondly and many not so much
Honestly, this is quite a good video and touches on a lot of points other youtubers and content creators deem irrelevant, a particularly good example of blatant and biased nationalist rhetoric is that serbian mapping channel, which still uses outdated historical data and some very questionable statements regarding ethnicity, political system in place in specific countries, and a general attempt at misinformation through simplification of topics, which is why I respect your work, as you put in the time to make a longer more exhaustive video where you cover a lot of points but in a less biased way.
I think when you are arguing it's quite a case of "When crops fail, people depose the king" is quite correct, to an extent. However that crop failing was symptomatic of the state monarchy was in, and if you argue Wilson's outside influence you cannot ignore idealist nationalist exile groups that probably had great deal of influence on Wilson. For example Czechoslovak exile forces came into existence well before major supply crysis, and had significant influence by end of war and even after. Of course recruiting pools may have been different at different times (emigrants early on, turncoats later) but the sentiments materially did exist at war start already.
You also need to consider manpower losses.
As for the planned economy, fact of the matter is that if you conscript significant part of farmers into army, significant amount of working animals into army(both for wagon train and cavalry), perhaps limit access to fertilizer and other goods, this is going to have great impact on the agriculture with the technology as it was at the time. And you can just forget about things like coffee, even if you could grow it in Central Europe (which probably you can't) doing that at expense of producing already collapsing basic food would be incredibly stupid. It's just sad that you again could not hold yourself from perpetuating the propaganda.
Yes, well one of the glues that was holding the empire together was fear. First from the Ottomans, then the French "Republic? LOL" , Then Russian imperialism, Hungarian revolutionaries, then the German state itself LOL... Insert Germanization attempts LOL. With Germany destroyed, Ottomans destroyed, Russia destroyed. France destroyed also, at least all north of Paris parts of it/manpower. There is no reason to stick together, and if smaller nations are better able to micromanage the food situation on the ground, than that is all that matters.
Now this part is sort of shooting from the hip, but applying some knowledge from the Ottoman first siege of Vienna. One of the problems of the 1848 Hungarian revolution would had been that to offset Germany/Austria and Russia, the Hungarian republic would had been a natural ally for the Ottomans. Meaning that their success would make any independence for slavic states that much harder.
"As for the planned economy, fact of the matter is that if you conscript significant part of farmers into army, significant amount of working animals into army(both for wagon train and cavalry), perhaps limit access to fertilizer and other goods, this is going to have great impact on the agriculture with the technology as it was at the time. And you can just forget about things like coffee, even if you could grow it in Central Europe (which probably you can't) doing that at expense of producing already collapsing basic food would be incredibly stupid. It's just sad that you again could not hold yourself from perpetuating the propaganda."
Oh I see. The fact that the State forcefully conscripted people into an army, destroyed the economy due to central State planning, all for a war that the State started in the first place, isn't the fault of the State? Okay then... I guess I'm the one spouting propaganda...
Not to mention that the most productive, food wise, part, the Hungarian part was VERY agrarian, meaning most of the population was working the fields. If you conscript pretty much all able bodied men who aren't working in factories, you won't have nearly enough people to bring in the harvest. Add in limited to nonexistent mechanization, and it literaly means if you mobilize x% of workers you can expect x% or more drop in food production.
Mobilization can have such severe impact that you literally HAVE TO end the war before a certain date, or demobilize a significant part of the army to bring in the harvest, or starve.
Absolutely correct.
As so often TIK tries to smuggle his libertarian agenda in his videos.
How could an unregulated free market succeed in an economic environment of total mobilization and shortages of food supply and production goods?
He describes a regulated, centralised chain of supply as inferior, but doesn't deliver any kind of proof for his point.
@@TheImperatorKnight Be reasonable TIK. You made a statement that rationing and like was Socialism, and then blamed Socialism for famine.
Fact of the matter is when you have vast majority of population be agrarian and have to work the fields to produce enough food, when you conscript a significant chunk of that population that will significantly impact the ability of anyone to produce food. Especially with little to no mechanization to offset loss of labor. No magic pixie dust of any economic idea will solve the problem that you just don't have enough people to work the fields and the same would have been the result if any other idea was used to solve the food crisis. All nations involved in this war that didn't have access to world trade or colonies were going hungry by 1918.
Yes, the blame lies with the state for starting the war, but once that happened there would have been lack of food no mater what was done if the degree of mobilisation remained for years on end.
This was such an interesting topic I never knew I wanted to learn about. Its unfortunate we learn so little about The Austro-Hungarians.
People get really pissed when they can't get food, for some reason. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why my Glorious Propaganda is not enough to fill their stomachs.
Good to see your still making videos Tik. Listened to your last one driving back home. Situation in seemed very complex. Almost finished with Stahels work on Kiev. Seemed that the Wehrmacht was pulling the wool over its eye despite the victory. I havenât finished the video yet, but I assume the empire went bankrupt from the war which would explain the collapse?
TIK (Lewis) Will NEVER sell out to simplicity, or the popular opinion, and that is why he is the most factual historian on CZcams. Well worth the $5 monthly investment.
I do sometimes agree with the mainstream narrative... sometimes... I think.... Thank you for supporting! đ đ
@@TheImperatorKnight At least until the mainstream narrative stops being "Hitler bad", anyway... which I'm pretty sure is on the horizon.
Wilson was probably the biggest reason the Empire collapsed as he legitimized breaking it up as war aim. The other issues put a serious strain on the people's confidence in the government that made a collapse possible if enough political pressure was put on the Empire. I am not sure if the Allies actually had thought of breaking up the Empire as a war aim. Emperor Karl, if he come to the throne in peace time, seems to have enough of a reform minded emperor that he might have done some serious political restructuring of the Empire.
Hi TIK, at first sorry for my bad english... I love your chanell and thank you very much for your work. I just want to corect that Czechoslovak national - socialist party CSNS wasnt anything like NSDAP or sudeten DNSAP. Yes it was the party which was and still is oriented on heritige, tradition and so on... Socialist part of program of that party wasnt about social democratic, or comunist socialism at all. It was mostly about land reforms which were very much needed in Czechoslovakia in that time. For examle to take the land of mostly German and Hungarian feudal lords and give it to people. (from one feudal family they took everythink which was over 150 Ha) It looks like theft now, but these feudal families get their land mostly after czech protestants who had to leave kingdom and by very similar proces which we can describe as encloser system in Great Britain. Also churches were included in this nationalization. Other thing was to make national gold reserves which ware put together by national colection of all people (volunterly and very succesfully) to backup new curency. Nationalist part of that party was mainly against germans but not in the way as other nationalst party did it in thierties of twenty century. Often is said that we did second class citizens from germans and hungarians after 1st WW, but its not simply true (yes there was some sort of discrimination, but not on the state administration level, it was mostly discrimination by people them self and it was on both sides). And actualy CSNS was from the begining very much against it. Also this party was pro-jewish and they offered and gave citizenship to jews or germans who were discriminated in Germany from 1933 to 1938. In twenties they were also for giving citizenship to all people who run from Soviet Union. Actualy Edvard BeneĆĄ was a member and leader of CSNS and as we know he realy wasnt dictator as Hitler or Pilsudski and Milada HorĂĄkovĂĄ was a member, she helped jews to run from Reich and after war she lead organization to help jews and other prisoners of war to return to their country of origin or to help them stay in CSR. Then she was executed by Czechoslovak comunists in 1955. Party is still alive (but very small, cca 2% of votes in elections) and its conservative party in the middle (little bit to right) of polictical spectrum, pro NATO and pro EU. Czechoslovakia had fascist movement called Flag. In time of protectorate they renamed them self on Czech national-socialist camp. They even formed SS company called Voluntary Company of St. Wenceslaus. They never completly formed and also never saw the fight mostly for lack of recruits.
Austria-Hungary was born with Emperor Franz Josef and it died with him. Sure, he had to balance the interests of the largest ethnic groups, the Germans and the Hungarians given the inability of the Germans to control them. It is easy to see how two races were dominating Austria-Hungary, given the name, but the Emperor did extend greater rights to other ethnic minorities of the Empire. He was that one unifying figure that lived into an era in which he did not belong, but when he died, the Empire lost that unifying figure just as the military and economic situation was worsening. Karl was a good man, but he was the new guy on the job. We are not taught that much about him in the States, but what I do know is his attempts for peace and stopping grain shipments on the Danube at the risk of war with Germany. If the situation was that desperate, ethnic tensions alone was not why the Empire collapsed. That is demystifying in the same way when I say the French Revolution had little to do with ideals or the American experiment, but subsequent generations of starving people who finally had enough.
I recomend you look up the ''carte rouge'' that shows the ethnicites of Hungary around 1919. These maps people throw around does not take into account the huge parts in which nobody lived, (big lakes, forrests, the carphatian mountains etc) just marks them as Romanians for example.
Great video Tik! I know your main subject is ww2 but I think ww1 (the last period most) is as if not more important in the sense that it explains most about the following war. Would be great with more videos like this
Versailles treaty and other treaties were geopolitical disasters
The carte rouge doesn't hcange the fact that Transylvania, Vojvodina, Ruthenia and Slovakia were largely not Hungarian.
Territory wasn't allocated based on maps alone but also on census data and many of those regions were simply not majority Hungarian as a whole. The fact that population density varied doesn't really change this.
@@g-rexsaurus794 No it does not, not my point. Just that these maps they show are very very misleading. For example it does not show that all the largest cities had majority of Hungarians or Germans. Also it shows all romanian in parts (for example Szilagay County) where around 35 percent if I remeber correctly had were Hungarians. + as I said large parts of both Transylvania and Slovakia were mountains or lakes etc where nobody (or a veryvery few mountain people lived). Also it should show from County to country if it wants to show the whole picture (also for example they show all of the parts that become romania are transylvania when only a smaller part was that, for example the majority hungarian Szatmar was part of "Partium" and the mixed romanian/german country in which temesvar was located was part of BĂĄnsĂĄg. I do absolutly not argue that the lost territories were mostly other peoples, these are facts but it is not accurate to use these maps that does not take into acount important factors as thoose I mentioned.
@@sapphirero2235 Well acording to schoolars (apart from nationalistic romanian schoolars, not every romanian schoolars of course) and the versaille comite (also almost every leader that was in trianon recognized it was a total ethnic failure and the carte rouge was in large the background for this assumption) this was the most accurate map... Its plain stupid to mark the huge carpathians as inhabited by romanians... That is just stupid.
I've watched most of the videos that were shown, before i even actually hear anything i would just like to say that nationalism is more of a by product do to the failure of the leadership if the Austro-Hungarian Empire that caused the many, many peoples within the empire to seek independence and freedom from a power which decided not to care for its people at large. Now im going to enjoy the video and see if i was at least in the ball park from what i drew up based on those other videos, documentaries and entertainment like Fall of Eagles.
Welp i watched the video and i think i was in the ball park, different approach but still the same game in a way.
Love the videos you do Tik, gives a fresh and good view point on subjects that many say is set in stone. Keep up the good work
What you have just described is Victoria, Australia in a nutshell. Love the videos as they give a complete overview of the Economic, Political, military and social factors. đŠđșđŹđ§đŽó §ó ąó „ó źó §ó ż
I've got a History Channel too, but you've got a lot more experience than me ^^
Frankly, I'm amazed by the clarity of your explanations, I'm French and I understood 99% of what you said, believe me, it's great!
Great also are your research of sources, the quotations of historians are a nice addition giving more depth!
You win a new subscriber!
Concerning the inability of the State to feed the population, I wonder if the post-1918 states would have done better...
It is true that all the successor states had significant minorities, but far more people were in their own national states after the collapse of Austria-Hungary than before. There were no political entities left ruled by a minority. Under Austria- Hungary all the ethnicities were in a minority and most were ruled by just two. The conventional narrative about nationalism is correct.
The food crisis was as a result of the war. This again confirms the traditional narrative that war exhaustion helped provoke the collapse of Austria-Hungary.
Nationalism was essentially a 19th Century phenomenon. Before then it was not a factor and so could hardly contribute to the disolution of Austria-Hungary. It was still not a mature force in 1848, except, probably in Hungary.
Why wasn't Hungarian nationalism successful in 1848? Because large Austrian and Russian armies descended on Hungary. Not did any of the other minorities, whose own nationalism wa not as developed as that of Hungary, have any interest in furthering Hungarian nationalism.
Hungary being admitted as a co-ruler was the start of concessions to nationalism a little later in 1867.
This was partly motivated by the need to have someone else other than just the Austrians inside the Imperial tent pissing out on the other national minorities.
However, nationalisn continued to grow up to WWI. During it, the Austro-Hungarian Army had to be careful to deploy Slavs as far as possible away from the Russian Front for fear of mass desertion to fellow Slavs, and the Romanians away from the Italian Front for fear of mass desertion to their fellow Latins. Nevertheless, this did not stop several units of Austro-Hungarian minorities being formed by the Allies.
The Croats were initially more interested in joining Austria-Hungary in a tripartite state. However, even they had had enough by May 1918 and ten if their political parties came together to request the formation of a tripartite South Slav state with the Serbs and Slovenes. This became Yugoslavia, though the Croats were always, at best, luke warm towards it.
If the Allied intent was to weaken Germany, why didn't they just return it to its multiple pre-1870 components? Isn't breaking up Austria-Hungay a rather indirect, convoluted way of taking a dig at Germany when direct action was available?
The Allies were pushing at an open door as far as Austria-Hungary was concerned. Even the Hungarians wanted out, as they had in 1848. How much more so the subordinate nationalities?
This entire offering seems to be contrarian for its own sake. It is always good to revisit apparently settled issues, so this was not an entirely wasted effort by TIK, but in this case the traditional narrative wins hands down!
@@markaxworthy2281 Yeah. Even without Allied conspiracy, A-H was going away because Serbian, Italian and Romanian armies certainly weren't going to stop at the pre 1914 borders and were going to take the south and eastern chunks out of it and by this time army was pretty much gone. With Hungarians loosing Slavic bits they considered theirs there wasn't much reason for them to stay and nobody really to stop them, they already had full control over Hungarian units. This would only leave Central European Slavs, and they were pretty fed up with Viena too.
Only direct intervention by the Allies to prop up A-H could have made it stay arround, and even then it would have lost territory to Serbia, Romania and Italy. And possibly to newly formed Poland in confusion too.
Oh yeah. Also I think even Germans in Austria by that point were more interested into pan Germanism than in their Empire.
Inject âbut is this really the case?â Directly into my veins
Hey TIK, finished watching your video while playing War Thunder. (World of Tanks 2 you called it. Much to my grievance.) And I have to say on your video, and the basic history on the fall of the Austro-Hungary Empire; bloody heck.
Now I'm not trying to be derogatory or insulting or anything, and I'll keeping the swearing out as best I can. But the Balkans are a right mess of a place.
Looking forward to your next video. And always happy to learn more on anything you put up.
All this stuff should be being taught and explained to many. It clears a fair amount up and helps to set the picture on much now.
My interest level jumps to 11 every time when tik says âis this really the caseâ. Thanks tik!
Yeah, Its mostly Wilson s job... As a actual czech, I am actually pretty mad at him. He severed our nearly 1000 ( 1010) legacy within HRE/german sphere.
Wilson was entirely in the pocket of the Zionists, he was just a tool, no more and no less.
@@roodborstkalf9664 Erhm, if he was a tool of the Zionists, why did he broke one of the most Jew-tolerant countries?
But Czech hate Habsburg
@@stevensamuels4041 welcome to panslavism, son
@@thedevilneveraskstwice7027 LOL panslavism is a russian meme ideology
i've always heard, read and even learnt (back in the day) that austro-hungary split up because of the treaty of trianon, which was made by the victorious factions (not anyone in austro-hungary). so the country split up because they had to, if they liked it or not.
additionally to that apparently all non-austrian and non-hungarian peoples were happy about this, in the case of countries that did exist prior to this like romania and the ukraine also because their countries gained parts of the former austro-hungarian empire's territory, but also in general self rule was appreciated in the newly formed countries.
but most importantly it was because splitting up the beaten enemy was a sure-fire way of keeping them from ever causing trouble again, divide and conquer, as the romans said. same thing happened after ww2 with germany (for a while) so i'm quite certain they did the same here.
if you want some more details, the forced splitting up of the eastern (hungarian) territories hit hungary especially hard because of logistics among others: most large cities now were outside of hungarian borders, while hungary in the past had invested a lot of money into good railway connection from budapest directly to those surrounding cities, and all those cities connecting to their closest neighbours. in the new hungary there apparently were rails going from budapest in a star shape out into nowhere. the surrounding countries would have similar problems but on a smaller scale, i'd imagine.
True the victorious allies imposed the trianon treaty, the peace dictate was ready before they had heard the Hungarian delegation.
Trianon was against Wilson's self-determination theory, because it was NOT based on democratic plebiscite (general equal&secret ballots). Let's don't forget: Without democratic plebiscites about the borders, there was no demonstrable popular legitimacy/acceptance behind any territorial changes, so it could lead only to arbitrary political decisions (aka. dictate). It was not a wonder that Czech, Romanian and Serbian politicians vehemently PROTESTED against the very idea of democratic referendums about the borders at the Paris Peace Conference. Czech politicians didn't trust in Slovaks, because only very few Slovaks joined to the so-called "Czechoslovak"army against the Hungarians in 1919 (and Slovaks represented only 53% ratio in Northern parts of Hungary). Romanian politicians didn't trust in Transylvanian Romanians, perhaps they didn't want to join to the traditionally seriously backward & poor Romania (the ratio of Romanians were only 53% in Transylvania). Serbs were small minority (22% !!!) in Voivodine. Similar to Romania, Serbia was also a very backward Orthodox country without serious urbanization or industrialization. Just imagine how "civilized" were these countries: overwhelming majority of the population of the Kingdom of Romania and Kingdom of Serbia could not read and write in the era of the first WW1.
It was not wonder that the US Congress did not sign this anti-democratic dictate.
There was only one democratic plebiscite about the borders between Hungary and Austria: The Sopron area plebiscite in Western Hungary in 1921, there were general equal and secret ballots with electoral registers (or poll books) of the LOCAL residents, and every local citizen could take part in the elections over 18year, regardless the ethnicity, social status or sex. The polling stations and polling districts were under the control and supervision of the Western (Italian, British and French) ENTENTE officers. Some villages and towns voted to be part of Austria, some villages and city of Sopron voted to remain part of Hungary. Read about it here and watch the video: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sopron_plebiscite
Now, I understand *why* you didn't want to go into the *why* did the allies want to break up the empire... the video's already long enough on its own. However, I do think it could be an interesting video on its own. Likewise, I'm curious if you've given any thought as to how England's reaction to the formation of Germany in the 19th century influenced the goings-on in the 20th.
Also, the bit about the exhibitions was nice foreshadowing. "It's the economy, baka!"
As I understand it, Britain looked quite favourably towards the formation of Germany. During the 19th century, Britain's greatest rivals/threats were the French and the Russians. This was largely because Britain was a naval power with far flung interests, and only France & Russia could potentially challenge those interests. Germany then appears in the middle of Europe, a land based power with little coastline, no naval aspirations and also considering France and Russia to be her greatest potential threats. That makes Germany a clear and obvious friend and (potential) ally to Britain.
Germany had to work really hard to screw that up. They did this by directly challenging British control of the oceans by building up the second largest battle fleet in the world. If Germany hadn't made the foolish decision to build a huge fleet that they did not need and served only to provoke Britain, then WWI would either have not happened at all, or happened very differently. As in, a war with Britain allied with Germany against Russia & France. That would change everything.
Our family from Croatiaâ frontier, and Tyrol, and the south region
All
During the Reign of Karl and Franz Joseph
Weâre As Patriotic, Hell Nationalistic for Austro Hungaria
They hung there portraits in there bed rooms
They were in love
And if old or young enough to join the army looked at there service as a private
Hell franz Ferdinand they Loved too
Most âNationalistsâ were people who just loved there own country, just because Croatia joined Yugoslavia doesnât mean they hated there rule under Austro Hungarian, because the truth was, they kinda were there own country, they were closer to a dominion then a region, they had there own governmental structures, and voting styles
The separation of Austro Hungarian was more brutal then the treaty of Versailles, because Austro Hungarian was organized to operate a regional factory
For example
Hungarian, Galicia, Slovakia, Bosnia, Moravia harnest resources from agriculture
Bohemian and Austria Manufactured and mined goods Primarily
Slovenia and Croatia Exported them
Now what do you get once you separate them
All lot of poverty and dept
Because remember they are having to pay back from the war
So all though even to day we are different countries
I like to see us as people of the same ideas
4:17 "It has ceased to exist. It is an ex-empire"
Socialism and failure: name a more iconic duo.
Dear TIK! Great video, you condensed into 20 minutes a lot of new information. Unfortunately I believe this topic is a bit biased in the West and I doubt there are many great sources in English that actually look really deep (same with the Eastern Front of WW2 for the minor nations). There are so many internal factors besides the nationalistic and economical problems that one would need hours to explain it. Keep up the good work! Cheers!
Interesting as always. Btw i would like to hear your thoughts about the idea that the european hstory of the 1900ÂŽs was basically one long conflict starting with WW1 and ending when the ussr collapsed. Dont remember who said it but the idea was that WW1 pretty much gave birth to nazi germany, fascist italy and the soviet union wich lead to WW2 wich then lead to the cold war. It sure looks like that on the surface but is that really the case? Maybe that could be something to talk about in future videos, your work is much appreciated.
Also the Allies were intent on breaking up The Empire weren't they? And one of the driving points for The Entente's desire to break up Austria Hungary (beyond Anglo-American interests in expanding their markets) was Wilson's 14 points, which came in the spirit of Sovereignty of Nations and self Determination. Therefore I'd argue that although it may have not been the root cause of most common people, Nationalism was certainly a factor, especially among the elite, and Culture and public opinion tends to flow downstream, not the other way around
Edit: Okay I commented at 16:30 and 10 seconds later you mentioned Wilson and the 14 points so never mind then I guess lol
I would also say that while multiethnic and nationalist factors weren't fatal for an empire or nation, the Habsburgs ran into troubles. 1848 saw major nationalist revolutions that had to be quashed by (among others) Russian allied invasion, including a major Hungarian force that nearly reached Vienna. Stability only really returned after the Habsburgs and Austrians had to cede power to the Hungarian elite and make Austria-Hungary, and even then... Austria-Hungary was an unstable, multi ethnic mess *without a strong national character* because it was a dynastic state. And one that dabbled in odd Royal-Socialist economic nonsense to boot.
Reform was possible (indeed, it kind of happened in a halfhearted manner in 1867), and multiethnic and imperial control wasn't fatal. But the combination of autocratic, dynastic definition rather than shared national identity, Socialist lunacy, defeat in a global war, and the opposition of now very powerful internal and external factions that wanted it gone did it in.
Yes, the Entente engineered it so that Central Europe would remain weak and divided for the foreseable future. But they did too good of a job. The 20s and 30s were full of ethnic strife and small wars all over the place, and this chaos is what allowed extremists like Hitler and the Nazi party to come to power in German and easily sweep up the remains of Austria-Hungary into the Reich. Opps.
@@jamestheotherone742 I don't think there was this idea behind it, and in any case there were opportunities to stop the Hitler(who's rise to power depended on mystifying cause of defeat and economic depression as well as nationalist greed and would be unaffected by situation in Austria even if his origin was there).
@@llllib I think there was a certain greed and ambition behind the harsh treatment of Versailles. For the French it was more personal and about revenge, but for the Anglo Americans it was almost purely economic (while with the Americans it was also idealistic to an extent, as folks such as Wilson dreamed of expanding 'Democracy')
@@llllib The situation in Germany was very similar to the Austrian experience.
The strategy of the Entente and the aims of the Versailles et.al. treaties.
In regards to the "expired by" date of Dual Monarchy.
On 27th of October liquidation government was formed under H. Lammasch with specific task to coordonate the dissolution of Dual Monarchy
On 28th of October 1918, Viceroy of KIngdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia Antun Mihalovic has visited His Royal Majesty and ask to advice in regards to that. He was told by Emperor to "do as you please (mach was Sie wollen)".
On 29th of October Parlament (Sabor) of Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia (properly ellected legislation and governmental institution) in Zagreb proclaimed State (Republic) of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and it's independance.
On 30st of October Hungarian Parlament pass the resolution accepting separation of newly formed state from the Lands of St, Stephen and annulment of Settlement of 1868 which created last legal framework of Dual Monarchy. That is the day when Dual Monarchy legally ceased to exist.
And the small "blame" note: Imperor could not blame Czech and Serbs .Serbs were actually enemies, as their kingdom was at war with Dual Monarchy
More Serbs lived in A-H than in Serbia Proper.
@@andreastiefenthaler3811 There were more than 3 milions living in Kingdom of Serbia in 1914, and between 1.5 and 1.8 living in Dual Monarchy. Numbers for Dual Monarchy are actually about citizens with christian-ortodox religion not nationality.
@@agrameroldoctane_66 The Number of Serbians in the Empire was around 3 million. (you forgot Bosnia-Hercegovina, I suppose). In Serbia proper there whee about 3,5 Million inhabitants. True. But how many where "Macedonians", Albanians, Bosniaks or Vlach? about 1 million at least.
Good evening TIK! Completely agree with your point: multi-etnicity would have been one out of many factors amb probably the less important one compared to the incentives posed by external powers leaning to disintegration.
This is my second time I watch your channel and I love it, you are neutral and talk more komplex what politic and history is. Just keep it up! Bravo
Nobody can be neutral, everybody voice his/her thoughts by some kind of trust about what he/she has learnt/heard (and no human being can exhaust the whole knowledge of 'reality'). That's why we need a debate on EVERYTHING. Question Tik, question yourself, question everything, and then you'll be ready for freedom
Personally I am quite curious how history would go if it didn't collapse. It almost feels like there is a place for a strong state in this part of Europe.
For or less the same as we have now. In stead of a EU ruled from Brussels (informally ruled by the French) we would have another EU ruled from Vienna and/or Berlin (informally ruled by German speakers).
@@roodborstkalf9664 Well... modern EU is ruled by France/German partnership where Germany has the dominant role. France is more of a junior partner.
Secondly... I am quite skeptical that Austro-Hungary would expand over western Europe... and quite skeptical that it would be willing to be overtaken by Germany in the long run.
@@shogomakishima7224 : In practice the French are boss in the EU. Look at what has happened in the last two years. It's quite clear that Macron is in control. If Germans had won the war, Belgium would have become a member of new German/Austrian state, just like it was in the 18th century. In that configuration Netherlands would have developed quite close ties to this German/Austrian state. The same goes for Switzerland and Northern-Italy.
@@roodborstkalf9664 How again France is the boss of the EU? I can't name one thing they managed to push threw without the German approval. If you look at the economies of both countries, it is pretty obv who is the major benefactor of the EU. Macron can't even control his own country tbh.
It is hard to say what would happen if center powers won first WW... too much speculation. I was wondering more about what would happen if they lost but Austro-Hungary didn't fracture.
A-H would break up sooner or later. It was unstable because the many nations living in A-H did not want to be a part of A-H.
The reason why it split up was that it couldn't exact military control over territories that had large minority populations. Slavs didn't want to be (effectively) 3rd class citizens in that country to begin with and once the empire was its knees they grabbed the chance to get independence.
Thank you for the video, and highlighting the full reasons why the Austro-Hungarian empire had collapsed and I think that is often overlooked with the creation of the new states and how the were not split along ethnic lines. It is the policy of divide and rule, you do not create a fully national state of people of one culture/ethnicity as they become more united in their resistance. I forget the source and when it was quoted but if I recall correctly we British could not stand more than one super power in continental Europe. Also France had just recently lost a war to the Germans where Bismarck had tricked and defeated them. With Germany sinking US vessels prior to US entering the war any favour with them was ultimately lost. Given the U.S. dislike for empires it is not surprising that the Austro-Hungarian empire was dismantled.
Although not related to the topic and I'm not rich enough to ask on patreon, but will you please comment on the impact of Hitler's drug addiction on millitary decisions. I heard this on a comical CZcams video and started to wonder whether the classical narrative has some merit to it. I have seen your older videos and have understood that the classical narrative is wrong in strategic aspects, but I would like if you, with your expertise, comment on it.
Cardboard shoes in the Carpathian mountains is the cause.
Ok, but all I have to say about this is: But is this really the case?
Very good analysis and its framework can be used to explain the changes in poland, baltic and ottoman lands after ww1. Donald Bloxham uses the same approach in his book "Genocide, the World Wars and the Unweaving of Europe"
I disagree with your proposal that the states into which the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed did not collapse further.
We only need to look at what happened to Yugoslavia recently, or that after years of unease, the Czechs and Slovaks decided to go their separate ways. But even in the immediate aftermath of Trianon treaty, there was unrest, for example the uprising in Sopron / Odenburg which actualy briefly declared independence from both Austria and Hungary, but the allies did not allow that and instead permitted the famous plebiscite and the subsequent correction of the border. There has also in the period following the splitting up of the empire, and in a second wave following the end of WW2, been a wave of ethnic cleansing and exchange of populations across the entire region that basically weakened the standing of the remaining minorities and thus stabilized the status quo by de facto strengthening ethnical homogenity,, at least in certain areas. For example Slovenes were expelled from Hungarian Transdanubia and sent to Slovenia, while their houses were given to ethnic Hungarians being expelled from Slovenia. Cruel as these actions were, they may have prevented a further disintegration of the newly founded states.
Great video. The Austro-Hungarian empire was indeed multi-ethnic but only the Austrians and Hungarians had real power inside it, it had been dysfunctional for a long time because of this. The Magyar(Hungarians) landholding elite feared enfranchising other ethnicities would lessen their power. I think nationalism is a strong argument because of this. The other arguments you stated are still very valid but I wouldn't downplay nationalism.
The Hungarians had such a "real power" they couldn't stop the monarchy from going to war even tho they were strongly against it and did everything they could until it became unavoidable.. If you would have actually studied the power distribution you would know that Austria ruled absolute in all important ministries, especially in foreign relations. So its a real stretch to say Austrians and Hungarians had real power in it.
@@jacky9590 that's entirely beside the point.
In July 1849, the Hungarian Revolutionary Parliament proclaimed and enacted the WORLD's FIRST laws on ethnic and minority rights. It gave minorities the freedom to use their mothertongue at local administration, at tribunals, in schools, in community life and even within the national guard of non-Magyar councils. However these laws were overturned after the united Russian and Austrian armies crushed the Hungarian Revolution of 1848.
After the Kingdom of Hungary reached the Compromise with the Habsburg Dynasty in 1867 (Ausgleich), one of the first acts of the restored Hungarian Parliament was to pass a Law on Nationalities (Minority rights law: the act number XLIV of 1868).
The situation of minorities in Hungary was not even comparable to the contemporary pre WW1 Europe. Other highly multiethnic /multinational countries were: France Russia and UK.
See the multi-national UK:
The situation of Scottish Irish and Welsh people in "Britain" during the English hegemony is well known. They utmost forgot their original language,only English language cultural educational institutions existed. The only language was English in judiciary procedures and in offices and public administrations. In Wales Welsh children were beaten by their teachers if they spoke Welsh among each others. This was the infamous âWelsh Notâ policy... See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Not
The contemporary Irish question and tensions are well documented. The situation of Ireland was even a more brutal and bloody story. It was not a real "United" Kingdom, it was rather a greater England.
English legal system did not know the minority rights until the post ww2 period.
See the multiethnic France:
In the era of the Great French revolution, only 25% of the population of Kingdom of France could speak the French language as mothertongue. But even in 1870, France was still similar-degree multi-ethnic state as Hungary, only 50% of the population of France spoke the French language as mothertongue. The other half of the population spoke Occitan, Breton, Provençal, Catalan, Corsican, Alsatian, West Flemish, Lorraine Franconian, Gallo, Picard or Châtimi and Arpitan etc... Many minority languages were closer to Spanish languages or Italian language than French) French governments banned minority language schools, minority language newspapers minority theaters. They banned the usage of minority languages in offices , public administration, and judiciary procedures. The ratio of french mothertongue increased from 50% to 91% during the 1870-1910 period!!!
The situation in German Empire was well known (Polish territories and Sorbs)
Just look some Eastern countries in the oreintal so-called Eurasian (aka. Orthodox) civilization :
The legal system of pre-WW1 Kingom of Serbia did not know minority rights.
Also, the legal system of pre-WW1 Kingdom of Romania did not know minority rights, morover, Kingdom of Romania applied strong anti-Semitic disciminative laws against Jewish people, which was similar to Tzarist Russia. Read about it here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Romania#Treaty_of_Berlin_and_aftermath
Slavery disappeared during the high medieval period on Western Christian European soil, however it existed in Romanian territories until the mid 19th century! The Gypsy slavery and slave markets were abolished only in 1852!!! (Gypsies of Romania had similar status like blacks in USA before the civil war) See: books.google.com/books?id=df2mIOnbrDoC&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=gypsy+%22slave+markets%22+romania&source=bl&ots=5MY5_TxutD&sig=ACfU3U1E8Dvv2rkKhRSfOrnAbfwQgnlv3g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwith4_qqbntAhWSuIsKHZ37CpwQ6AEwAXoECAIQAg#v=onepage&q=gypsy%20%22slave%20markets%22%20romania&f=false and see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Romania
Just examine the high contrast between Kingdom of Hungary and contemporary pre WW1-era Europe:
The so-called "Magyarization" fantasy was not so harsh as the contemporary western European situation, because the minorities were defended by minority rights and laws. Contemporary Western European legal systems did not know the minority rights, therefore their political leaders loudly and proudly covered up their minorities by the force of law.
1.Were there state sponsored minority schools in Western European countries? NO.
2. How many official languages existed in Western-European states? Only 1 official language!
3. Could minorities use their languages in the offices of public administration in self-governments , in tribunals in Western Europe? No, they couldn't.
4. Did the minorities have own fractions and political parties in the western European parliaments ? No, no they hadn't.
5. What about newspapers of ethnic minorities in Western Europe? They did not exist in the West.... We can continue these things to the infinity.
The Austro-Hungarian compromise and its supporting liberal party remained bitterly unpopular among the ethnic Hungarian voters, and the continuous successes of these pro-compromise liberal parties in the Hungarian parliamentary elections caused long lasting frustration for Hungarians. The ethnic minorities had the key role in the political maintenance of the compromise in Hungary, because they were able to vote the pro-compromise liberal parties into the position of the majority/ruling parties of the Hungarian parliament. The pro-compromise liberal parties were the most popular among ethnic minority voters, however i.e. the Slovak, Serb and Romanian minority parties remained unpopular among their own ethnic minority voters. The coalitions of Hungarian nationalist parties - which were supported by the overwhelming majority of ethnic Hungarian voters - always remained in the opposition, with the exception of the 1906-1910 period, where the Hungarian-supported nationalist parties were able to form a government.
Well, it's complicated.
Some nationalities within the empire were more discontent than others.
The Hungarians for instance were generally loyal - Hungary even kept on being a monarchy until 1945 (a "monarchy with the monarch being absent": a weird concept. But it nethertheless shows that Hungary was clearly pro Habsburg).
The Poles were also rather loyal as they were treated better in the Empire than in Germany - and MUCH better than in Russia.
The Croats and Slowenes didn't have much to gain from being part of a Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia - and indeed quite happily supported the German invasion in 1941.
This leaves the Serbian minority and the Chech and Slovaks - who were probably among the most discontent minorities in the Empire.
But of course all these nationalities werde not of one mind. I am sure there existed a separatist minority in Hungary - as well as a loyalist minority in Bohemia.
=================
Anyway, the Empire is fascinating: at the time it appeared anachronistic. And also to 20th century historians it generally appeared anachronistic.
From today's point of view, it is strangely modern: a multi-ethnic Empire, which doesn't try to to enforce a centralized culture on all its citizens. Almost a blueprint for modern day USA or EU.
The Poles, Croats and Slovenes also had the Catholic connection to the Hapsburgs, and the Jewish citizens were quite loyal to the Empire because it was one of the least Anti-Semitic powers of Europe especially in Eastern Europe(due to the rulers not wanting to inflame any ethnic tensions).
What about rumanians and italiens? They surely had some seperatist movments there. Also you can expact that ukraniens wanted to be a part of the slavic russia state more then the german Habsburg empire
@@flolow6804 "What about rumanians and italiens?"
From the point of view of preserving the Empire, these were the least problematic, simply because there already existed an Italian and a Rumanian nation state.
The Habsburg Empire had lost the war - it was only natural that it had to cede some territory to the winners.
The Habsburg Empire's borders had fluctuated for centuries depending on the results of wars. (In fact, the Empire had been SMALLER a hundred years earlier and had since grown).
Ceding some marginal territory to Italy, Rumania and Russia wouldn't have meant the end of the Empire.
(Just as ceding some marginal territory to Poland and France didn't spell the end of the German Reich).
What caused the end of the Empire was that it was totally carved up by the creation of NEW states that hadn't existed before.
Hi TIK. I love your channel and think its very informative, I learn something new every time.
I don't know if this comes under your remit, but I've been seeing a lot of dubious takes online regarding the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki suggesting a narrative that the bombings were unnecessary as Japan was about to surrender regardless.
Accompanying comments suggesting that the nuclear bombings were just as bad as events such as the rape of Nanking give me reason to believe these people may be pushing an agenda rather than basing their opinions on evidence. Id be interested to know whether historical evidence indeed suggests that the surrender of Japan was as a result of America possessing nuclear weapons, or that Japan was intending on surrendering before the bombings and that the bombings were unwarranted.
I'd be interested to see what you have to say on this.
Is this the first video which is NOT about WW2? Just curious.
P.S.: I've been a fan for quite some time and I enjoy your videos, please keep up the good work and never lose your passion.
This is a weird video for me. From what I was taught, TIK's position on this is the mainstream one: the AH empire was weak, its people were starving and its army was deserting. The nationalists in the various ethnic regions decided to rise up and the ethnic populations joined in because they no longer saw an upside to being part of the Empire. The same happened to the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire (the Soviets had to fight many bloody wars to regain some of the territories that seceded). The Germans lost its Polish territories and even the victorious British ended up losing Ireland.
The collapse was caused by a multitude of factors which were not helped by the fact that other nations saw no reason to maintain the AH Empire as a political entity.
From my perspective TIK seems to argue against fringe positions that seem to be popular in his circles.
Spot on. I thought the exact same thing. Perhaps a chicken & egg argument, but nationalism was definitely a contributing factor.
TIK is really good in military history, but as an economist he is completely useless with his ultra-dogmatic faith in so called free market.. Short example: in AH Empire there was no coffee because it is produced in tropical areas, and Empire is under the naval blockade. TIK just closes his eyes and imagines the invisible hand of the market deals with a problem, creating coffee out of thin air.
You do really brilliantly researched videos.
TIK, love your work, I think on this episode you forgot to add that the multi-ethnicity of the empire didn't meant equal rights for everyone, it was multi-ethnic, yes, but some ethnic groups (germans, hungarians) had more rights than others (Romanians, Serbs, etc) and since 1848 there was dissent and a struggle for equal rights.
I feel like we need a plan B for when it is actually the case
8:30
Yes, i'm nitpicky, but "Verkehrsanstalt" is spelled wrong ^^
Grammar Nazi. Joke
@@danielaramburo7648 heheh
The funniest thing abput it is that, Iâm swiss. So âGrammar Frontâ would be an even funnier alternative xD
@@gameer0037 I have not heard the term âgrammar frontâ.
@@danielaramburo7648 just a dumb joke.
Before and during ww2, we had a national socialist moving in switzerland, called âthe national frontâ.
Its a (dumb) pun.
you can make quite a strong twine from nettles (the stem), you can also dye cloth with the leaves, so cloth from nettles seems fairly reasonable to me.
I thinks it's German nationalism that cracked foundation of multi-ethnic state, Habsburg's offensive remarks and policies toward other which favored Germans in key positions create the environment in which Slav or Hungarian people felt that "it's not OUR state", estranging further from idea of building common state under rule of Germanic Habsburgs. War hardships only accelerated that process leading to collapse and situation where "everybody went different way".
It's similar to fall of USSR, where similar conditions happened resulting in collapse of empire.
- "leader nation" nationalism pushed endangered minor nations into reactionary nationalism and disillusionment with empire
- ideological bankruptcy, so hard that at some point even ruling elites are disillusioned
- economic hardships blamed on "top", "empire", "head" accelerate the decentralisation process and leads to break inside power structure. People (across social stratas) feel that problems can be solved without "empire parasite" and "in our way, by us".
Few notes from Croatian perspective:
1848. Croatia felt threatened by Hungarian nationalist revolutionary government. That's why Croatians were pro-Habsburg. Croatian army under JelaÄiÄ helped squash revolution in Hungary and Wienna. Because of that we earned the wrath of Marx and Engels as "unhistoric nation that deserved to be exterminated" or some similar lovely communist dribble like that.
WW1. A-U was terribly disorganized and outmoded. One example: in the kingdom of Dalmatia was famine, in the kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia a relief operation was organized. The authorities forbid relief to cross the border between kingdoms because Dalmatia was in Austrian part, and Croatia in Hungarian part. Sheer lunacy.
The factor that most pressed Croatia at the end were Italians (and Serbians). We could have stayed strong, cling to Habsburgs, or remain independent, but in that case we would be a defeated power, and as such we would lose lion share or the territory to Italy and Serbia. Check the secret 1915. treaty of London with Serbia and what Entente promised to Italy.
OTOH we could unite with Serbia ASAP and try to do battle with Italians on the negotiation table.
Not all were pleased with this and in December 1918. a massive demonstration was held in Zagreb main square for independent Croatia, some of them were gunned down by pro-Yugoslav forces.
Very good comment. Most of this is new to me. In general you can say that history is written by the winners.
Well now, one third of your historic territory had been inhabited by orthodox Serbs at the time when WWI was over and Wilson and Clemenceau ordered that Dalmatia would only remain slavic if included in a sort of Yugoslav state of sorts. Nothing to complain about, if not for Yugoslavia in 1918, Croatia now would have lost most of its seaside territory to Italy. In all honesty, you had no choice !
@@roodborstkalf9664 czcams.com/video/MoXYE5rj2w0/video.html
Serbia was crazy in it's wish to unite with the Croatians and Slovenes in a pan-Slavic state. It should have only taken the ethnic Serb populated territories and created a homogenous greater Serbian state not the multiethnic Yugoslav kingdom...
"Croatia felt threatened by Hungarian nationalist revolutionary government", but JelaÄiÄ didn't want to negotiate with the hungarians and in fact he attacked without provocation. Hungary wasn't openly hostile towards Crotia, thegovernment simply didn't decide what to do with the minorities, but they didn't made decisions about other important questions and btw the main reason Hungary made an army after the revolution was the threat of a south slav attack.
"Croatian army under JelaÄiÄ helped squash revolution in Hungary" not really, the Croats were defeated, when they attacked. And they didn't really help the austrians defeat Hungary, because Austria didn't defeat Hungary. The russian intervention was the reason for the defeat. The austrian army was deafeated and nearly encircled.
More Stalingrad please?
I'm working on it. But it takes time
@@TheImperatorKnight is there a timeline or plan you follow? (For example 3ĂQ&A between each season) Or is it more of an 'im ready when im ready
Your pronounciation has become far better by now. Kudos to you. I respect your work spirit.
TIK, great video as always, only one thing that really bothered me was your argumentation at the start. Regarding Czechosklovakia - the whole point of the czechoslovakist movement was that in their respective territorries, czechs would not form a decisive majority against the germans and slovaks against hungarians, but combined, they could (ie Czechoslovak nation combined would outweigh both the hungarians and the germans). Also, the argument that it was multiethnic was really not that important Imho. The desired state was supposed not to be multinational, the real one ended up being though - mixing up this really is not fair. Not to mention the fact that it was this ethnic tension that led to the downfall of the first Czechoslovak republic (amongst other things). Just a detail but since your standards are pretty high, I find it appropriate to point this out
I disagree.
The Austrian empire was always connected with Germanization and oppression of ethnic minorities. There had always been nationalism and it was quite common in educated middle class. Of course, largely due to limited concessions and autonomy, it was not as radical as nationalism present amongst the ethnic minority populations of German Empire or Russian Empire, but it still was there, and the goal of all nationalist movements was always establishing an independent nation in the lands of their homeland (theoretically as seen through the ethnic lense, in practice it was not purely ethnic, but also based on the old, traditional regional borders, even if the region was inhabited by somebody else)
Such view on the Empire prevailed amongst the minorities. War was the catalyst of the collapse, because it weakened the empire and made it possible to dismantle it, as it lost had lost the war. Of course it also caused poverty, which made it far easier for the nationalists to rally support, but the nationalism had always been there and it was a *huge* factor in the collapse of K.u.K. Austria-Hungary.
In answer to TIK's signature "But is this really the case?" -- in this case, Yes.
But in the sources I have, they talk about all the ethnicities and nationalities rallying to the Austro-Hungarian flag at the beginning of WW1. So, why did they do that, if the regime was so oppressive of ethnic minorities?
(The exception in 1914 was the Serb minority, because obviously they went to war with the Serbs and they did start oppressing them then.)
@@TheImperatorKnight I know precisely what you mean by "all the ethnicities and nationalities rallying to the Austro-Hungarian flag at the beginning of WW1." Europeans at the time were largely influenced by the war hysteria and the "warmongering culture" of early 1900's, which was so influential it even made many generals, as in what is supposed to be serious military personnel, extremely overconfident. The journalists, the intelligentsia, the military, talked about a war to cleanse Europe of decadence, to test out nation's strength in a noble battle, to crush the hated enemy etc etc. Of course not everyone thought so, but jingoism was popularized.
But the nationalists were mostly not that enthusiastic. As I have stated, once the empire became weak, the nationalists were able to bring their vision into reality. By then, the bizarre atmosphere of pre-war Europe, where everyone except for the pacifists and socialists was all too eager to finally engage, was gone, the war destroyed all the illusions and provided a ground for the nationalists to gain a lot of support: hunger, sorrow, poverty, death of friends and relatives, frustration.
The Czechs remembered that their nobility had been exterminated by Austrians in the 1600s and their population germanized so much, that their language had to be created anew, because it was only spoken by peasants, who of course formed no formal standards of language. Slovaks were then basically seen as mountain Czechs.
The Romanians living in the Carpathians wanted to unite with Romania. Obviously, the ethnic situation there was and still is complicated with that big ethnic island of Szeklerland.
The Poles always wanted to rebuild their nation and treated Galicia And Lodomeria only as Poland's Piedmont.
The Ukrainians in East Halychyna (Galicia) were largely influenced by Russian Panslavic propaganda, but their nationalism was, at the time, in very early stages.
The Serbs were obviously hostile and wanted to take Western Balkans, inhabited by people who spoke the same language (except for Slovenia, different story).
Such were the points nationalists made when they wanted to escape the Austrian rule.
Even Hungarians wanted to be free, as the treatment of Hungarians within the Empire wasn't exactly all too kind until 1867. Even then, Hungary was the lesser partner and Hungarians remembered 1848 very well. OF course, Hungarians were treated very, very harshly by the Entente, but that's a different story.
My source is mostly "Suicide of Europe. Great War 1914-1918".
@@TheImperatorKnight To paraphrase Zinn: there are no opinion polls from that period. Personally, I would be very skeptical of sweeping statements such as "all the ethnicities ... rall(ied) to the Austro-Hungarian flag." Sure, you'll find examples of newspapers praising the war effort and rallying to the flag - not doing so would likely have landed somebody in jail.
I'm from Slovakia, and I can assure you, based among other things on the various novels I've read set in the Great War, often by people who had lived through it, that this was not the case.
One of the best books about the war, The Good Soldier Ć vejk, opens with Ć vejk being arrested because his enthusiastic expressions of support for the war are construed as mocking the emperor. If the mood had been one of everybody rallying to the flag, this scene would have come off as fake. The author had served in the war, the first part of the book was released in 1921. It should be considered a semi-reliable source for what the popular mood may have been like.
In Slovakia, the people were so poor I would very much doubt their enthusiastic support of anything, let alone the war. The books written by Slovak authors virtually always treat the war as yet another tragedy that befell an already impoverished and opressed people.
And speaking of the regime being oppressive - it wasn't one regime, it was two.
The Austrian part was fairly liberal as well as more economically developed - which ironically led to the development of intellectual movements demanding greater autonomy and/or liberation - often in the shape of a pan-slavic country often led by Russia.
The Hungarian part was much more heavy handed in its treatment of ethnic minorities - especially after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, which led to a policy of "Magyarization" - the closure of schools teaching in minority languages, making Hungarian the sole administrative language within the Kingdom of Hungary, police crackdown on intellectuals advocating nationalist (ethnic) causes.
So, I'm not sure how accurate your soures are on this topic, I would wager that the answer is not very.
@@varhYT The notion that the Czech language had to be "created anew, because it was only spoken by peasants" is not correct. Sure, the language was codified, but not because it had fallen into disuse, it hadn't. Czech national revival had taken place in the first half of the 19th century and there were a number of Czech language books, newspapers, plays, and operas.
Slovaks did not have a political presence at the time, most of their intellectual life took place in the US.
What Slovak intellectuals there were were opposed to the war, I very much doubt the average peasant would have been particularly excited to leave his family to go fight a war.
Greetings from "Austria-Hungary". I find this borderline demagogical and frankly very lazy. As if nationalism in the Balkans didnt ignite WW1 and the troubles within and outside A-H before the war in the first place. You could likewise argue that nationalism didnt really drive WW2 and german aggressive imperialist expansionism because there were "economical reasons behind it" - which would also be an empty sophism.
Also major local movements for independence were very active before the war as well as in its early years, long before any hunger or economical struggle was apparent - for example Czech separatist politicians sitting on death row in Austria, Czech legions forming in Kiev, far away from the Austrian war-time reality, these were often people who never even set foot in A-H, the separatist movement being largely financed and supported by expats in the US.
As for the "multi-ethnicity" of slavic countries like Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia - how is that different from Spain, France, Germany or Italy, that were also put together from (often dozens of) various duchies and provinces with even different languages and traditions? Czechoslovakia wasnt multiethnic because Czechs wanted so - they simply needed big enough country to even stand the slightest chance against Austria, Hungary and Germany (they didnt), also their historical borders now included over 3 millions of Germans that simply moved in.
"A-H" fell apart because other powers wanted it to? What empty truism, isnt that ALWAYS the case? Fall of British empire, split of Germany, fall of the USSR... You could always childlishly argue that it fell apart because other powers wanted it to.
As for "socialism always failing", somehow great many of the former A-H countries went towards a socialist path and/or had the biggest socialist and communist parties in the world, weird, huh?
Just one thing I wanted to point out. The 3rd Reich did not have a Imperialist nature. It had a social-darwinist casus-belli against lesser races. Hitler despised western empires who conquered land then started interbreeding with other races. The intent of Imperialist conquering was to extract and subvert a population into its dominion. Hitler would've exterminated almost all peoples to make space for lebensraum. The plan was known as General Plan Ost and it was in act since they started stealing all food of the conquered people. All of this because I know the difference between being a Pole in the 3rd Reich and being a Native in Portuguese Brazil.
@@Jojo-hm1do I dont think colonialism and imperialism are conflated with one another: typically, colonialism is strictly driven by commercial intentions, while imperialism needs to be ideological. Colonialism also suggests some distinctive separation (geographical, legislative...) between the empire and its colony.
I am well aware of the plan, but it also differed greatly from place to place. While Poles and Russians were indeed meant to "make room" for German settlers, inhabitants of Bohemia or Moravia certainly were not and were intended to be mostly assimilated and gradually germanized, not to mention many puppet states like Hungary and Slovakia that were given relatively free hand.
@@f4ust85 I know I took a different route of Imperialism: Colonization. But what I was trying to explain was that Imperialism is just conquering land and annexing to a existing empire. Also I know Hungary, Bohemia and others countries didn't suffer that much by the hands of the Nazis. It's because they were to be considered in a caste closer to the Aryan race or Nordic race. Such qualifications was given trough out the Reich to almost anyone who were considered cooperative to Hitler. You may or not already know that Arabs were considered the same as Italians. This just because the guy from palestine flew to Germany to enter in direct contact with Hitler. (I don't remember his name, but he was a very important man to the british) I would say that no matter how we view Nazi Germany, we would always get the conclusion that everything they did was because of Racism. Imperialism is more about power and control, Nazi ideology is more about the annihilation, competition and assimilation of certain races. Is just applying everything that darwin said to Humans then turning it upside down. Peace!
@@Jojo-hm1do I would still say that the racial drive is very problematic - lets not forget other nations and ethnicities that were not only allies, but formed their own SS divisions, some one and half million Soviet citizens fought on the Axis side (typically against other Slavs), many of them worked as "Hiwis" that actively participated on the Holocaust (one could almost make a bad joke that there are more war criminals from Auschwitz with Ukrainian than German surnames). All this was ideologically explained and legalized.
Is Wilhelm II also driven by racism when he actively pursued very much the same geopolitical advances? Its just like claiming that Soviet expansionism was fully driven by class struggle, the komintern and world revolution - while in reality, it was an imperialist policy that simply followed the principles, borders buffer zones and long-term strategies set forth by tsarist Russian empire already, well-being of the working class in Mongolia or Latvia had very little to do with it. Ideologies come and go and geopolitics stays largely the same.
Interesting justification for Hungary . The feudal.land tenure in Hungary, followed by Horti and his modern day equivalent Orban.
TIK. I applaud your bravery! It would also be an interesting topic how Austria created said nationalism within the monarchy as a weapon against the Hungarian part, which exemplified vividly during the 1848-49 war, leading to even smaller genocides.
I am staying late just to to watch your videos
Well, I hope it's worth it!
So once again the most common and effective measure of a wartime economy that has only two parameters for its success planning capacity of the state bureaucracy and commodity moving capacity (and efficiency in extent) of the national transport system, the central planning and rationing of resources accordingly (that everybody - even USA in WW2 -, ever, came to use with great effect during crisis), is to blame for the fall of the austrian empire...
Not that their admin has crap and they couldnt plan their way out of a paper towel, not their inefficiency because of language and cultural barriers and problems that they always had (and not that were not a nationalist problems) not that their rail system was bad, disorganized, difficult to plan, with different gauges, lacking locomotives. Not to mention conscription of the needed manpower to farm, killing them in stupid attacks in italy and balkans. (all easy to research since WW 1 in real time is a channel with all of the data in there)
No... but those pesky (somehow) commie ideas of central planning of the economy that everybody employ because free market always works... somehow magically with no planning by anyone and solve all problems buy her divine hand (that never comes in the times of need).
I didn't say that central planning caused the end of the Austrian Empire. Please actually watch the video before commenting.
@@TheImperatorKnight Not it alone, but you presented it as a factor that at best had a major contribution because of the hardship and famine that it produced and the corresponding disillusion to the population. You basically recognize it as a root cause (one of them).
Then spent a good few minutes critiquing it, before returning to the "nationalism conundrum".
Furthermore it is a permanent feature of your analysis (free market economy critique) in any of your not pure military videos and that is why it is so noticeable (for god shake black market exploiters were presented in the video about greek famine as "economy heroes").
When i comment i watch the video first, dont worry.
I remember reading that the main reason the Crown Prince was paying a state visit to Sarajevo, in spite of the danger thereof, was so that his wife could share his status as a full-blown Empress, which was possible in Serbia but impossible in the Crown Prince's Empire, where she was of a lesser rank, what with obscure court protocals which no one but obsessive courteriers cared about :
www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/10930863/First-World-War-centenary-the-assassination-of-Franz-Ferdinand-as-it-happened.html
"... Franz Ferdinand married Countess Sophie Chotek for love, for which both paid a price. She was from a Czech noble family but was deemed unfit to be a Habsburg bride; she had been a lady-in-waiting to Archduchess Isabella, whose sister Franz Ferdinand was expected to marry. Their marriage was morganatic, meaning their children were excluded from the line of succession. Although she was made Duchess of Hohenberg in 1909, the slights were constant at functions such as imperial banquets, where she had to enter the room last...".
When that sort of nonsense is deemed all important, the state has lost the right to exist and ceases to make any sense ...see the French Revolution
In discussing the role of nationalism it's worth considering that beginning around 1860 the European powers began to implement systems of "national education" (to use a term current in The UK at that time) to effectively "nationalise" the population.
Not being dominated by a single nationality The Empire couldn't do this and this was a major reason why defeat caused it to collapse.
If TIK hearts this comment, hes an oni-chan weebo!
Originally this was a different comment that TIK gave a heart, but when i edited it the heart went away. This is the day i learned youtube is smarter than me.
@@TribuneAquila lol
Treaty of Bucarest (1916), declaration of corfu (1917), Pittsburgh agreement between USA and Czechoslovaquia (1918). Some examples that the partition was already rearranged and the "socialism made AH collapsed" theory it's in my opinion totally wrong...
True the partition was prearranged, in part as promises to allies like Romania and Italy.
This was an interesting video. WW1 seems to have a lot of singular conclusions about why things happened as they did, when indeed the reality was a lot more complicated. In the case of Austria-Hungary, I think a more stable version of it could have persisted if not for the devastation that was the first world war, however their interference and jockeying for power in the Balkans seemed to be a significant factor in their entry into the first world war, after all it was a balkan slavic nationalist who killed the heir to the Hapsburg monarchy.