We’ve talked about the Austro-Hungarian
Empire for over four years now, and not just about the war in the field, but what was going
on at home. At this point, in 1918, that empire seems
destined do dissolve. Postwar, when that dissolution happened, the
empire was most often portrayed as “doomed to fail”, but was that really the case? Let’s find out by looking at the Austrian
part in particular. I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to a Great War
Special Episode about Austria-Hungary and the First World War. Now, the Hungarian and Austrian parts of the
empire were equal and had shared financial, foreign, and war policies, but had mostly
independent inner workings. In the Austrian part over the 5-6 decades
before the great war, domestic conflicts with the various minorities slowly led to the successive
governments adopting minority demands, so eventually they mostly had equal rights with
the German majority, and in 1907 all men were given suffrage. In fact, the Austrian Reichsrat - Parliament
- allowed the following languages in session: German, Czech, Polish, Croatian, Serbian,
Slovenian, Italian, Romanian, and Russian... but did not provide translators. As in other legislatures, filibustering was
a common tactic for any of the 40 odd factions to obstruct business, so members of the Reichsrat
could hold endless speeches in their native tongues that only a few other people could
even understand, and it even became a tourist attraction. A Berlin journalist wrote: “Unlike the theaters
or opera houses of the city (Vienna), visiting the Parliament was free.” The struggle between the political establishment
and the minorities created multiple crises, notably in 1897 and 1905. We covered these in our specials about different
parts of the empire and our Franz Josef special, but to underline how serious the situation
was in 1905, the Austrian Ministry of War had plans to quell Hungarian troublemakers
by bombarding Budapest with the Danube flotilla. But it was a conflict with the Czechs in 1913,
though, that had lasting consequences for the war. See, in the Reichsrat the Germans were blocking
the local Bohemian Parliament’s work, Bohemia being the Czech crown lands. This led to Austrian Minister-President Count
Karl von Stürgkh dissolving it. This in turn angered the Czechs in the Reichsrat
so they began blocking the Austrian Parliament. Stürgkh then simply put the Reichsrat on
hold. This lasted from 1914 to 1917 and during that
time Austria was governed by emergency decree. The first major consequence of that was that
during the July Crisis in 1914, Parliament could not act as a controlling or stabilizing
influence. But I have to point out that though political
crises were commonplace, none of these conflicts ever usually questioned the existence of the
monarchy itself since it provided stability, even to the most minority politicians in Vienna. But that view evolved over the course of the
war and you can see that in Stürgkh’s assassination in October 1916 by the son of a well-known
Socialist. You may think that such an assassination from
the left would cause all sorts of issues, but instead, everybody was mostly okay with
it since most everybody saw him as a major obstacle. The Austrian population held him responsible
for the deteriorating food and supply situation, Army Command thought he was a roadblock on
the path to military dictatorship, for the minority peoples of the empire his steadfast
loyalty to the Emperor meant growing tensions between those peoples couldn’t be resolved,
and even his German ally didn’t like him. Fast forward, though, to Parliament being
recalled in May 1917, and the situation was so out of control that inner unity was no
longer possible. The German majority of Austria no longer cared
about the minority peoples - they were loyal to their German ally and winning the war would
make all the hardships worth it and return the Empire to its former glory. Groups like the Czechs and Poles grew more
and more alienated, and every day of hunger, every issue that had not been resolved under
the emergency decrees, and every dead countryman lost in yet another military disaster was
another reason for independence. It’s also worth noting here that there are
numerous reports of atrocities towards minorities of the Empire committed by Austro-Hungarian
troops in the frontier regions; certain officers ruled by fear to “pacify the rear” and
a whole village could be burned down if one man was deemed too suspicious. Ruthenians and Serbs particularly suffered
from this, and of course news of this reached home and only inflamed tensions. As for the Austro-Hungarian economy... Prewar, it lagged behind those of other European
powers, but the Empire was economically stable and not in danger of collapse as has sometimes
been portrayed. But there were problems. The Austrian part of the empire was home to
major heavy industry, but from 1906 the iron industry stagnated, and the Balkan Wars of
1912 and 1913 hit the textile and paper industries hard (why?). One major stabilizing force was the heavy
arms industry, though, and one big part of them was Steyr. Up to the outbreak of the war, Steyr had delivered
hundreds of thousands of rifles to Serbia, Romania, and Greece. The Empire had been self-sufficient in terms
of food before the war as well. A lot of the agricultural land, though, was
in places like Galicia in the east and needed to reach Austria by train. When the war began, it became immediately
obvious that there were not enough locomotives or rolling stock to handle requirements, and
existing ones could not be maintained because they were needed non-stop. Already in 1914, there were huge stores of
grain and coal that just lay waiting around for transport that was unavailable. And what was available had to transport soldiers
and supplies to both the Serbian and Russian borders. The military took priority and the civilians
quite simply could not be kept supplied. To worsen the issue, when huge numbers of
farmers became soldiers, agricultural production collapsed and the food situation in Vienna
grew dire. And imports of either food or trains were
not an option because of the Allied blockade of the Mediterranean; especially once Romania
joined the war. By the numbers, in 1915 a worker in Vienna
got on average half the daily calories he had in 1913; by 1918 it was half of 1915. The Austrian economy shrank by 40% by 1918. In 1919, it was estimated that 10% of civilian
deaths in Vienna were directly because of hunger, and 20-30% as a result of malnutrition. During the war, civilian unrest over the food
situation was commonplace, and in 1916 hunger riots broke out - by which time 500,000 people
were lining up daily for supplies. By 1917 and 1918, riots and strikes were ever
more frequent. Germany – through the Hindenburg program
– demanded that Austria-Hungary double the output of its military production facilities,
which made it worse for civilians. Austrians tried their luck getting food from
Hungary, which was more agricultural, so Hungary enacted harsher border customs and police
patrols. When Imperial Foreign Minister Count Czernin
pleaded with Hungary to send food transports to Austria, the reply from the Hungarian Agricultural
Minister was, “If Austria is starving, they shouldn’t fight a war.” By 1918, the striking had escalated. Up to 700,000 workers at a time would strike
for food and there was also a fear of a German military invasion of Bohemia to secure military
production and keep it running. When the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is signed
in March, ending the war for Russia, Austria-Hungary agreed to its terms on condition that the
Empire gets part of the food supplies - those supplies never arrive. The Austrian Home Guard then seized 2,500
train cars of corn en route via ship to Germany, desperate to alleviate the situation. But as we know by now from the regular episodes,
that situation is anything but alleviated, and the centuries old empire is really by
now an empire in name only. I’ll end today with a quote from Swiss observers
of the situation in late 1918, “The populace is starving and freezing, the civil guards
are not to be counted on, the constant greed for food has a demoralizing effect on the
entire people, theft is commonplace. Beggars, cripples, homeless families, neglected
families, riffraff on the streets: a mortally wounded, dying city, this is what has become
of the once so magnificent Vienna.” We want to thank Michael Mallat for the research
for this episode. If you want to learn more about the Hungarian
part of the Empire, you can click right here for our special episode about that. Follow us on Twitter or Instagram for even
more WW1 facts and don’t forget to subscribe. See you next time.
