Eh both of those cases were during the occupation of Hungary when much of AH's budget and strength was sapped by garrisons in Hungary. In light of WWI, and the horrific losses sustained during it, I'd say the compromise resolved that lack of staying power.
What could Austria Hungary could of done to fix its Over Diversity and National instability in its Ethnic army, and government.
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In some ultra A-H wank when they get Congress Poland and ideally also some more Polish parts of OG Russian partitions (western Volhynia and western Belarus + Vilnius land) + CP victory, which leads to trialist idea (Austria-Hungary-Poland) being fulfilled as Galician Poles hoped, that is a given, other options - outright subservience to Germany or vengeful Russia are way worse + Poland can be an "advocate" for less numerous Slavic nations in empire.
In hindsight it is obvious, but couldn’t some propaganda work to keep the peoples of the empire together? The elites and intellectuals, I presume, would be the most interested to stir separatist sentiments, but is it really in the best interests of the everyone else? I’ve read the Jews were very loyal, and with good reason. It’s not the same thing making business or building a career as a bureaucrat in one of Europe’s largest and most important powers, than in a collection of small third-rate (from an economic and military standpoint) countries?
United they are relevant and strong enough, to face aggressive neighbors (Russia and Germany mostly, I wouldn’t count Italy or the other Balkan states as a big threat) or be part of an alliance of great powers as partners. Once the empire was gone, all these countries would be bullied or invaded throughout the rest of the 20th century, becoming part of Germany’s or Russia sphere of influence. Hungary lost more than it gained by becoming “free”. The same can be said about Bohemia, Galicia and Croatia.
I think a part of the population took for granted many things and didn’t appreciate the relative safety and prosperity they had being part of a multi-ethnic empire as Austria-Hungary, once it was gone, they were easy prey for other countries. The solution is not to disband but to find a way to get their voices heard in Vienna. An independent and thriving Hungary in the 20th century was a dream, it has too many hostile neighbors and few resources for it to succeed. I guess they took the “I’d rather rule in hell than to serve in heaven” too seriously.
United they are relevant and strong enough, to face aggressive neighbors (Russia and Germany mostly, I wouldn’t count Italy or the other Balkan states as a big threat) or be part of an alliance of great powers as partners. Once the empire was gone, all these countries would be bullied or invaded throughout the rest of the 20th century, becoming part of Germany’s or Russia sphere of influence. Hungary lost more than it gained by becoming “free”. The same can be said about Bohemia, Galicia and Croatia.
I think a part of the population took for granted many things and didn’t appreciate the relative safety and prosperity they had being part of a multi-ethnic empire as Austria-Hungary, once it was gone, they were easy prey for other countries. The solution is not to disband but to find a way to get their voices heard in Vienna. An independent and thriving Hungary in the 20th century was a dream, it has too many hostile neighbors and few resources for it to succeed. I guess they took the “I’d rather rule in hell than to serve in heaven” too seriously.
All the suffering in Yugoslavia during and after WW2, Same for Galicia and Hungary.
Worldwide Deaths in World War II | The National WWII Museum
| Country | Military Deaths | Total Civilian and Military Deaths |
| Austria | 261,000 | 384,700 |
| Czechoslovakia | 25,000 | 345,000 |
| Hungary | 300,000 | 580,000 |
| Poland | 240,000 | 5,600,000 |
| Romania | 300,000 | 833,000 |
| Yugoslavia | 446,000 | 1,000,000 |
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If you're quoting this from somewhere, you'd be best off citing it to be safe.
Mhm yeah training officers especially ones that require mutiple lanugages proficiency takes time and with how many die in the first opening months of ww1…
This is completely unrelated but I just looked up "Best Generals in history" and was greeted by this.
I’ve been thinking about it, but what about the introduction of “Schulländer/Bildungsländer” as territorial units in which every student is required to learn two recognised languages of the region? Take as an example a “Böhmisches Schulland”, an “Erblande Schulland” or a “Galizisches Schulland”.
Schooling would be done in the mother language of the students obviously (and as law dictates), but there would be mandatory classes in a second tongue, which in effect means that most minorities would be encouraged to learn German (or Hungarian in Hungary, but for the sake of compromise you might want this language to be an elected one if there are multiple languages recognised in the “Schulland”) while Germans and Hungarians would have to learn a minority language (or each others’ languages in the case of “core Austria” and „core Hungary”).
Would this piss off nationalists? Of course it would, but I would assume that the state could print propaganda posters like showing how most every language of the empire would gain speakers, making every language more wide-spread. You would of course have to get around the article in the constitution that forbids forcing languages on people, but nothing else would have to change. AH could still give soldiers the right to be led in their language, you could still demand to have your papers be done in your native tongue, etc, but there would be a back up in case of an emergency. Besides mandating a bilingual education for every child in the empire the language rights of the constitution could be maintained.
Schooling would be done in the mother language of the students obviously (and as law dictates), but there would be mandatory classes in a second tongue, which in effect means that most minorities would be encouraged to learn German (or Hungarian in Hungary, but for the sake of compromise you might want this language to be an elected one if there are multiple languages recognised in the “Schulland”) while Germans and Hungarians would have to learn a minority language (or each others’ languages in the case of “core Austria” and „core Hungary”).
Would this piss off nationalists? Of course it would, but I would assume that the state could print propaganda posters like showing how most every language of the empire would gain speakers, making every language more wide-spread. You would of course have to get around the article in the constitution that forbids forcing languages on people, but nothing else would have to change. AH could still give soldiers the right to be led in their language, you could still demand to have your papers be done in your native tongue, etc, but there would be a back up in case of an emergency. Besides mandating a bilingual education for every child in the empire the language rights of the constitution could be maintained.
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If you KNOW it i off topic what would you willfully try to derail the thread?
Don't do that!
Austria Hungary collapsed because it lost a major war.
If that hadn't happened maybe it could have unscrewed some of its worse problems.
If that hadn't happened maybe it could have unscrewed some of its worse problems.
Agreed.
Conrad and Co thought a war would fix their issues, FF thought it would turn out poorly. He had a plan to reorganize things, Conrad had a plan to attack Hungary.
FF or Karl could have saved AH.
The Hapsburgs suffered from ruling an anachronism adjacent to a powder keg in the Balkans, emerging industrial, urbanized ethnic states to the west in Germany and Italy, each suspicious of Vienna for historical reasons, and a backward paranoid basket case to the east in the Russian Empire. The position is as unenviable as it is untenable. The best unifying element in the empire is arguably Catholicism, but even that is a dicey prospect given the large presence of religious minorities in addition to ethnic ones. Maybe tricking the Hungarian nobility into a sort of federalism rather than the duopoly helps. If each crownland was its own autonomous component, it might trick the various nationalities into an arrangement that reinforced German linguistic and clerical/administrative dominance while also allowing the flourishing of local cultures and keeping Hungary in line as the Romanians, Serbs, and Slovaks focus their ire on Buda rather than Vienna.
The Habsburgs actively embraced identifying people in their empire as a single nationality based on their primary language. Do that for long enough and people start identifying that way. In reality, huge numbers in the empire had ancestry from multiple places and spoke multiple languages. They should have encouraged identity around the crownlands instead.
Sounds like some horrendous 19th century colonial empire, with settlers bragging about speaking the local lingo to talk to their servants while denying that people like Berbers or Tuareg actually had a common language. I guess the more things change with the French upper class...
Galicia certainly was a relatively wealthy province, especially when it was acquired relative to the rest of the Empire but in the long run I question whether on balance it was a net positive or net negative for Austria. One of the biggest advantages that the Austrian Empire had was its geographic and economic integration as a 'Danubian' state. Austria, Bohemia and Hungary could be sensibly organized as an economic unit with the added advantage of historical/traditional administrative units governed by Vienna, Prague and Buda often in some association with one and other. IMHO that was the greatest counterforce the to centripetal force of ethno-nationalism trying to tear the Empire apart. But Galicia is the one that's not like the others. Its traditionally part of the historic Polish state and has easier communication via Vistula with the rest of Poland and it has no natural geographic boundary to protect it from Russian territory to the north and east.
So I think the Carparthians would have made a more logical boundary for the the Empire. And that would have put Hungary on the frontline with Russia. IOTL Hungary balked at paying for the reconstruction of Galicia caused by the Russian invasion but it Hungary had been on the receiving end of a foreign attack I think it would have helped to align the foreign policy and strategic interests of the Magyars more closely with the rest of Austria.
As much as I want to give due consideration to the Magyar position I have to concede that the intransigence of the Magyars on the issue of minorities within Hungary was a serious problem. I understand somewhat their perspective. They suffered a lot after the country was essentially partitioned by the Ottoman invasion with mass displacement of peoples, economic decline, a sort of broken state. And they faced Austrian domination with Leopold's imposition of the counterreformation even as early as the 1660s so it wasn't as if expelling the Turks really revived the Hungarian state to what it had been. However that doesn't really excuse their approach the non-magyar population of historic Hungary in the 19th century.
I've always wondered if nationalism took a different route in the early to mid-1800s. If the Magyars had been more accommodating. ITOL there was a brief movement among Slovak intellectuals to reconceptualize Hungarian identity/nationality in a non-enthnic or supra-ethnic fashion. It involved a linguistic slight of hand that would form the framework for conceptualizing a Slovak-Hungarian identity alongside a Magyar-Hungarian or German-Hungarian identity. The idea was to rethink Hungary as multi-ethnic state state rather than a national state of the Magyars.
Mad'ar would become the Magyar Hungarians and Uhor would describe all Hungarians in the Slovak language with a suggestion to use Magyaren and Ungarn in German. So for example a German speaker in Hungary would call himself a German-Hungarian and his Magyar neighbor a Magyar-Hungarian but they were still both equally Hungarians. But to the Magyars Hungary was Magyaroszag, the country of the Magyars, and they refused to countenance the idea that Hungary could be anything other than their state to which the other peoples living within its borders would have to accommodate themselves. So even the most liberal Magyar position if not seeking outright assimilation of minorities still felt that theirs was the national culture of Hungarian society and the minorities would have to accept that.
But I've wondered if such a pluralist/multiethnic view of Austrian or Hungarian nationalist could have been achievable. Perhaps not, perhaps its just my American sensibility, where one can be Italian American or Korean American without either loosing their unique cultural/ethnolinguistic background or their identity as 'Americans'. But on the other hand I think about Great Britain. After the act of Union the English, while you could argue that they dominated the new state, did agree to give up the Kingdom of England and subsume the idea of Englishness or English identity into a new British national identity. One could be an Englishmen or a Scot or even Welsh and still be British. Obviously you can make the argument that its easier because language is not such a profound barrier with the majority of Great Britain speaking the same language but it still suggests that such an outcome is possible.
Ultimately I think the Magyars need to be presented with a viable path towards accepting a plural multi-ethnic society without feeling like they're losing face or seeing their traditional historical state dismantled. Give the Magyars the fig leaf of historic Hungary but reconceptualize the state as a supra-ethnic entity and allow the minorities a buy in to the collective history and tradition of that state.
So its federal in a less radical way that the United States of Austria and leans more heavily into tradition and the history of the realms constituting the Empire. The idea being to reconcile and and bond the peoples of the the Empire to the state in a foundational way. A Slovak or Romanian in Hungary could see the Kingdom of Hungary as their state and its history as their history and thus its preservation and continuation as being in their interest. And if its workable in Hungary then why not Galicia, you could be Polish-Galician or Ukrainian-Galician and The Kingdom of Galicia just forms an autonomous state of the Austrian Empire. ditto Bohemia with its Czech and German population. Maybe also an 'Illyria' with Croats and Serbs. Ultimately its a path to multi-ethnic federalism that relies more upon heritage and tradition than a radical reordering of the empire into new states based upon discrete ethno-linguistic population blocks.
Maybe its utterly fanciful, pie the sky utopianism. I concede it runs counter to the development of Nationalism in central and eastern Europe but I think it better accommodates the dynastic origins and traditions of the Austrian state.