AUSTRIA WITHOUT HER PROVINCES
In the middle of October, 1918, Marshal von Hindenburg telegraphed to
Vienna that it would be impossible to hold the western front any longer
unless Austrian reinforcements were immediately forthcoming. From a
purely military point of view the appeal was reasonable. Although the
June offensive had failed, the Austrians were still superior to the
Italians; and there was no reason to believe that the Austro-Hungarian
armies could not continue to hold their lines, even though they
detached a considerable body of troops, until winter made an Italian
offensive impossible. Because he was unaware of the moral factors in
the situation, von Hindenburg was surprised when he received a refusal.
It was at this moment that the handwriting upon the wall appeared
before the eyes of the German General Staff.
But it had long been evident at Vienna that the war would be won or
lost on the western front and by the Germans alone. With the composite
and mutually antagonistic elements that composed the armies of the
Hapsburg Empire, it was nothing short of a miracle that Austria-Hungary
had held out so long. The authority of the Vienna Government was
sustained only through the belief of the peoples of the Dual Monarchy
that Germany was invincible. The collapse of Russia had come in time to
check serious disloyalty in the non-German and non-Magyar portions of
the Austro-Hungarian army. Until Germany appealed for aid, most of the
Hapsburg subjects felt that they would be playing a losing game if they
mutinied.
Study of the records shows that demoralization began in the rear, and
that it was the result of news leaking through of disasters falling
upon the coalition of the Central Empires. The capitulation of Bulgaria
and Turkey came nearer home to Vienna than to Berlin. And yet, if the
Germans had been successful on the western front, these events would
not in themselves have led to the collapse of Austria-Hungary. It was
the German appeal for aid that suddenly made the Vienna Government
realize the hopelessness of the situation. There was a revolution
at Prague. The Croats proclaimed their independence at Agram. Count
Karolyi and Archduke Joseph called the Hungarian divisions back to
defend their native land.
For some days the news was kept from the troops. In the fighting
from October 24 to 28 the Italians had failed signally to achieve on
their front results comparable to those of the French and British and
Americans on the western front. The Austrian army group at Belluno
fought wonderfully--even the Czechs, whose crack Prague regiment
distinguished itself. The change came on the night of October 28, when
the news of happenings in the rear reached the soldiers in the trenches
and in reserve. Ordered to undertake a counter-offensive on the morning
of October 29, the soldiers mutinied. The signal was given by the 26th
Czech Rifles. The armies began to leave the front. The Hapsburg Empire
collapsed in a few hours!
At the suggestion of Admiral Horthy, the imperial fleet was presented
to the Jugoslav Government that had been formed at Agram. No opposition
was made to the Prague revolution. The imperial authorities made no
effort to prevent a revolt in Budapest.
When Austria asked for an armistice and signed the terms of the
Entente Powers on November 3, 1918, there really was no longer any
Austria. The Vienna Government was not in a position to accept the
responsibility for the whole country. Czechs, Poles, and Jugoslavs
were out of the empire and were dealing directly with the Allies.
Under the armistice terms Italy occupied the territories that all the
world knew had been definitely promised to her by the secret Treaty
of London in 1915. Several million of her German-speaking population
passed immediately under the control of the new Czech Government at
Prague, and several hundred thousand Tyrolese came within the zone of
military occupation of the Italian armies. Austria at the outbreak of
the war had a population of about 30,000,000, of whom not more than
10,500,000 were Germans; the Czechs and Slovaks were 6,700,000; the
Poles 5,000,000; the Ukrainians 3,700,000; and the Jugoslavs 3,000,000.
Thus, while Austrians were more numerous than any other element, they
comprised only a third of the population, and more than 3,000,000 of
that third were in Bohemia. These figures show how radically different
was the situation of Austria from that of Germany. Many of the leading
generals and statesmen and a very large number of the functionaries of
the Hapsburg Empire were from the non-Austrian and non-Magyar peoples.
Throughout the war the army had been composed, officers and men, of
the entire population, and the Austrians and Hungarians contributed
only about 50 per cent--perhaps less than that--to the fighting forces
that had invaded and imposed their will on Serbia and Rumania, had
successfully withstood Italy and Russia, and had contributed to
the success of Germany on the western front. The major part of the
Austro-Hungarian artillery was manufactured in Bohemia.
And yet, when the Paris Conference assembled, all the Hapsburg peoples
except Austrians and Hungarians were represented and were regarded as
co-victors with the Entente Powers. On the other hand, the Austrian
element in the Hapsburg Empire was held to be the culprit, responsible
for the war, guilty of its excesses; and in the settlement all the sins
of the Hapsburgs were visited upon the heads of less than 7,000,000
Austrians. The inconsistency in the attitude of the Peace Conference
toward the Hohenzollern and Hapsburg Empires is amazing, and shows
that neither logic nor a sense of justice inspired the victors, but
simply the desire to impose treaties that would serve best their own
interests. The Germans were told, when they protested against the
terms of the Treaty of Versailles, that no government could have
initiated and carried on the war without the consent and support
of all the people; therefore, the inhabitants of Germany could not
escape punishment by doing away with their government. Germany still
remained a powerful nation; therefore prudence inspired guarantees for
future good behavior, and a sense of justice demanded the payment of
reparations and the punishment of war criminals.
Less than 7,000,000 Austrians, a third of whom lived in the city
of Vienna, were indicted, tried, found guilty, and punished in the
Treaty of St.-Germain for the misdeeds of the Hapsburg Empire. Nothing
could have been more absurd than to suppose that these people were
a super-race who had dominated for five centuries the peoples round
about them, and that from 1914 to 1918 6,500,000 people could have held
the other 23,000,000 inhabitants of Austria so completely at their
mercy that the latter, bowing to _force majeure_, should have fought
against their will for those who held them, terrorized, in complete
subjection. In the great Austrian armies, according to this assumption,
Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, Croatians, Dalmatians, Slovenes, and other
peoples were no more than unwilling slaves, doing their master’s
bidding. At the same time these non-Austrian elements were assumed to
be so superior in culture and inhibitions to the Austrians that all
the violations of the laws of warfare, all the crimes, were committed
solely by German-speaking soldiers and officers!
If any one thinks I am exaggerating, let him read the Treaty of
St.-Germain and bear in mind that this treaty was imposed upon less
than one fourth of the inhabitants of pre-war Austria with about
one fourth of the area of pre-war Austria, and that a third of the
inhabitants of the new state live in one city, whose size and equipment
for industry and commerce (Vienna is the fourth city of Europe) are the
result of economic evolution as the center of a great nation. Read the
Treaty of St.-Germain, I ask, and then judge for yourself what must
have been the state of mind of the men who framed it.
The Hapsburg Empire was a governmental system, not a nation; and after
the rise of the principle of nationality in the nineteenth century it
had held together against powerful currents of disintegration because
the ruling classes of its various elements believed their prosperity
and security were better guaranteed by remaining in the empire than
by separating from it. Irredentism became a powerful influence with
peasants, when sufficiently worked upon, and with petty politicians,
students, and a portion of the professional classes. Landowners,
business men, manufacturers, and clergy among all the Hapsburg peoples
supported the governmental system, indorsed its foreign policy, and
worked as hard as the Austrians and Hungarians up to the very end for
the success of the coalition of the Central Empires. The sinking ship
was deserted when it was realized that Germany was going to lose.
In the general _sauve qui peut_, the non-Austrians at Vienna and in the
provinces suddenly discovered that a new citizenship would save them
from the moral and material consequences of defeat and that attention
could be diverted from their own war activities by capitalizing the
world-wide distrust and hatred of the Germans to include the Austrians.
The Treaty of St.-Germain punished a German-speaking people, but it
was more cruel and disastrous to the Austrians than was the Treaty
of Versailles to the Germans. The Treaty of St.-Germain closed the
only door left open to the Austrians for rehabilitating themselves
economically and for finding an opportunity of consoling themselves in
their ostracism. They were condemned because they were Germans, but
they were forbidden to unite with Germany.
Austria lost not only her non-German population and provinces but
also one third of her German population. She was rendered militarily
impotent, cut off from her access to the sea, deprived of the southern
part of the Tyrol with a purely German population, made dependent
upon her former provinces for food-stuffs and coal, and left without
the means of manufacturing sufficient to pay for the food-stuffs and
coal she would have to import. She was left saddled with the great
city of Vienna, containing a population of more than 2,000,000, and
every effort was made in the treaty to destroy Vienna’s one chance
of making ends meet, i. e., by remaining a center of distribution on
one of the world’s main trade-routes. The route of the Orient Express
was changed to run by way of Venice and Triest; through express
trains with Germany, the one friendly country, were forbidden; and
a new regime for the Danube was created for the purpose of stifling
Vienna’s Danube trade. The Austrian delegation at the Peace Conference,
through its able spokesman, Dr. Renner, pointed out from indisputable
statistics that the Treaty of St.-Germain condemned the Austrians to
poverty and slow starvation, and pleaded either for permission to join
Germany by the exercise of the right of self-determination (which was
the justification of the treaty!) or for guarantees that the lost
provinces should arrange to give Austria stipulated amounts of coal
and food-stuffs to enable her to exist. The Peace Conference refused
to admit the necessity of either alternative. On the other hand, heavy
reparations in cash and in kind were inserted in the treaty.
The hopelessness of the situation in which the Peace Conference put
the Austrians is demonstrated by the fact that the new Austria is a
mountainous country, with less than 25 per cent of its area capable
of producing food-stuffs. The hilly country is suitable for breeding
cattle but is unable to provide the requirements of the people as
regards meat and fat. Before the war only 14 per cent of the meat and
fat consumed in Vienna came from the provinces left to Austria by the
Treaty of St.-Germain. The new Austria’s forests contain soft woods.
By the most optimistic calculations she can supply only one fifth of
her fuel requirements. Thus manufactures are bound to languish and the
people to be permanently undernourished unless Austria joins Germany or
is admitted into a customs union with her former provinces. Nearly five
years of despair and agony have sufficiently proved this statement. In
Vienna the people feel that they are doomed.
The Entente Powers have realized that common humanity as well as policy
demand that the Austrians be saved from the fate imposed upon them by
the Treaty of St.-Germain. They have come to see that the geographical
position of Austria makes it impossible for them to leave her to
her fate, as they have done in the case of Armenia. The Succession
States also are beginning to come to their senses. Statesmen are now
in agreement with economists, and are willing to waive reparations
payments and admit that the great highway of Europe by the Danube must
continue to be traveled. When Chancellor Seipel made the rounds of the
European capitals in the summer of 1922, begging for an international
loan and for the indefinite postponement, if not the wiping out, of
reparations claims, he was received favorably everywhere. The Entente
Powers and the Succession States agreed that something must be done,
and to the League of Nations was entrusted the task of helping Austria
to her feet by means of an international loan. Credits recently granted
Austria have enabled the Government to begin a policy of currency
reform; and Viennese importers and exporters have been enabled to
arrange for a sufficient exchange of Austrian products against coal and
food-stuffs to prevent the country from going to pieces.
The scheme of the League of Nations for the financial reconstruction
of Austria was embodied in the Geneva protocols, signed on October 4,
1922, and provides for a rigorous control of Austrian finances up to
the end of 1924, when it is hoped that the budget will be balanced.
The Austrian Government was required to secure from Parliament full
authority for two years to go ahead without parliamentary control and
to carry out financial rehabilitation--with the reforms necessary to
assure it--under the supervision of a Commissioner-General appointed
by the League. Dr. Zimmermann, burgomaster of Rotterdam, accepted the
task and took up his work in Vienna on December 16. Not the League but
Great Britain, France, Italy, and Czechoslovakia guaranteed 84 per cent
of a total loan of 650,000,000 gold crowns, with Spain taking 4 per
cent, Switzerland 3 per cent, Belgium 2 per cent, and Holland 1 per
cent. The first four powers, however, agreed to guarantee all the first
short-term loan. It was agreed that Austria should dismiss 100,000
officials before July 1, 1924, 25,000 each half-year. This drastic
measure was necessary, but it will only add to the unemployment and
suffering. Between the time of the signature of the Geneva protocols
and the end of the year, the number of unemployed in Vienna rose from
57,000 to 120,000, and by April 1923, had reached 170,000.
The measures imposed and the aid given by the League of Nations are
only palliatives. They have not solved the problem; they have only
postponed for a brief time the solution. “Austria,” I was told by Dr.
Grünberger, minister of foreign affairs, “is like a man whose arms and
legs have been cut off, but who is all the same expected to walk and
work. We are being given alms, but are told that this is just to tide
us over. Tide us over to what?” Dr. Grünberger was food administrator
during the trying period immediately after the war, and later minister
of commerce. He has taken an active part in Austrian affairs since
the first days of the republic. President Hainisch and other leaders
of political and financial life express the same opinion as Dr.
Grünberger, that under the conditions of the Treaty of St.-Germain
Austria cannot work out any scheme of independent existence. Nor
have the alms-givers presented to the Austrian Government a way of
salvation. It stands to reason, therefore, that there must be either
a liberal economic arrangement for interchange of raw materials,
manufactured articles, coal, wood, and food-stuffs among the Succession
States or union with Germany.
A conference of the Succession States, in which British and French
representatives participated, was held at Porta Rosa in November,
1921, for the laudable purpose of finding a way to settle some of the
practical difficulties arising from the dissolution of the Hapsburg
Empire. Postal and telegraph relations and a _modus vivendi_ for
transport were arranged, but it was impossible to come to an agreement
about the question vital to Austria, that of tariffs. The Succession
States, including Italy, needed to arrange with Austria about
communications. They did not need to trade with her so much as she
needed to trade with them.
Two years have passed since Porta Rosa. Little progress has been made
in the establishment of normal and reasonable economic relations among
the Succession States. This is only partly due to the intractability
of the emancipated Hapsburg peoples. For while there are dangers in
any such arrangements where it is Hungary who would benefit, the
neighbors of Austria do not have to fear from Vienna what there is
reasonable ground of fearing from Budapest. Sinister outside influences
are at work to prevent the consummation of the movement begun at
Porta Rosa. Austria is suffering from the conflicting policies of
France and Italy. France has no objection to the regrouping of the
Danubian states into an economic federation, if this be necessary for
the salvation of Austria. Italy, on the other hand, is determined
to prevent the adoption of any plan that might lead to a Danubian
federation, in which the Slavs would predominate. Rather than see this
accomplished, she would prefer the union of Austria with Germany. To
France and Czechoslovakia the incorporation of Austria into Germany is
a contingency the possibility of which both countries refuse to admit.
But if an independent Austria is impossible, and Italy, herself the
most powerful of the Succession States, blocks the way to the economic
agreements Austria must have to exist apart from Germany, what
alternative is there to the _Anschluss_ (union)?
Many Austrians are opposed to the _Anschluss_ and point out to you
that there is no more reason for them to favor joining the German
Empire than for Americans to favor joining the British Empire. These
irreconcilables, however, admit that the _Anschluss_ is inevitable, on
the ground that Austria cannot live alone, and must be either a member
of a Danubian federation or a province of Germany. They think that the
latter solution is not for the best interests of their country; the
prospect wounds their pride; and, from an international point of view,
they see only trouble ahead for Europe in the union of their country
with Germany.
The acceptance of the present status of Austria as permanent by the
League of Nations indicates the subserviency of that supposedly
international organization to the interests of certain powers. The
Council of the League has postponed the collapse of Austria in the same
way as it settled the Upper Silesia and Vilna questions, by offering a
solution that took into account the transcendent interests of members
of the Council. Austria had to be helped to her feet financially to
repair, if possible, the damage done by the Treaties of St.-Germain
and Trianon, which broke up the Hapsburg Empire without providing for
economic safeguards for Austria or the alternative--union with Germany.
That the danger remains--a danger that may well lead to a new war--is
evident from the significant and dramatic participation of Austria
in the seventy-fifth anniversary of the first German Parliament at
Frankfort-on-Main, on May 18, 1923. Professor Hartmann, Austrian
Ambassador to Germany, declared that the Austrians “are hard and fast
in their yearning for the union of Austria with Germany,” and he
asserted his belief that the _Anschluss_ would be effected eventually.
When he reached his peroration, “The revolution of 1918 will bring us
as its fruit the unity and coördination of German middle Europe into
one state,” the audience rose to its feet in frenzied applause, led
by President Ebert, Herr Loeb, president of the Reichstag, and other
leading officials of the German Federal and State Governments.