Page - 13 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

S everal decades ago, a semantic debate surrounded the Second World War and the power politics of National Socialist Germany. Did the war break out of its own accord, or was it deliberately unleashed ? The almost unanimous conclusion was that the war was unleashed. In the case of the First World War, the answer is not so obvious. It is likely that while to a certain extent the war did break out, it was at also precipitated and unleashed to an equal degree. In general, however, precisely who was responsible for precipitating, triggering or unleashing the war, and who simply failed to prevent it, is portrayed differently according to subjective evaluation and emphasis. Each point of view has been convincingly presented and supported by documentary evidence.1 In the interim, the definition of the war by the American diplomat George F. Kennan as ‘The grand seminal catastrophe of this century’ has become a kind of unofficial truism.2 Long before 1914, numerous publications already referred to any future war in highly generalised terms as a ‘World War’, as if to find words to capture its scale and to act as a deterrent. Then, war broke out. In English, French and Italian literature, the phrase ‘Great War’ (Grande guerre, Grande guerra) became established, while after the war, the German Imperial Archives opted for the term ‘World War’.3 In Austria, the war was re- ferred to in nostalgic terms both verbally and in writing as ‘Austro-Hungary’s final war’. However, there is something to be said for the use of the term ‘seminal catastrophe’, since the first major war of the 20th century, while largely limited to Europe and the adjacent regions, set in motion most of the events which would lead to the second, real world war, particularly the establishment of totalitarian regimes in Russia and Germany and the involvement of countries from all six continents and all the world’s seas. To a certain degree, the First World War was not fought to the end until a quarter of a century later, albeit within the lifespan of the same generation. However, while most of the powers that had already been termed the ‘main warring parties’ in the First World War played an even greater role in the second major war of the 20th century, there was one empire to which this did not apply : Austria-Hungary. In contrast to the German Empire, to Russia, which had become the Soviet Union, and indeed to Turkey, which by then was a neutral power, Austria-Hungary was irretrievably lost. The Danube Mon- archy under Habsburg rule had been destroyed as a result of the ‘seminal catastrophe’. From that point on, it became one of a number of failed states. Many aspects have been considered in the debate surrounding the causes of the first great conflict, not least the obvious fact that an important determining factor for most of the great powers that deliberately began the war in 1914 was their strength, perhaps