Page - 36 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

36 On the Eve Croats, Bosnians and Slovenes together to create a new state. In so doing, they spec- ulated on the downfall of the Monarchy in a targeted way, the demise of which they regarded as necessary in order to establish a major southern Slav empire. The other adjoining states were then to have access only to the bankruptcy assets. In relation to this aspect of the pre-war era, domestic and foreign policy were, therefore, intermeshed in a particular way. The southern Slav issue was a problem for the Hungarians and Austrians in equal measure since Croatia and most Serbs in the Monarchy belonged to Transleithania while the Slovenes were part of Cisleithania. However, Hungary had also come into dispute with Romania over the Romanians living in Transylvania, and displayed a cer- tain lack of discernment in recognising the problems. Overall, the nationalities problem in Hungary did not appear to be so serious, if only perhaps because there were fewer nationalities living there than in Austria, thus reducing the number of conflicts. In terms of domestic and nationalities policy during the pre-war period overall, the German countries in the Monarchy certainly cannot be regarded as problem regions in terms of the nationalities conflict, or as places where signs of decay could already be seen. However, it was just as evident that there were German national groups in exist- ence that were keen to find a solution to the nationalities issue in the form of assistance from the German Empire that would ensure the Germans became the unquestionably dominant group in the Habsburg Monarchy. Naturally, the nationalities conflict also spilled over into the German lands. One example of this was the small-scale Italian irredentism, which despite the official proximity to Italy, an ally of Austria-Hungary and Germany since 1882, dreamed of the surrender of the territories of the Monarchy inhabited by Italians, in other words, the area around Trieste (Triest) and Trento (Tri- ent), and South Tyrol. Conflicts that affected the Germans arose from disputes with the Slovenes, such as in Celje (Cilli), Ptuj (Pettau) or Maribor (Marburg an der Drau), or in areas where Czechs and Germans mixed in the Lower Austria-Moravian, Silesian or Upper Austrian-Bohemian regions. In Vienna, where the nationalities conflicts were expressed with particular vehe- mence during the sessions of the Reichsrat, a certain magnifying glass effect was added since events could be followed directly, whereas information about Trento, Moravská Třebová (Mährisch-Trübau), Celje or Sibiu (Hermannstadt) was available only from second-hand reports. For this reason, disputes were experienced at a different level of intensity than elsewhere in the Monarchy. To this were added those debates, disputes, conflicts and upheavals that characterised ‘everyday’ parliamentary events of the ‘king- doms and countries represented in the Reichsrat’ from the Austrian half of the Empire. Developments such as these were regarded in Hungary as a symptom of too much de- mocracy.59 This impression could only have arisen from a comparison with the merely semi-democratic conditions in Transleithania.