Page - 292 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

292 The First Winter of the War Monarchy would have to experience territorial gains and, with this, Andrian devoted himself at length to the Polish question. In Poland, nothing was feared more than another partition. Russian Poland would rather remain with Russia than accept an- other division. A solution would, therefore, be to unite Russian ‘Congress Poland’ and Austrian Galicia together in a single state and, similar to Hungary, to bind them in a real union to the House of Habsburg. Belonging to a Catholic empire would con- stitute an attraction above all for the predominantly Catholic Poles. In the event of a victory over Russia, it would be easiest to induce this state to cede its Polish territories and also to favour this over the payment of war reparations. Germany could not be allowed to acquire Poland either, as this was certain to have a lasting influence on the balance of power between Austria-Hungary and Germany, provided that an equiva- lent territory could not be found for Austria. Such a territory did not exist, however. In the Neues Wiener Tagblatt from 26 August, the establishment of a Polish-Lithua- nian-Curonian buffer state had been recommended, though Andrian saw no point in this, ‘since such a strange construct with five chauvinistic nationalities would contain within itself the germ of severe internal conflicts, future foreign entanglements and ultimate decline’. Even an independent Ukraine appeared to him undesirable and likewise the incorporation of Ukraine into the Dual Monarchy. Perhaps an incorpo- ration of part of Ruthenia would be imaginable, namely the Podolia Governorate and the Volhynia Governorate. The Chełm Governorate, however, should be incorporated at any rate. Thus, the position paper of the poet-diplomat covered rather a lot. Following the description of the maximum aims, Andrian qualified it by writing that it would be problematic to have such a large Polish empire in the framework of the Danube Mon- archy, just as it occurred to him that it would be unrealistic to leave the German Empire empty-handed. So Poland would have to be partitioned after all. Andrian repeatedly discussed the domestic affairs of the Monarchy, namely that in the event of a growth of the Slav population, the non-Slav and non-Hungarian parts of the population, and above all the Germans, would have to be secured a special status, in order that they did not orientate themselves towards the German Empire in a form of ‘disenchantment’ with the Habsburg Empire. This had been written when the Austro-Hungarian armies had just set off to the north. It had been written in order to produce something that could also be an objective. Hypothetical considerations of this sort can now be dismissed as crazy fantasising, but they were in fact a lot more, namely a departure from mere revenge for Sarajevo as well as a renunciation of the mood that dominated before the war, according to which the Dual Monarchy was solely fighting a battle for its existence and that change could only gain ground in the Balkans or Italy, in order to provide relief for the Danube Monarchy. Now it was suddenly a question of Poland.