Page - 366 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

366 ‘The King of Italy has declared war on Me to achieve territorial concessions. Italy began in the process to dream of great power status, which no longer took Austria-Hungary into consideration : the German Empire would be the hegemonic power on the Continent, but Italy would dominate the Bal- kan-Adriatic region.852 It was as though Italy were anticipating the Rome-Berlin ‘Axis’ of the Mussolini-Hitler era. Italian hopes received an additional boost when the German ambassador in Rome, Baron Flotow, was replaced by the former Imperial Chancellor Prince Bernhard von Bülow, who was married to an Italian woman. Bülow started by stating that Trentino could be discussed, but Trieste was ‘Austria’s lung’ and must therefore be excluded from the talks.853 Pressure increased on Austria to cede Trentino and make additional territorial con- cessions. Count Hoyos, still known from his Berlin mission in July 1914, compared the German approach with recommending that Germany end the war with France by ceding Lorraine (Lothringen), which would be just as impertinent.854 The thing that appeared so vivid and plausible about this comparison was in fact not quite fitting, since Lorraine had only belonged to the German Empire since 1871, whereas Trentino and Trieste were territories that had been a part of the Habsburg Monarchy for 500 or 600 years. Such comparisons on the one hand were always used, whilst on the other hand they were never very expedient and history can provide arguments and coun- terarguments for everything imaginable. Ethnographers pointed to the demographic structures, others argued that these structures had only emerged as a result of policies that were arbitrary and repressive towards one national group, and scholarship was once again used and abused. In the case of the Habsburg Monarchy, one could argue just as well with the idea of empire as one could in the case of Italy with the nation state. This all restricted the room for manoeuvre in negotiations. Austria-Hungary found itself ever more on the political defensive. In the meantime, Italy expanded the notion of compensation. In the view of the new Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino, it was no longer just a question of balancing out any territorial changes in favour of Austria ; he also demanded compensation for political, economic and ideational benefits.855 This brought imponderables into play. Italy could claim, however, to also receive support for its demands from opposition circles in the Habsburg Monarchy. Thus, the leader of the democratic opposition in Hungary, Count Mihály Károlyi, gave the green light to a cession of Trentino. Trieste also appeared to be a logical and grantable demand to Count Károlyi. He was not prepared to talk about Rijeka (Fiume) in Croatia, however, which belonged to the Hungarian half of the Empire, and ultimately the fulfilment of Italian demands should only serve to get the Apennine state on to the side of the Central Powers, in order that Romania did not, if anything, feel encouraged to enter the war on the side of the Entente and to threaten Hungary in Transylvania.856