Page - 1010 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

1010 The War becomes History ambitions of domination. Amery was vehemently contradicted,2524 but suddenly Italy was also anxious to retain an Austrian rump monarchy. There was not to be an inde- pendent German-Austria but instead a state that also included Croats, Slovenes and Dalmatians. The Slavs would have to be in the majority, in order to prevent a union of German-Austria with the German Empire.2525 And whilst the shooting continued and the war passed into the post-war period, those armistice conditions were still circulat- ing that Czecho-Slovakian and Yugoslav representatives had worked out in Bern at the end of October. These stated that it could not only be a question of agreeing on military provisions for an armistice. The Austro-Hungarian armistice commission would have to recognise the independence of ‘Czecho-Slovakia’ and Yugoslavia. Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and the ‘Czecho-Slovakian lands’ of Hungary were to fall to the northern Slav state. The following would be ceded to the Yugoslav state : Carinthia with the dis- tricts Hermagor, Villach, Klagenfurt (except the Feldkirchen region), Völkermarkt and Wolfsberg, the south of Styria from the Koralpe to the northern border of Radkersburg, then the territory from Zala and Vas to Szent Gotthárd, the Serbo-Croat territory north of the Drau, the Batschka, the Banat, provided it belonged to the Serbian Vo- jvodina, Croatia, Slavonia with Rijeka as well as Bosnia-Herzegovina and Dalmatia. The territory between the Leitha and the Danube as well as the course of the Raab River were to be occupied by international troop contingents in order to establish the link between ‘Czecho-Slovakia’ and Yugoslavia and give the former access to the sea.2526 The paper had not been used in the Villa Giusti, but it very clearly announced the de- sires for the time after the war. The lands that had belonged to the Habsburg Monarchy now ultimately had only one thing in common : they had to clarify their relationship to one another. However, in the hour of the dissolution of the Empire, they already split into victors and van- quished. Northern and southern Slavs were victors, although they had fought, suffered through and experienced the war as part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Austria and Hungary were the vanquished. The Monarch, the Imperial and Royal household, the last Imperial-Royal govern- ment, the Imperial and Royal Army High Command and liquidated imperial authori- ties remained in a recess of history. Many of them gathered together on 4 November in Vienna’s St. Stephan’s Cathedral. It was the name day of the Emperor, which was to be commemorated. Cardinal Piffl celebrated mass. The members of the Imperial-Austrian government had almost completely assembled. It was not a requiem for the Empire but instead a ‘Te Deum’. At the end, the Emperor’s Hymn, Gott erhalte (God Preserve) was sung. For Josef Redlich, there was a glaring contrast between the words ‘lead us with a prudent hand’ and the revolution taking place outside.2527 ‘Blood and treasure for our Emperor, Blood and treasure for the Fatherland’  – this might have been acceptable as a type of ‘balance sheet of the World War’. But the entire scene was unreal.