Seite - 684 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

684 The Writing on the Wall a thoroughly satisfactory end to his career if he ‘were honoured with the command of the German Army when it entered Bohemia’.1558 Would the Imperial and Royal troops also turn against Germany if necessary, and would they  – as before  – allow themselves to be used on the domestic front ? It was impossible to find an answer to these questions. However, whatever was going to happen and whatever the war, which had become a part of everyday life, had disrupted : a surge towards greater polarisation and radicali- sation was inevitable. In March 1917, the discussions between the USA and Austria-Hungary had run out of steam. Between the end of January and March, Wilson had declined to give the Austrian ambassador the opportunity to hand over his letter of appointment. Pub- lic opinion in the USA measured Austria-Hungary and the German Empire by the same yardstick, particularly when the so-called ‘Zimmermann dispatch’ became public knowledge, which had been encrypted by the British intelligence service and immedi- ately communicated to the Americans. In this dispatch, the German Permanent Secre- tary for Foreign Affairs had made promises to Mexico if it were to agree to an alliance with the German Empire and embroil the USA in a two-front war. Now, the American government was clear in its intention of immediately precipitating the war. The Amer- ican ambassador in Vienna advised his compatriots to leave the Habsburg Monarchy. On 6 April, the USA declared war on Germany, but not on Austria-Hungary, to whom President Wilson conceded that while the latter was complicit in waging war with words against the USA, it was not doing so with actions. The American ambassador, Penfield, was ‘recalled for debriefing purposes’, as it was so elegantly put, while the Imperial and Royal ambassador in Washington, Tarnowski, received instructions on 6 April to notify the American government of the severance of diplomatic relations, while at the same time, however, referring to the fact that this was due solely to the alliance, and that it was hoped that following the restoration of peace, the traditional friendly relations could be resumed.1559 These were very similar words to the ones that had been spoken at the beginning of August 1914. The Conrad Crisis Emperor Karl’s peace policy appeared to have reached a dead end. After several months of rule, he was forced to admit that almost nothing of what he had set out to achieve with such high ambition had been accomplished. Relations with the German Empire had developed in such a way that Austria-Hungary had become even more strongly bound up in the German conduct of war than it had been previously. In terms of do- mestic policy, no decisive breakthrough had been possible, and the foreign policy had failed, both with the ‘peace note’ and with the phrase ‘peace without victors or losers’.