raharris1973
Well-known member
Have you ever hear or read the argument, assertion, or allegation that ironically, even though Germany "lost" WWI, the war's outcome, and the territorial map of Europe it resulted in, left Germany in a *strategically better* position after WWI than it had been before the war?
I've heard this one. I've got some heavy caveats with the way the concept is expressed however.
A couple of the arguments in favor of this have to do with what happened to major combatants in WWI and what it did to their core strength.
For example, Germany was ultimately left a unified whole, regardless of any disarmament clauses, so it had an easy basis to rebuild. The war was not really fought on German soil, so it did not face the devastation and rebuilding costs that France and Belgium and Poland and Russia and Serbia and Romania faced.
The geographic argument points out that before WWI, Germany was encircled by a solid Triple Entente alliance of France and Russia on either side, and Britain at sea, and then, one step removed, Italy to the south. Furthermore, the *potential* to contain Germany was even stronger pre-WWI. It had *three* Great Power neighbors, France, the Russian Empire, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. covering most of the length of its border, with the lesser Switzerland, Low Countries, and Denmark covering lesser parts of its border. Sure, Austria-Hungary was an ally in WWI as it was actually fought, and in the pre-war years, but at least it represented a great power *potentially* useful for containing Germany, so the idea goes.
But post-WWI, Germany only borders 1 great power, France. And France has a nicer border, getting back Alsace-Lorraine, but it is still just one country. On Germany's eastern and southeastern borders however, instead of two great power empires, it now borders a series of smaller, and weaker, states that just can't measure up to the old countries that used to be there: Lithuania, Poland, Danzig Free City, Czechoslovakia, the Austrian Republic - 5 little states, not empires or great powers.
Looking at the map, and this batch of small states, obviously no match for Germany, people making the observations above often make a follow-on comment, lamenting the dissolution of the Habsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Woodrow Wilson and the Allied role in dissolving that empire during and after WWI.
"A-ha" they say, "if only the western powers could have somehow kept Austria-Hungary around, instead of helpless non-entities like the Austrian Republic and Czechoslovakia, the western powers could have had a viable partner to contain Nazi Germany in the east, and maybe watch the Soviet Union too, or prevent the war by containment and prevent any need for relying on the USSR to beat Nazi Germany, which involved the USSR occupying Central Europe as a byproduct."
I find this lament, and speculation on a continued and propped up Austria-Hungary to be based on multiple optimistic, and weak, assumptions. The first weak and optimistic assumption is "What's the guarantee, or even mere probability that a surviving Austria-Hungary would prefer to ally with Britain, France, and Poland---this last to which it has lost territory (Galicia) or is disputing territory against Germany, and not preferring to ally *with* Nazi Germany as it has allied with other German regimes in the past?" Even if a surviving Austria-Hungary has a little more gratitude and grace about being left alive than Germany and Bulgaria did, it would seem to logically have revanchist feelings about probable territorial losses in a World War I alternate settlement. Revanchist feelings about territory lost to Italy in Trentino and Istria, territory lost to Yugoslavia, Transylvania lost to Romania, and Galicia lost to Poland.
And if the Allies bent the WWI settlement to protect Austria-Hungary from one or more of these territorial losses, say to Romania and Yugoslavia, in order to 'buy' Austro-Hungarian support for the European peace treaty status quo, then this could end up handing a revanchist Germany, Nazi or otherwise, Romania or a Serbia/Yugoslavia a revisionist/revanchist partner, motivated to side with Germany against the western powers and Austria-Hungary in order to achieve its unrealized territorial ambitions from WWI.
The second weak and optimistic assumption is that the Western Allies late in the war, in the 1918 timeframe, really have it in their power to stop the national disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The peoples comprising the successor states already had national organizations, exiles organized proto--governments and military units, the Habsburg state was considered to be failing the test of war. The final Balkans campaign coming out of Salonika knocked out Bulgaria, drove Habsburg occupiers out of Serbia and Romania, revived Romania, occupied lands Serbia claimed for a joint south Slav state and that Romania claimed for itself, and penetrated into ethnic Hungary proper before armistice was signed.
And if the Habsburg state had held together by the skin of its teeth, all acknowledged it would be tied up in internal negotiations about its federal structure. Could a state like that have made decisive alliance commitments in the 20s or 30s to stop Hitler?
To sum up, based on the circumstances as they were actually developing in 1918, keeping Austria-Hungary alive in a scenario where like ours, the Allies are actually regaining the initiative and winning, is actually extraordinarily hard. If it had been achieved and the core of the empire was preserved, probably with major territorial losses outside its Austro-Hungarian-Czechoslovakian core, it would have been a weak federal state, not inclined to be a strong ally, or any kind of ally, of the western powers against Germany, and much more likely to be allied with Germany, or at best a neutral.
In OTL, yes, it is true that despite France's desire to have Czechoslovakia as an eastern ally to divide German power and keep it busy, Nazi Germany ended up absorbing Austria, then the Sudetenland, then Bohemia, and making a puppet of Slovakia, without a fight, before the outbreak of any declared war. But at least, in the crises of Czechoslovakia, and the stepwise betrayal of this ally without a fight, the alliance served a useful purpose for the western allies. Its process of dissolution served as an early warning beacon and testing ground for appeasement and 'proof of concept' that the concept was a failure, and alerted Britain and France to get reunited and ready to draw the line on declaring war before Hitler advanced any further, on either France and the Low Countries, or Poland or Romania.
In WWI, Habsburg Bohemia served no such useful purpose for the Entente powers. It was simply an unalloyed asset for the German-led Central Powers from day one of the war and decades beforehand, integrated with the arming and manpower system of Germany's main ally, Austria-Hungary. If it remained part of Austria-Hungary, that probably would have remained the case.
The way WWII did start, with France and Britain declaring war in response to a German attack on the east, in Poland (and how it could have started over Cezechoslovakia even earlier) gave them an 8 month gift of time to mobilize and prepare for German invasion. In the event, they ended up screwing up the defense and losing on the western front in 1940, but they undoubtedly had a much longer waiting and preparation period in 39-40 than they did in 1914 of the sudden German simultaneous assault all across the front from Belgium, Luxemburg, and the common border.
So I feel like the pining for Austria-Hungary as the lost potential hero or savior of WWII or the interwar era is misplaced.
The real truth of how the interwar map messed up two-font, three-power (Anglo-Franco-Soviet) containment of revanchist Nazi Germany is simpler, and in some ways uglier......
Basically, the WWI settlement of real life and Versailles Treaty brought Poland back to life. And Poland existing, got in the way of smooth western collaboration with the Soviet Union.
The pre-WWI Franco-Russian alliance was simple to manage. Between the two countries, it was only one-country deep, Germany. The two continental allies could pledge to attack Germany in the interest of the other and protect their mutual survival.
But when Poland was reborn, it had to worry about either Germany or the USSR smothering it, equally. The new existence of Poland created a constant temptation for Germany and the USSR to cooperate for a fourth Partition of Poland. By 1935 France and the Soviet Union were both mightily alarmed by Nazi Germany, and France made a security pact with the USSR. France hoped this would be a second layer of protection to add to its 14 year old alliance with Poland. But it could never reconcile the two alliances, because of territorial disputes between its two eastern partners and Poland's well-founded existential fears.
I've heard this one. I've got some heavy caveats with the way the concept is expressed however.
A couple of the arguments in favor of this have to do with what happened to major combatants in WWI and what it did to their core strength.
For example, Germany was ultimately left a unified whole, regardless of any disarmament clauses, so it had an easy basis to rebuild. The war was not really fought on German soil, so it did not face the devastation and rebuilding costs that France and Belgium and Poland and Russia and Serbia and Romania faced.
The geographic argument points out that before WWI, Germany was encircled by a solid Triple Entente alliance of France and Russia on either side, and Britain at sea, and then, one step removed, Italy to the south. Furthermore, the *potential* to contain Germany was even stronger pre-WWI. It had *three* Great Power neighbors, France, the Russian Empire, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. covering most of the length of its border, with the lesser Switzerland, Low Countries, and Denmark covering lesser parts of its border. Sure, Austria-Hungary was an ally in WWI as it was actually fought, and in the pre-war years, but at least it represented a great power *potentially* useful for containing Germany, so the idea goes.
But post-WWI, Germany only borders 1 great power, France. And France has a nicer border, getting back Alsace-Lorraine, but it is still just one country. On Germany's eastern and southeastern borders however, instead of two great power empires, it now borders a series of smaller, and weaker, states that just can't measure up to the old countries that used to be there: Lithuania, Poland, Danzig Free City, Czechoslovakia, the Austrian Republic - 5 little states, not empires or great powers.
Looking at the map, and this batch of small states, obviously no match for Germany, people making the observations above often make a follow-on comment, lamenting the dissolution of the Habsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Woodrow Wilson and the Allied role in dissolving that empire during and after WWI.
"A-ha" they say, "if only the western powers could have somehow kept Austria-Hungary around, instead of helpless non-entities like the Austrian Republic and Czechoslovakia, the western powers could have had a viable partner to contain Nazi Germany in the east, and maybe watch the Soviet Union too, or prevent the war by containment and prevent any need for relying on the USSR to beat Nazi Germany, which involved the USSR occupying Central Europe as a byproduct."
I find this lament, and speculation on a continued and propped up Austria-Hungary to be based on multiple optimistic, and weak, assumptions. The first weak and optimistic assumption is "What's the guarantee, or even mere probability that a surviving Austria-Hungary would prefer to ally with Britain, France, and Poland---this last to which it has lost territory (Galicia) or is disputing territory against Germany, and not preferring to ally *with* Nazi Germany as it has allied with other German regimes in the past?" Even if a surviving Austria-Hungary has a little more gratitude and grace about being left alive than Germany and Bulgaria did, it would seem to logically have revanchist feelings about probable territorial losses in a World War I alternate settlement. Revanchist feelings about territory lost to Italy in Trentino and Istria, territory lost to Yugoslavia, Transylvania lost to Romania, and Galicia lost to Poland.
And if the Allies bent the WWI settlement to protect Austria-Hungary from one or more of these territorial losses, say to Romania and Yugoslavia, in order to 'buy' Austro-Hungarian support for the European peace treaty status quo, then this could end up handing a revanchist Germany, Nazi or otherwise, Romania or a Serbia/Yugoslavia a revisionist/revanchist partner, motivated to side with Germany against the western powers and Austria-Hungary in order to achieve its unrealized territorial ambitions from WWI.
The second weak and optimistic assumption is that the Western Allies late in the war, in the 1918 timeframe, really have it in their power to stop the national disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The peoples comprising the successor states already had national organizations, exiles organized proto--governments and military units, the Habsburg state was considered to be failing the test of war. The final Balkans campaign coming out of Salonika knocked out Bulgaria, drove Habsburg occupiers out of Serbia and Romania, revived Romania, occupied lands Serbia claimed for a joint south Slav state and that Romania claimed for itself, and penetrated into ethnic Hungary proper before armistice was signed.
And if the Habsburg state had held together by the skin of its teeth, all acknowledged it would be tied up in internal negotiations about its federal structure. Could a state like that have made decisive alliance commitments in the 20s or 30s to stop Hitler?
To sum up, based on the circumstances as they were actually developing in 1918, keeping Austria-Hungary alive in a scenario where like ours, the Allies are actually regaining the initiative and winning, is actually extraordinarily hard. If it had been achieved and the core of the empire was preserved, probably with major territorial losses outside its Austro-Hungarian-Czechoslovakian core, it would have been a weak federal state, not inclined to be a strong ally, or any kind of ally, of the western powers against Germany, and much more likely to be allied with Germany, or at best a neutral.
In OTL, yes, it is true that despite France's desire to have Czechoslovakia as an eastern ally to divide German power and keep it busy, Nazi Germany ended up absorbing Austria, then the Sudetenland, then Bohemia, and making a puppet of Slovakia, without a fight, before the outbreak of any declared war. But at least, in the crises of Czechoslovakia, and the stepwise betrayal of this ally without a fight, the alliance served a useful purpose for the western allies. Its process of dissolution served as an early warning beacon and testing ground for appeasement and 'proof of concept' that the concept was a failure, and alerted Britain and France to get reunited and ready to draw the line on declaring war before Hitler advanced any further, on either France and the Low Countries, or Poland or Romania.
In WWI, Habsburg Bohemia served no such useful purpose for the Entente powers. It was simply an unalloyed asset for the German-led Central Powers from day one of the war and decades beforehand, integrated with the arming and manpower system of Germany's main ally, Austria-Hungary. If it remained part of Austria-Hungary, that probably would have remained the case.
The way WWII did start, with France and Britain declaring war in response to a German attack on the east, in Poland (and how it could have started over Cezechoslovakia even earlier) gave them an 8 month gift of time to mobilize and prepare for German invasion. In the event, they ended up screwing up the defense and losing on the western front in 1940, but they undoubtedly had a much longer waiting and preparation period in 39-40 than they did in 1914 of the sudden German simultaneous assault all across the front from Belgium, Luxemburg, and the common border.
So I feel like the pining for Austria-Hungary as the lost potential hero or savior of WWII or the interwar era is misplaced.
The real truth of how the interwar map messed up two-font, three-power (Anglo-Franco-Soviet) containment of revanchist Nazi Germany is simpler, and in some ways uglier......
Basically, the WWI settlement of real life and Versailles Treaty brought Poland back to life. And Poland existing, got in the way of smooth western collaboration with the Soviet Union.
The pre-WWI Franco-Russian alliance was simple to manage. Between the two countries, it was only one-country deep, Germany. The two continental allies could pledge to attack Germany in the interest of the other and protect their mutual survival.
But when Poland was reborn, it had to worry about either Germany or the USSR smothering it, equally. The new existence of Poland created a constant temptation for Germany and the USSR to cooperate for a fourth Partition of Poland. By 1935 France and the Soviet Union were both mightily alarmed by Nazi Germany, and France made a security pact with the USSR. France hoped this would be a second layer of protection to add to its 14 year old alliance with Poland. But it could never reconcile the two alliances, because of territorial disputes between its two eastern partners and Poland's well-founded existential fears.
Last edited: