Would Austria-Hungary have collapsed if WW1 never happened?
Without reform, yes
In the long run I can't see it lasting super long, even with a federal system
>>327445
This. Nationalism was on the rise. Reforms were "coming" But I feel it was too lite too late. Large scale rebelions would have broken out before. But then again there is too many factors to take into account. A shame such a country did not survive. Imagine how central europe would be today.
>>327445
>>327539
Basically this, but there would need to be some sort of spark, If the political situation was stable, its unlikely it would just break apart. But as ethnic tensions rose, yeah an event precipitating a breakup would be inevitable. Ideally I think the breakup would be pic related
>>327316
Yes you stupid obsessed cunt, Ottomans may have been they sick man of Europe but Austria was definitely next on the chopping block, if was a huge shithole
>>327577
>giving them that bit in Romania
Why? It looks retarded, just have a population exchange for the small minority there
No, most nationalist movements did not have anywhere near majority support. Nobody in the Empire or anybody outside of it thought that collapse was coming before the war. "Doomed to fail" is bullshit that people prescribe to it with 20/20 hindsight and historians are increasingly challenging it.
>>327590
>it was a huge shit hole
What are you basing this on? This is objectively incorrect.
>>327612
I basing it of the state of the countries it split off into, the only decent ones out of it are Austria and Slovakia. Just look at Bosnia, Sarajevo is one of the worst cities in Europe
>>327616
>the only decent ones out of it are Austria and Slovakia
Yeah, I'd hate to live in West Czechia, Slovenia or Friuli :r)
>>327638
How about Hungary of Vojvodina? :r)
>>327616
That's ridiculous. Most of those countries went through 100 years of communism, occupation, and war after A-H. Bosnia was not even in the Empire for very long. Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Croatia are all fine countries today. The only parts of the Empire that were and are shit were the eastern provinces and they did not amount to much of the population.
>>327645
What's wrong with Hungary?
>>327645
m8, while driving over Fruška Gora, I felt as if I'm in africa, or Štajerska or some horrible place like that :r)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Greater_Austria
I think that if the Emperor bit the dust and Franz Ferdinand lived, he could have introduced enough reforms to at least leave a federation where Austria-Hungary was. Not exactly certain if he could have kept everybody under Austria-Hungary though, given all the nationalism and separatism going on.
>>327702
What nationalism and separatism was "going on"? It's a long stretch of time between 1848 and 1914, nationalism and pro-independence sentiment was mostly confined to the Balkan provinces. The Czech government in exile had difficulty raising support for independence in Bohemia even during the war, for example. Most non-German or Magyar nationalities just wanted autonomy within the empire.
>>327608
Doesn't the idea of a strong, free, rich, Central europe intrigue you? Say the empire gave your province autonomy. Would you still prefer to have gone through years of occupation and communism?
>>327726
They were given many chances for Autonomy during the war but they only accepted Independence
>>327729
Who did? The rabidly pro-independence unelected national councils and exiled governments operating from the Allied countries? It's not like they were holding referendums on it or anything.
>>327754
Where were the outcries among the public to rejoin the great empire then?
>>327597
Romania conquered that part during the war. Though I see there's non-world war related stuff so yeah, it's stupid.
Better question: What would have happened with austria if WW1 happened but the central powers won (or at least managed to end the war in statu quo situation)?
>>327762
A restoration of the Habsburgs was a very real and popular possibility before World War II in Hungary.
>>327727
Well, first there's a lot of contingencies here.
You have to remember that Yugoslavian communism came about internally (for the most part) and not from Red Army marching across Europe.
You know, ultimately, I'd rather live in a sovereign nation state like Slovenia, than a decrepit anachronism turned federal that would be the USGA.
And the idea that it'd be a strong, free and rich nation is lacking.
A-H was already fairly behind all of its contemporaries, aside from Russia and Ottomens in terms of economic strength, GDP per capita, literacy, etc.
Also, Austria proper tended to recieve most of the developmental benefits at the exclusion of other.
And ultimately, it's not like Austria would magically go from a monarchical regime to something akin to USA at the snap of a finger.
Austrians were notoriously nationalistic and their treatment of other ethnicities/minorities was usually not very pleasant and they most certainly would still hold the leading role in a federated state.
Take, for example, the slovene minority in Austria (post ww1), through a combination of germanisation, repression of minority rights, lack of structural/economic investment and so on, the minority was literally decimated, with questionable decisions being made as recently as 10 years ago (ban on bilingual signs and so on).
>>327813
That's because they lost 72% of their land and wanted to get it back
>>327813
What about the rest? As in, the ones that were not suzerains.
>>327819
Maybe it's just the romantic in me thinking CE could have withstood all the hardships the last century threw at it if ot was more united. I guess not being from there makes you only see the big picture.
>>327819
Also since you seem to come from slovenia. Can you tell me why it seems to be in much better shape then most of it's neighbors?
>>327882
well, it's a boon and a disadvantage, on one hand I'm probably a bit brainwashed by our ideologues and nationalistic propaganda in school books, on the other hand I did spend years studying about A-H and Habsburg lands as part of our mandatory curriculum and that manages to wash away part of romantic haze.
>>327852
I would not really say that there would be too much drive to bring the empire back in most other places. Not wanting an empire to collapse and wanting to revive an empire which has collapsed already are very different things though. most people were content with the empire while it was extant once it was gone it was gone and not many people are going to care enough to cry over spilt milk.
>>327316
Yes. They were literally on the same boat as the Ottomans.
on a side note, why were Turks so stupid in their defensive lines? like they have\ hundreds of guns facing the sea but seriously, no one bothered to protect their flanks?
>>327907
There's a lot of factors and I'll try to simplify.
One is the HRE/Byzantium divison, which runs pretty much in the same manner as the Slovene/Croatian border today.
We were always more part of the german and italian cultural spheres and closer to movements like the renaissance, enlightenment, reformation and so on.
Second, we managed to mostly evade the Turkish rape. Although there were some incursions, it was never as bad as the hungarian/croatian area and we were never under turkish administration, like parts of hungary, romania and bosnia/serbia especially.
And the differences between austrian and turkish administrations were harsh, just look at the literacy map of the 1931 census and how you can still clrearly see the austrian/ottomen border even 60 years after they fucked off.
Thirdly, the austrian administration system was superior to the hungarian one, albeit only slightly so, but the differences became most apparent in the post feudal era after the Theresian (Maria Theresia) reforms and later on with industrialisation.
Fourth is that slovene lands were considered somewhat as a part of habsburg proper lands and slovenes as wends (slavicised germans in denial or whatever) and as such, habsburgs liked to invest into slovene lands, leading to a good deal of industrial growth in the second part of the 19th century.
Another thing, that used to be a factor even before, but became much more apparent during the industrial era, was the geographical position of slovenia, the major Vienna-Trieste and A-H hinterlands - Italy trade routes went through slovene lands and contributed to economic prosperity.
Fifth, slovene lands are homogenous and we managed to evade a long genocidal war during the balkan wars in the 90s, our independence war lasted mere 10 days.
cont. (only one more :r))
>>327907
Slovene is master race, living under Germans for over 1200 years gives you good genes
>>327990
And lastly, post independence, our government decided for a slow, gradual move from nationalised, socialist market towards privatised, capitalist one.
That meant that we didn't go thorugh as tumultuous a period as Czechia or Poland did.
But now that the immediacy has subsided, it's much harder to pass structural reforms, which are blocked by either the opposition for populist point or by popular referendums.
This means that our growth is starting to stagnate in comparison to the countries previously mentioned.
Anway, I'd say that ultimately, the first, third and fourth factors were probably the most influential.
>>327316
Well, you've gotta remember that nationalism was springing up everywhere in the country, sooner or later with or without war it would've split apart because of all the different ethnic groups- it's not like there was anything uniting them.
>>328017
The monarch. They also share some common cuisine and even today they are pretty similar politically.
>>328025
True enough, but most minority groups didn't truly give a damn about the Monarch I thought. Czechs, poles and slovaks probably would've stayed on, but the Slovenians and Croatians would've eventually left and joined up with the Serbians, right?
>>327997
honestly, we're like cockroaches, 1200 years of german autism and we're still alive to tell the tale of our peoples :^)
>>328018
the key to understanding a great deal about slavic nations unde the Habsburgs is delving into the whole reformation/counter-reformation thing.
Don't forget, one of the biggest shabangs in european history started with based czechs throwing a bunch of imperial fucks out of windows.
>>328051
Slovene a very religious place?
>>328060
as in, now?
Not really, anyone under 60 that happens to follow christianity, does it more out of tradition than anything else.
There is a minority of about 10% who are almost american tier in their religiousness, but I wonder what that number will be once the old fucks die off.
>>328039
Actually Slovenes in the 1867-1914 period were mostly pro representation (as opposed to pro secession), at least judging from the leading politicians and parties at the time.
Poles on the other hand were pretty radical and IIRC their Sokol societies tried to radicalise them to be pro secession.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokol
>>328039
The Czechs would definitely have left eventually, but it's impossible to say with most others. Although the Croats were unhappy with their position within the Kingdom of Hungary and pan-Slavicism and Illyrianism were at an all time high full uprising in Slovenia or Croatia is much less likely than it was with Bosnia or the Serbs because neither nation had a recent history of independence. As for the monarch, it really depended on the ruler. Franz Joseph was a bit of a relic and saw himself first and foremost as a German prince, but future kings would have made a much larger attempt to identify with the lesser nationalities and present themselves as unifying figures.
>>327316
Yes. Fear of collapse was a primary motivator for pushing Austria towards war.
Austria had already decided that a military soltion was the only hope for holding it together.
>>328113
Source please. Complete collapse was considered unthinkable until the late stages of the war, even some allied leaders fully expected it to continue after the war in some form.
>>328136
Don't have a source off the top of my head, but the Compromise of 1867 made the state unworkable.
The Hungarians responded to it by basically shitposting IRL. A huge portion of why Austrohungary did so badly during the war was because Austrohungary as a whole was way below European average on defense spending as part of GDP.
Because the Hungarians decided to keep voting for negligible defense budgets, because fuck Vienna, lol.
At the same time, Austrohungary ended up diplomatically isolated because virtually everyone in Europe stood to gain SOMETHING from it's dismemberment, including it's allies, Germany and Italy.
While there was lots of talk of reform, but reformist hopes were all based on the fact that federalism would be able to give their nation particularly what they wanted. Which was possible (except for the Poles). But it was not possible to give EVERY nation what it wanted, not without, paradoxically, an all powerful Hapsburg state.
This is why Austria acted so recklessly in starting the war. All these factors pinning Austria in, the only way they saw out of this was a military solution.
They sure as shit knew they weren't ready for war, and did not really expect to win it. But decisively driving Serbia and Russia out of their affairs (hopefully with Italy, one way or another) and demonstrating that nationalist agitation could be met with overwhelming military force at the same time was the only way to stop the slow dismemberment of their empire.
WWI was literally a war for the survival of the Habsburg state. If they won, there'd be a decent chance of survival. But they could not continue to function diplomatically isolated and predated on while their government was deadlocked.
>>328331
>Because the Hungarians decided to keep voting for negligible defense budgets, because fuck Vienna, lol.
Don't forget that they refused to export any food after Galicia was pillaged, keeping all of it for the ethnic Magyars. The Austrian half of the empire was literally starving and was forced to import food from Germany while the Hungarians just kept everything to themselves.
The Hungarians seemed like they wanted all the glory of the war without having to suffer any of the consequences.
![Kaiser-Wilhelm-II[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/gSGTv9m.jpg "Kaiser-Wilhelm-II[1].jpg")
>encourages war with serbia, sure that the russians won't get involved.
>if they do get involved, which means France will be involved, we can surely win against france and then defeat russia, because the japs beat russia, we can too, victory in france is certain
>Britain will remain neutral, no question about it
>german navy's planning is backwards to army with no co-ordination between the two
what a screwup
>>327316
If it managed to stabilize it could defeat the rising nationalist movements.
>>328381
>The Hungarians seemed like they wanted all the glory of the war without having to suffer any of the consequences.
It's because that was the basis of the 1867 compromise. Hungary shall get all the benefits of the empire, and none of the responsibility.
>>328381
>The Hungarians seemed like they wanted all the glory of the war without having to suffer any of the consequences.
Trianon proved that there is something like karma
>>327316
Nope.
The "A-H was on the verge of implosion!" train of thought is pretty much disregarded by now. In fact, it is a product of rather easily identifiable factors (and the actual outcome of WW1) - rabid nationalism seeping into historiography after the war, and heavily biased works by people like Steed, Seton-Watson or Namier. Who had an axe to grind and promulgated the "inevitable decline" angle - except when actually examined in detail, it does not hold water. We know that basically even the most vocal and numerous opponents of the monarchy in for example the Bohemian part of the realm did not want it dismantled, did not want outright independence, but simply a greater degree of autonomy within the empire, we know that the empire did, albeit slowly, tackle these issues, and that the factors leading to the dissolution of the empire were basically minor actors suddenly granted power by the combination of the defeat in the war and allied support - see the work of Masaryk, Benes, Stefanik, all of whom would have been an absolute minority amongst the Czechs and Slovaks in peacetime, having pretty much no support either from the victorious powers, nor from home. See John Deak: The Great War and the Forgotten Realm for more.
>>329634
>We know that basically even the most vocal and numerous opponents of the monarchy in for example the Bohemian part of the realm did not want it dismantled, did not want outright independence, but simply a greater degree of autonomy within the empire
This completely denies the conservative position within the empire, that the state could not function and could not provide that degree of autonomy. Hungary seems to validate that position.
>>327607
This, I find it strange how many people think Austria-Hungary was on the brink of collapse already before WW1.
It wasn't, and one of the main reason for it was its general economic prosperity that made it attractive despite harsh handling of minorities.
>>328331
> the Compromise of 1867 made the state unworkable.
The Empire was unworkable without the Compromise, moot point.
>the Hungarians decided to keep voting for negligible defense budgets
Guess why Hungary didn't want to spend on defense, they had zero reasons to go to war. What for, to gain more ethnic minority lands? One of the staunchest opposition to the war was the Hungarian PM at time.
>>328381
You say that as if Hungary had massive reserve supplies it could just give to Austria as charity.
>The Hungarians seemed like they wanted all the glory of the war
Hungarians didn't want the war at all.
>>329994
>Hungarians didn't want the war at all.
Then why did their parliament vote for war?
>>329384
>Wilhelm wanted war
HA
>>330318
Consequence of the assassination and war fever. But the general mood before Sarajevo in Budapest didn't really wish for a war, unlike say in Berlin. There was just nothing in it for Hungarians.
>>330389
>There was just nothing in it for Hungarians.
This really, actually if anything, Hungarians stood to lose from the war.
The Compromise put them in a relative position of power and the potential of trialism (the chance of which would only increase with the annexation of Serbian lands and extra slavs in the empire) would only diminish their power.
>tfw panslavism is dead forever
>>331098
>instead of a great Empire we're stuck with shitty irrelevant nations that go to war every few years
>>331098
it is a good feel
>>327616
Little Sarajevo isn't that bad, the countryside is often horific in Bosnia.
I hear that 'ole archduke Frans Ferdinand wanted to change A-H from a dual monarchy to a triple monarchy of Austria, Hungary and the Slavic nations... But then he got assassinated
> :( rip sweet prince
>>331533
We had a great Empire but that buttmad Serb ruined it.
>>329980
Most people who lived in A-H, said that it was a golden age of stability, where things had been prosperous for ages, and they couldn't see it changing.
A lot of what you hear about A-H is pan-slavist propaganda. But the Pan-Slavists were idiots who shot Franz Ferdinand, who wanted to create a Pan-Slavic realm under Habsburg dominion. Somehow these derplords have hijacked history.
Princip attempted suicide with cyanide, but it was past-date (as did Čabrinović, leading the police to believe the group had been deceived buying the poison), then tried to shoot himself, but the pistol was wrested from his hand before he had a chance to fire another shot. Princip was 19 years old at the time and too young to receive death penalty, being only twenty-seven days short of the 20-year minimum age limit required by Habsburg law for the death sentence. Instead, he received the maximum sentence of twenty years in prison. He was held in harsh conditions which were worsened by the war, and contracted tuberculosis.[2] He died on 28 April 1918 at Terezín 3 years and 10 months after the assassination. At the time of his death, weakened by malnutrition and disease, he weighed around 40 kilograms (88 lb; 6 st 4 lb). His body had become wracked by skeletal tuberculosis that ate away his bones so badly that his right arm had to be amputated.
Fearing his bones might become relics for Slavic nationalists, Princip's jailers secretly took the body to an unmarked grave, but a Czech soldier assigned to the burial remembered the location, and in 1920 Princip and the other "Heroes of Vidovdan" were disinterred and brought to Sarajevo, where they were buried together beneath a chapel "built to commemorate for eternity our Serb Heroes" at St. Mark's Cemetery.
The house where Gavrilo Princip lived in Sarajevo was destroyed during World War I. After the war, it was rebuilt as a museum in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was conquered by Germany in 1941 and Sarajevo became part of the Independent State of Croatia. The Croatian Ustaše destroyed the house again. After the establishment of Communist Yugoslavia in 1944, the house of Gavrilo Princip became a museum again and there was another museum dedicated to him within the city of Sarajevo. During the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s the house of Gavrilo Princip was destroyed third time; no attempts to rebuild.. announced.
>>332488
The destroyer of nations, rewarded as he deserves
>>332492
Amen, but let's not pretend that war would not have occurred without Princips actions.
>>332698
Franz Ferdinand would have reformed the Empire, the slavics would have been happy. Russia would be butthurt because they aren't king of the slavs. France keeps being a pussy. Everyone wins.
It was pretty poor and backward. At least Hungarian part
I don't regret at all that it fell apart, given how many opportunities and development Czechoslovakia brought about
>>332773
But that's like asking black Americans if they regret abolition of slavery I guess
>>332790
>implying anyone was enslaved in Hungary
