The army and the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1918

Abstract

The process of disorganization of the armed forces of Austria-Hungary in 1918 is considered through the prism of the national issue and the prospects for the further preservation of the Habsburg Monarchy. It is concluded that the military and diplomatic victories won in the early 1918 by Austria-Hungary were illusory and only put off the inevitable defeat of its army. Investigation of the first cases of mass withdrawal from obedience of military units in the spring and summer of 1918, showed that they were an interweaving of social, national-political and military reasons proper. At the same time, a serious discrepancy was revealed between Slovenian and Italian researchers in the interpretation of the reasons for the uprising in the 97th infantry regiment stationed in the Slovenian Radkersburg (Radgon). If for the former it was typical, following the Marxist tradition, to emphasize the social contradictions that led to the revolutionization of the army according to the “Russian model”, the latter praised the participants in the uprising from the Italian side as genuine national patriots. It is shown that the “shock force” of all the soldiers’ uprisings that broke out in the spring and summer of 1918 in the Austro-Hungarian army were servicemen who returned from Russian captivity in the spring of 1918, where some of them were imbued with revolutionary ideas. The conclusion is drawn about the extreme severity of military justice, which condemned many of the insurgents to death, which became the reason for deputy inquiries.