Part 6 out of 666, who are the Austrians, and who are the Hungarians and who are the Serbians and, WHO THE HELL ARE YOU PEOPLE!?
For those of you who studied the French Revolution (anyone?) you might remember Austria as the inept, conservative blowhards who lost against the French like eight times, and that’s true. Unlike the Ottomans, who were a massive Empire, the Austrians have always been a somewhat regional empire of multiethnic states, through like the Ottomans they are at the end of their glory when WWI comes about. Once upon a time, what is now Germany and all of Austria Hungry (see map below) were in one “country” called the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. It was in reality a confederation of Germanic states, who were united in a league with some basic loyalty to the Emperor, but not really united. Eventually it fell apart because..yeah, it couldn’t get anything done, and the largest of these states, modern day Austria, went “Screw these guys, I’m going independent” and took over what is now Austria, Hungry, Czechoslovakia, half of Poland, and parts of the Balkans, some of southern Germany, Romania, and northern Italy. Once largest empire in all of Europe, because their leaders, the Hapsburgs married themselves off to all of the other leaders, the problem is, in doing that, the Hapsburgs became MAJORLY inbreed. I mean, eww inbreeding, to the point where you had whole generations of kids who were as dumb as a rock. I mean look at this, this is what they looked like.
This is how big it was in 1914
Now the problem is that area is literally full of a massive number of different ethnic groups, each with a difference language, culture, customs, society, religion, and ethnic background all crammed together in a small area. And they all hate each other.
The Austrians are basically German, they speak German they are the same ethnic background, and they ruled over all of these ethnic groups, even through they were a minority they just kept all of the other groups divided. However after some really bad wars with Napoleon and a bunch of other screw ups, the second largest ethnic group, the Hungarians were able to gain some level of sovereignty. Thus the “Duel Empire” was born, a combination of Austria and Hungry ruling over all of these other groups, who they both hated, but the Hungarians and the Austrians hated each other and all of the people beneath them, thus the empire was simply too diverse and complex to run effectively, and despite the partnership, Austria still was the more powerful of the two. Now this isn’t like in America were our diversity is one of our greatest advantages, because we hope to integrate all of our minorities into one singular nation, we aren’t totally great at it, but the idea is that we are all Americans together. In Austria Hungry, they tried to keep the various ethnic divisions separate, IE, the Serbs were in their own community and considered themselves their own people, subjugated under the Austrians, and hated all of the other ethnic groups in the area. While this divided the various groups to keep them from uniting against Austria, it also meant that Austrian subject people had no real loyalty to their rulers. I know I’m not giving Austria credit, as it was a cultural powerhouse at a few times, but I really don’t care enough to go into detail about their advanced and ancient sophisticated culture. In short through, Austria is one of the old boys of Europe, like Spain, France and Britain, its an old nation. They hate the Russians and the Ottomans, as they are always fighting over each other’s borders. The Recent decline of the Ottomans is welcomed by the Austrians, however they hope to check the Russians. Despite a fairly recent war, the Austrians are very close to the Germans, as they are the same ethnicity and have the same view points. Austria basically would have joined Germany if they were so busy managing their empire. Its also worth noting that a young man named Adolf Hitler is living on the streets at the time of 1914 trying to get by as a painter with little success.
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