This is a major new contribution to the historiography of the First World War. It examines the lively battle of ideas which helped to destroy Austria-Hungary. It also assesses, for the first time, the weapon of 'front propaganda' as used by and against the Empire on the Italian and Eastern Fronts. Based on material in eight languages, the work challenges accepted views about Britain's primacy in the field of propaganda, while casting fresh light on the creation of Yugoslavia and the viability of the Habsburg Empire in its last years.

The Habsburg Empire was an experiment in multi-national politics. The eight essays in this volume seek to unravel the complexities of the final twenty years of Austria-Hungary and its eventual disintegration.

When Austria-Hungary broke up at the end of the First World War, the sacrifice of one million men who had died fighting for the Habsburg monarchy now seemed to be in vain. This book is the first of its kind to analyze how the Great War was interpreted, commemorated, or forgotten across all the ex-Habsburg territories. Each of the book’s twelve chapters focuses on a separate region, studying how the transition to peacetime was managed either by the state, by war veterans, or by national minorities. This “splintered war memory,” where some posed as victors and some as losers, does much to explain the fractious character of interwar Eastern Europe.

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 was just one link in a chain of events leading to World War I and the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian empire. By 1918, after nearly four hundred years of rule, the Habsburg monarchy was expunged in an instant of history. Remarkably, despite tales of decadence, ethnic indifference, and a failure to modernize, the empire enjoyed a renewed popularity in interwar narratives. Today, it remains a crucial point of reference for Central European identity, evoking nostalgia among the nations that once dismembered it. The Afterlife of Austria-Hungary examines histories, journalism, and literature in the period between world wars to expose both the positive and the negative treatment of the Habsburg monarchy following its dissolution and the powerful influence of fiction and memory over history. Originally published in Polish, Adam Kozuchowski's study analyzes the myriad factors that contributed to this phenomenon. Chief among these were economic depression, widespread authoritarianism on the continent, and the painful rise of aggressive nationalism. Many authors of these narratives were well-known intellectuals who yearned for the high culture and peaceable kingdom of their personal memory. Kozuchowski contrasts these imaginaries with the causal realities of the empire's failure. He considers the aspirations of Czechs, Poles, Romanians, Hungarians, and Austrians, and their quest for autonomy or domination over their neighbors, coupled with the wave of nationalism spreading across Europe. Kozuchowski then dissects the reign of the legendary Habsburg monarch, Franz Joseph, and the lasting perceptions that he inspired. To Kozuchowski, the interwar discourse was a reaction to the monumental change wrought by the dissolution of Austria-Hungary and the fear of a history lost. Those displaced at the empire's end attempted, through collective (and selective) memory, to reconstruct the vision of a once great multinational power. It was an imaginary that would influence future histories of the empire and even became a model for the European Union.

Excerpt from Austria-Hungary and the War I recommend to the kind attention of the American public this book, written by the Austro-Hungarian consul in Cleveland, on certain vital phases of the struggle which is convulsing Europe, The reader will find in these chapters a comprehensive presentation of the political forces and historical developments which led to the initial clash of arms. This volume contains authentic information about the Near East, a region so little known in the United States; it offers a graphic description of conditions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the two Austrian provinces coveted by Servia, and throws an illuminating light upon the real, the underlying, causes of the world-conflict. These causes I may be permitted to summarize in concise form. It should be borne clearly in mind at the outset that for more than a century Austria-Hungary and Russia have been keen rivals in the Balkan Peninsula. Owing to its geographical position the Dual Monarchy is the predominant economic factor in Southeastern Europe, and in the course of her commercial expansion has sought, quite naturally, to secure a market for the output of her industries in Servia, Bulgaria and European Turkey. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

“A monumental new volume. . . . Revelatory, even revolutionary. . . . Clark has done a masterful job explaining the inexplicable.” — Boston Globe One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History) Historian Christopher Clark’s riveting account of the explosive beginnings of World War I. Drawing on new scholarship, Clark offers a fresh look at World War I, focusing not on the battles and atrocities of the war itself, but on the complex events and relationships that led a group of well-meaning leaders into brutal conflict. Clark traces the paths to war in a minute-by-minute, action-packed narrative that cuts between the key decision centers in Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Paris, London, and Belgrade, and examines the decades of history that informed the events of 1914 and details the mutual misunderstandings and unintended signals that drove the crisis forward in a few short weeks. Meticulously researched and masterfully written, The Sleepwalkers is a dramatic and authoritative chronicle of Europe’s descent into a war that tore the world apart.