What if Wilson decided Austria-Hungary should be kept around?

[Jiraiyathegallant]

This would be out of character for Wilson. But what if at some point after American entry into the war, Wilson came to the conclusion that Communism in Russia along with German aggression may need some sort of large power that can check them post war and decides to either never issue his full Fourteen Points or determines that Point Ten just includes greater autonomy?

Around October 14th 1918 when Austria offered to accept the Fourteen Points, let’s say the Allies find the offer (or an ATL offer when AH still collapses around that point) acceptable enough. If Czechoslovakia’s provincial government exists and has joined the Allies, they get kicked the curb. The fate of the Balkans becomes somewhat negotiable with Corfu Declaration potentially being ignored. Poland gets their OTL territory and Italy gets at least their OTL gains.

Can Austria-Hungary hold itself together here? And if so, what borders would you consider most probable?

And if they do survive, how does this effect post war Europe? What kind of relationship would they have with Fascist Italy and the Soviet Union (assuming they are not butterflied away)? Would they butterfly away Nazi Germany? What foreign relations should they prioritize if they survive? What kind of economy and military would you expect?

 

[Nephi]

Basically just the territory they had left but leave them United.

They'd hate it but economically they'd come to rely on each other even more than before.

I actually found a map about this earlier today.

 

[Michele]

Riots, insurrection and eventually revolution in Budapest.

 

[BigDestiny]

Basically just the territory they had left but leave them United.

They'd hate it but economically they'd come to rely on each other even more than before.

I actually found a map about this earlier today.

View attachment 510155

I'm not sure an agreement like this would keep them strong enough to be the bulkward they're being saved to be.

My understanding is that the desire for independence in Slovenia and Slovakia was lukewarm. So I think Croatia, Trentino, and Bohemia (minus the Sudenten) would be the only core territories separated from Austria-Hungary. In fact, France might even suggest that Germany be further weakened by giving Austria-Hungary Silesia as an enclave to make up for losing Galicia.

Making a Communist counter without the ability to defend against them is just the sort of thing that would happen after WWI but not the best idea. The treaty needs to make Austria-Hungary responsible for aiding Poland and Romania against Soviet Russia and give them the means to react almost instantly. There'd better be a non-aggression clause against Serbia too.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

Not sure how that would happen, because the people on the ground already killed it. I doubt Wilson could send troops to keep the Habsburgs in power, even in Austria.

 

[Nephi]

So the Habsburgs are put on a puppet throne, at least at first, Austria and Hungary are unified under a federal monarchy, union with Germany is forbidden.

They're both economic shitholes but you could have done worse, the Hungarian half blames the Austrians for getting them into this but an iron fisted Miklós Horthy sits in Vienna, it's his puppet show.

 

[David T]

Wilson did not cause the disintegration of Austria-Hungary, except indirectly by helping the Allies to win the war and by his talk about self-determination (though in the Fourteen Points he merely took it to the point of autonomy for the peoples of Austria-Hungary). But in October-November 1918 it was far too late to stop the effects of these things. Once the Central Powers faced defeat, it was inevitable that the peoples who were discontented with the Dual Monarchy would take things into their own hands. The only way to stop them would be to send the Allied armies to actually put them down, which is not politically realistic. (And by the way, to do so would be a gift to the Bolsheviks, who could then claim, however inconsistent this was with their own record in practice, to be the sole champions of self-determination.)

 

[Magnum]

Wilson did not cause the disintegration of Austria-Hungary, except indirectly by helping the Allies to win the war and by his talk about self-determination (though in the Fourteen Points he merely took it to the point of autonomy for the peoples of Austria-Hungary). But in October-November 1918 it was far too late to stop the effects of these things. Once the Central Powers faced defeat, it was inevitable that the peoples who were discontented with the Dual Monarchy would take things into their own hands. The only way to stop them would be to send the Allied armies to actually put them down, which is not politically realistic. (And by the way, to do so would be a gift to the Bolsheviks, who could then claim, however inconsistent this was with their own record in practice, to be the sole champions of self-determination.)

Had a message been sent to Vienna that terms would be more lenient if the Habsburgs were retained, I have no doubt they would have been kept around.

 

[Resurgam]

Welp, I'd imagine Wilsonova Street in Prague and its nearby statue are no longer a thing here.

 

[David T]

Had a message been sent to Vienna that terms would be more lenient if the Habsburgs were retained, I have no doubt they would have been kept around.

"Kept around" by whom?

The German-Austrians might be satisfied with keeping the Hapsburgs around as leaders of a still united Austria-Hungary. It's the other peoples who were the problem.

 

[Historymaster]

Hungarians were fine with it too.

 

[David T]

Hungarians were fine with it too.

Only if they were left with control of "their" non-Magyar minorities, which was not plausible by late 1918.

 

[Galba Otho Vitelius]

First of all, an Austria bigger than the post WWI republic but smaller than the pre WWI Empire would have made sense from the Allied perspective. They needed a country in Central/ Eastern Europe strong enough to resist becoming a German or Russian satellite. There was thinking that Poland would be such a country, but we know how that would work out. Plus if either Austria or Hungary are screwed less in the postwar settlements maybe they play ball with this timeline's version of the Little Entente more then they did.

But I think the key here is going to be Bohemia and I have no idea about how strong the Czech independence movement really was or how much grass roots support it had. A POD could be the Allies telling the Czech nationalists that independence was not on the table and the best they could hope for would be more power within a surviving Austrian federation.

To go over the practicalities, Austria (actually "the lands represented in the federal council") and Hungary were already separate countries before World War I. They had a common monarchy, a trade union, and a common army, foreign policy and customs policy. As a union, it fell somewhere between modern Canada and the modern European Union ex-UK. And the Austrian part was already federal, as would be the post war Republic of Austria. Hungary was actually the problem with this, they kept making noises about getting out and blocking even internal reforms in the "Austrian" half.

So we can assume Austria and Hungary are going to separate, with or without the small transfer of territory between Hungary and Austria that happened IOTL. For purposes of discussion, once Austria and Hungary are separated. The independence of Slocakia and any transfers of territory from Hungary to Rumania are separate countries, though I think OTL the Allies way overdid the postwar Hungary screw. Hungary is not part of the Austrian rump state, it wasn't before the war.

Serbia is going to get Bosnia and most likely Serb populated parts of Croatia, in all likelihood the attempt at a Serbo-Croatian union still happens. But neither "Yugoslavia" or Slovenia joining such a union is not needed (does a South Slav union make any sense without Bulgaria?). Slovenia stays part of Austria. I think the IOTL Republic of Austria has a Slovene majority anyway.

So to make this work, Bohemia, Moravia, Austria, and Slovenia stay united in a federal union, with German and Czech as the official languages. This will be able to stand up to Germany better than the Czecho-Slovak union. The question is if this is feasible. Official name will probably be something like "Federation of Austria". I think this will be a republic but am not totally sure.

If Poland still exists IOTL presumably the Poles get Galicia and Ruthenia, but they will be natural allies to Greater Rump Austria. An interesting question will be,once the British and French and presumably Americans decide that this version of Austria is in their strategic interests, how much they stand up to the Italian land grabs. The federation should get at least a port on the Adriatic. Another question is whether the Allies can and will transfer Silesia from Germany to Austria, it would be in their strategic interests to do so.

 

[David T]

A POD could be the Allies telling the Czech nationalists that independence was not on the table and the best they could hope for would be more power within a surviving Austrian federation.

It was way too late for that in October 1918. Note btw that Wilson was not the first to give official status to the Czechoslovak National Council: "During the summer of 1918, the Czechoslovak National Council made significant headway in its campaign to gain recognition from Allied governments. On 1 July French President Raymond Poincaré granted the Czecho-Slovaks a special diplomatic charter.[8] The British government followed on 9 August with an official statement which recognized the Czechoslovak National Council “as the trustee of the future Czecho-Slovak Government”.[9] The United States went a step further the next month by recognizing the Czechoslovak National Council as a de facto government.[10]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovak_National_Council

 

[Magnum]

Bavaria and the Catholic part of Silesia go to Austria-Hungary.
They keep most of the Sudetenland, western Banat and southern Slovakia.
A lot of edge cases where the following cities narrowly went to their neighbors stay with the Dual Monarchy:
- Bratislava
- Maribor
- Ostrava
- Timisoara
- Oradea
- Satu Mare (not on the map)
- Uzhorod

 

[marathag]

My understanding is that the desire for independence in Slovenia and Slovakia was lukewarm. So I think Croatia, Trentino, and Bohemia (minus the Sudenten) would be the only core territories separated from Austria-Hungary. In fact, France might even suggest that Germany be further weakened by giving Austria-Hungary Silesia as an enclave to make up for losing Galicia.

Or add Catholic Bavaria to this new 'South Germany' or 'Danube Federation'

 

[Albidoom]

"Kept around" by whom?

The German-Austrians might be satisfied with keeping the Hapsburgs around as leaders of a still united Austria-Hungary. It's the other peoples who were the problem.

Indeed. Such an offer of more lenient terms for Austria-Hungary could seriously annoy Italy, Serbia, Romania and the Czechs (and the other national minorities won't be too enthusiastic either), since they all could fear that those "lenient" terms might affect their aspirations; or even worse, those lenient terms might affect some more than others.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

By OTL's October 1918 you need to change more than just the victor's opinions, and things on the ground were going against the Habsburgs by then, and the Habsburgs themselves had become quite defeatist.

There were some proposals iOTL by dynasty loyalists to try to change things on the ground. Boroević offered to march on Vienna with two corps to put the Kaiser back on the thrown, Charles turned down the offer. An officer clique approached Kövess about leading a monarchist army against the Hungarian communists, but he talked them out of it. So there were some opportunities to the lay the groundwork for a rump Austria-Hungary.

To keep Austria-Hungary intact you probably need the 1917 peace feelers to not get hung up on the matter of Italy's claims, or for them to be sent out again following the Battle of Caporetto (when Italy is at its nadir and Russia is on the verge of dropping out of the war entirely).

 

[BigBlueBox]

Austria-Hungary can only survive an Entente victory if it made a separate peace before the fall of 1918, possibly even earlier. The Sixtus Affair destroyed the possibility of that happening. I think if the Sixtus Affair never happened Karl might have been able to get a separate peace after the Spring Offensive failed, if he was willing to give up Trentino, South Tyrol, Trieste, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Transylvania, Galicia, and probably a lot more of the coastline.

 

[anotherlurker]

Wilson can decide whatever he wants. But there's simply no one available on the ground willing to make it work by that time. Any politicians signing something would be facing assassination upon return and the cities would be in constant revolt and anarchy. The time for half measures was up, no more autonomy or promises, only full independence and damn the consequences.

If there were any ideas like this voiced before OTL end of the war Italy and Romania might go further into A-H than OTL, fearing they're about to be screwed out of their victory by deceitful allies, so better have an army there to assert your claim.