ABSTRACT
No other major European dynasty has survived as long as the Austrian Habsburgs (12731918) or left so deep an imprint on European history. In most states governments and dynasties have come and gone, but territories have remained much the same (in the short term, at least). In the Habsburg Empire, by contrast, territories came and went, but the dynasty endured until 1918. Moreover, much that has happened in East Central Europe since then has been a consequence of the collapse of the Habsburg Empire in 1918. Imperial political and economic union, security and order gave way to political and economic fragmentation, insecurity, disorder, instability, irredentism, revanchism, beggar-my-neighbour protectionism and international discord. Before long, however, the power vacuum left by the demise of the Habsburg Empire was filled by Nazi Germany. In a sense, Hitler was ‘Austria’s revenge’ for the long succession of military and diplomatic humiliations inflicted upon Austria between 1859 and 1918. ‘Hitler had learnt everything he knew in Austria – his nationalism from Schönerer, his antisemitism and appeal to the “little man” from Lueger. He brought into German politics a demagogy peculiarly Viennese’ (Taylor 1976:258). Hitler’s peculiar hatred of South Slavs, Czechs, Gypsies and Jews was much more Austrian than German in inspiration.
