How Did the Austro-Hungarian Empire Actually Work? 

This is the first video of yours I have seen, and I kinda thought your “lackluster” narration sounded unique and interesting.

I think showing a map of all Germans in the empire while talking about austrian germans may misrepresent german groups like the saxons in transilvania and other germans inside hungry whom were ther since the middle ages (before austrian influence in the kingdom of Hungary)

eh, I mean, first video I watch of you. It was nice, I am gonna binge more stuff from you so I don't have a problem with it.

Air polution sucks, it should be ended.

It's pronounced more like "mud jar" rather than "Maggy Yar".

It didn't.

Still worked better and more effective than the European Union. But sure, this dual thing complicated things.

​@Luitpold Walterstorffer The EU is a mostly economic alliance, also the EU has a large movement for further unification something that Austria-Hungary never has had, so what is wrong with the EU that makes it more stable than the EU

Austria Hungary functioned like Brazil, you see it didn’t

​@@casualjoe1264 The EU has no such movement. Not by a long shot. Theres simply no common rallying point to keep it all a united nation. Think Austria being essentially a Bavaria spin-off. Or how Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia respectively united over similar/identical languages, common threats, similar cultures and so on. Think of it this way: You'll find hardcore nationalists who'd die for the wellbeing of their country in a heartbeat. How much more likely do you think that would be for Greece than the EU? The fact that almost every multinational state so far collapsed shouldve been a hint to what awaits the EU should it try something funny. So a tight alliance is the best thing that can happen

Why wasn't the system accepted? To me it seems a limited federation would have been the best path for the Austrian Empire. Keeping a single central government but also appeasing it's minorities. I can understand why the Kingdom of Hungary, which had lost it's long held status of autonomy over half the empire would hate and boycott Vienna's attempts at federalism, but Croatia Slovenia were a smaller region within the empire that to an outsider looking in would have benefited from federalism.

I always wondered about that too. It seems the logical way to have gone about governing the Empire. But humans are not always logical.

​@@bones6448 Slavonia -> Croatian region Slovenia -> that tiny alpine country Austria ruled for almost a millenium

There is so much to learn from the K.u.K Empire/Monarchies.

You forget some minor issues, like ww1....

That wasn't really the case with Austria-Hungary. Sure, Franz Josef was a very important symbol of unity, but the dissolution of Austria-Hungary has much more to do with the extraordinary strains of WW1 and other external factors.

​@@fehervari98Could it have survived without WW1? It seems to me like WW1 itself was largely a symptom of the strain that was already on the empire as a result of the rise of nationalism, and it sped up the process of disintegration that was already well in motion by that point. If the Archduke had not been killed, or if the response to the assassination had been handled in a way that did not end up provoking a major armed conflict I still can't really see the Dual-Monarchy surviving in the long term. It probably would not have ended when it did in 1918, but I don't think it would have lasted very much longer in that form. Perhaps as something akin to a Danubian Commonwealth of Nations (possibly with two or more of its member-states under a personal union), or some other intergovernmental body. Once nationalism became a factor it became a near-impossibility to keep multi-ethnic states like it together. Even the Austrian and Hungarian crownlands would have been difficult to keep intact themselves considering how their demographics were working against them in the age of nationalism. And considering the continuing patterns we've seen in nationalism over the course of the 20th century I very much doubt the proposed United States of Greater Austria would have been able to succeed either.

Your 3d point was actually proposed in the last months of the war but by that time the slavic nations had had enough and were already lobying with the Entante for creating Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia and resurrecting Poland.

@Three Emperors Interesting. I didnt know that. 1907-1918 isnt really that long though.

I think Franz Ferdinand wanted the trialism creating a south-slavic entity next to the Austrian and Hungarian part. That's why he was a threat in the eyes of Serbian Nationalists as Croats, Slovenes and Bosnians would have been well better of within the Empire and the idea to become part of Serbia or a future Yugoslavia would seem absurd. Serbian nationalists wanted to unify all slavs and therefore any political program that would improve the situation of sout slavs was a threat in their eyes - therefore Franz Ferdinand was a problem and he had to die in Sarajevo.

@Three Emperors Say that to the Czech students killed in 1848 or the soldiers of the Czechslovak legion who had to fight through Russia during the Civil War just to get back home. As a Czech this really isn’t true.

@@luitpoldwalterstorffer2446 Actually the trialism concept was a watered down (but at the time much more realistic) version of the 'United States of Greater Austria' (Vereinigte Staaten von Groß-Österreich) idea which was proposed by a group of scholars surrounding Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The 'United States of Greater Austria' proposal was much more radical as it would have federalized Austria-Hungary into 15 states based on ethnic groups. Each state would have been built around an ethnic group that was the majority in a certain region. Within these new states there would have been also a few regions with autonomy for the bigger minority groups (mostly German speaking enclaves). There was a lot of resistance against this idea from different sides. Especially Hungary was strictly against this idea because obviously it would have reduced its territory when new nation states would have been created based on the ethnic groups. In hindsight it was a big blunder for Hungary to not support this idea. Although it would have been significantly reduced in size by the plan, it lost even more after WW1. In addition 2 of the 15 states were planned for Hungarian speaking people. In addition to Hungary it was also planned to create a state Seklerland based on a majority Hungarian speaking region in present-day Romania.

The graphics definitely take a while!

Instead they got a land locked admiral

Interestingly, France supported Karl, but Horthy exiled him to an island because it would cause a war with the surronding countries. Shortly after Karl died on the island

The Austrian Republic was not imposed by the Allies. The Austrian National Assembly dethroned the Habsburg before any treaty was signed with the Allies.

Ha, thanks. Yeah, it's going a little crazy!

Happy to help!

okay but prior to this most of Hungary belonged to the Habsburgs and before that, it was a kingdom. primogenitura, not voting

A. J. P. Taylor has authored a monumental work on the K.u.K. state.

I would recommend reading a book if you want to go in depth

Believe me...we neither. Our goverment the last few years....never talk about them.

They are two nations, with one ruler: Putin :)

@@gigikontra7023 🤨

Hungary has better government than most of the world currently.

@@tomhanks7571 You can take them. We will gift them to you, just take them out of the country pls ✌🏻

Austria had to do it, I wouldn't say that it was in their interest

@@gachalifeplayer6539 Yes, Austria had to do it, they really had no other option at the time if they wanted to retain their empire, but that also means it was in their interest to do it, even if they did not want to. So, both things are true at the same time.

excellent point

True

And most of the Sudeten-Germans , especially in the north and west of bohemia werent Austrians either

This is actually anti-European propaganda. Germanic tribes already lived in those regions in antiquity.

But the rest of the countries who don’t belong to Hungaria or Austria? What about them? What about magyarisation?

Glad to hear!

To be honest, that is disputed by some historians. Sure, Croatia certainly existed through all that time, however the exact status of Croatia in relation to Hungary is another question. There are proponents of the idea of personal union, however there are just as many saying Croatia was an autonomous part of Hungary.

I agree wit you ..but I will correct you a bit. In 12 centrury Croatian succesion crises and of ciurse war fir the Croatian crown, Croatia and Hungary formed personal union, that lasted from 1102 - 1527. In 1527 Croatian nobles (" parlament" ) recognize Habsburg emperor Ferdinand I as her king , indipendently from Hungary in that period. And that is the oficiall end of persobal union.Habsburg emperors were having separate title as king of Croatia Slavonia and Dalmatia (whic is Croatia). And this was thru all the period of Habsburg monarchy. A lot of things happend also bcz of Turkish invasion. Regarding AustianHungarian monarchy ..that is different storry and everything changed and compicated anditt was not a great period between Croatian an Hungarianns unfortunatelly

@@zb496 Croatia's personal union couldn't have ended in 1527, considering the same person was still the King of Hungary and of Croatia. On another note, Croatia and Slavonia's nobility kept participating in the Hungarian Diet, and the Hungarian governing bodies (chancellery and chamber) were put in charge of the territory of Croatia and Slavonia. For this reason, I do believe Croatia was part of Hungary itself (as an autonomous region) for the majority of the two countries' shared history.

​@@fehervari98 it still kinda exsisted in special staus,but we recognized hadburg at throne and hade bans

​@@fehervari98 Then you dont know basic history

Flags often be like that for some reason. As a society we just take the coolest looking one and say it was the flag for the whole nation. Look at the Confederate flag for example

Austrians rather embrased the Great Austrian Solution

You, of all people, should know.

No, died off, when Romanians wants much more rights than other nations. Those, who had extra rights within the austrian empire (no tax, free land for the family etc) no want equality, this is why the Jews, Gypsies, Slovaks, Ruthenians, Armenians and others joined to Hungarians, while Serbs, Croats and Romanians fight against them.

Actually, one of their official flags was the old flag of the Austrian Empire connected to the flag of Hungary, similar to the fake Wikipedia flag that was fabricated. The most used one was just the flag of the Austrian Empire. Most regions probably flew their own flags next to it.

@@GenericRU-vidGuy it's not fabricated, but the naval ensign. And the official symbol for the empire was the cojoined coat of arms

@@monolith-zl4qt it being the flag of the empire was fabricated clearly.

Thanks 😀

@@LookBackHistory you're welcome

Thanks!

Yea, they should have just merged their empires into one, it would have made the Germans out number the other minorities greatly and they could have kept Hungary as semi independent and had them deal with said minorities. Something like a Germany-hungry. Problem is that the ruling class didn’t want to give up power to Prussia

I'm not sure if they deserve credit since it was a self-inflicted problem that started out as a solution. When central Hungary was retaken from the Ottomans and Transylvanian independence came to an end, Transylvanian Hungarians carried out several rebellions in just the first 2 decades trying to establish an independent Hungary free from Austria. When that failed the Habsburg response was to essentially Balkanize the country, settling in hundreds of thousands of Slavic, German and Romanian people. This boosted the Austrian economy while making it harder for Hungary to be a unified power that could oppose them, as Austrians played the ethnic groups against one another. The endgoal of this was Germanization, but for some reason that's not talked about nearly as much as Magyarization, which was just a reaction to previous Germanization/Balkanization.

Austria probably becomes the leader of a unified Germany. Prussian King Frederick William IV, after becoming massively popular thanks to his semi-democratic reforms that stopped an 1848 revolution against his rule, actually turned down the crown of a unified Germany, feeling it was not the Hohenzollerns' place to accept what had belonged to the Habsburgs for centuries (Holy Roman Empire, etc.). Franz Joseph would have become Emperor of Germany, and Germany would have reached power and military strength MUCH larger than in World War I. Needless to say, France, Britain and Russia would have been TERRIFIED and war with this super-Germany would have become inevitable. Bohemia might have been Germanized, but Hungary likely gets the rest of the minorities apart from the Italians. Due to a crafty land exchange or other deal, Italy becomes Germany's ally DECADES earlier, setting up a World War I that looks a lot more like World War II in alliances. Prussia only became the leader of a unified Germany after the results of the Austro-Prussian War in 1866.

Yes

Plenty of Austro-Germans would've been fans of that idea, but Franz Josef would've never accepted the humiliation of his dynasty being subjugated to the German emperor.

@@LookBackHistory The funny thing is: Had Central Powers won ww1-his empire would have collapsed wbd his family dynasty being subjugated to the German Emperor anyway.

At the age of nationalist rise it was difficult for a country like Austria-Hungary sustain itself when the leading ethnic group had no identity of its own. Many supporters of a prevailing Austria-Hungary wanted to create Austrianism as a distinct-from-germany-proper national identity. This ofc failed at first, but after ww2 and the allied occupation of Austria, the allies ensured the creation of the Austrian identity to cut any attempt by Germany to re-annex it.

@@gigikontra7023 Personally no. Nationalism itself was an alien concept and while definitely prominent (The Holy Roman Empire was basically a German club.), it was not seen to be the thing. Even the Prussian Kings initially refused the German Crown (Not only because of the gutter.) because they viewed the Habsburgs as their Liege-Lords. I personally think they should have focused on creating a Catholic Empire with the South-Germans (Although that would dramatically change the balance of power in ethnic terms.).

You can see nice signatures here, destroying centuries old paintings: e.g. Max Klar 1878. While Romania was fighting Ottomans for their independence, the Austro-Hungarian empire was destroying Romanian cultural legacy (link below)

@@gigikontra7023 Bukovina was under the Monarchy, North was Ukrainian and the South Romanian. The army was not exactly nice even to their own subjects in that War so it is not inconceivable but a bit more muddied.

Were they supposed to be happy when Romania declared war in 1916 in an attempt to enlarge themselves at Austro-Hungarian expense?

@@andrepettersson175 umm, the scribbled obscenities are dated. E.g. 1878. Late XIX century.

@@gigikontra7023 interesting, i would love to hear your proof that the soldiers that scribbled anything in Bukovina in 1877 weren't from Bukovina themselves? Or is this where we pretend it must have been an Austrian or Hungarian?

In modern Russian history books this is considered as the biggest mistake of the Empire that began its death way. The only reason for this decision was Nicholas I's fear of revolutions, because of the Decembrist revolt, but the truth is that Russia actually didn't get any benefits from this: 1) The salvation of Austria-Hungary contravented Russia's Panslavic policies. If the Hungarian revolt had been successful, then other nations of Austria could have begun a revolution against Habsburgs. Especially Russia was interested in the Ruthenic population of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomery which used to have Russophilic thoughts back then. 2) Austria-Hungary didn't support Nicholas I during Crimean war, despite his help 3) And yeah the WWI

The biggest mistake Austria made was abandoning their oldest ally Russia in the crimean war, and isolating themself politically for the rest of the 19th and early 20th century

Slaves were kept in part through their own use of fiction?

Well that's feudalism and several nations joint in one nation together. It was just complicated but worked out fine.

Possibly. I've been thinking of potentially doing the Bosnian Crisis (1908).

@@LookBackHistory oh boi this will cause another balkan war in the commentary because mamy Serbs will claim that all Bosnian Muslims were and still are Serbs

I'm Croatian and while i get where youre trying to come from i see a few flaws here 1. Serbo-Croatian is the same language And claiming otherwise is the same as claiming Irish is somehow different than English Sure it sounds a little different and it has some different word usage but Come on Its English mate Now ill agree with you that we're two different people i mean i would rip the skin off anyone thay calls me a Serb to my face just like an Irish man would if someone called him English 2 Im pretty sure he put us in the same category as Serbs in the demographics list because he needed space in the frame to list everyone annnnd also include the map And if you look carefully enough he even went the extra step to give us a different colour so i ain't really bothered by it. 3. While what you say about serbs behaviour towards us is certainly true its also a gross exaggeration and unnecessarily paints them as universally evil greater serbia obsessed Chetniks and its just as unfair as painting Croats as Fascists and Nazi collaborators who despise everything Serbian 4. we KNOW how to speak for ourselves And Serbs certainly KNOW from personal experience with us that we KNOW how to speak for ourselves Tis why we have our own fucking country now after all ffs. 5. The blue white and red flag is an unofficial but still important pan Slavic flag used since the 18 hundreds and has been mainly inspired by the flag of the Russian empire(the only free slavic country at the time) You know Like every other slavic flag (bar poland) It was adopted by Yugoslavia because in their eyes it best represented ALL of the slavic people living in it and its still used to portray Pan-Slavism Not just the south slavs

@@marin8141 I always had the sense that calling Serbians and Croats (and Bosnians) different peoples is somewhat like calling catholic, greco-catholic and calvinist Hungarians different people, despite they speak the same language and have the same history (except independent Transylvania times which lasted for about 300 years). Honestly it blows my mind how the alphabet wasn't universally switched to latin in the Yugoslav times. I know that the question of a common people is way beyond the point of return, but can you imagine?

And let Russia gain huge swathes of eastern Europe and the balkans due to the Absence of the Habsburgs? Then Germany would be even more threatening on Paper to Britain France and more, while having to deal with an even bigger Russia.

More like the bosnian hergezovinan federation of today i think

Well, it very much still was together with Austria until the fall of A-H, at least as far as their foreign policy was concerned

@@user-zz3sn8ky7z they had the same currency. The Austro-Hungarian krone was written on one side in German and on the other side in Hungarian.

Absolutely true.

Falsification of history in a strange way. Austrians didn't tolerate other languages in the army, just the opposite, German was the language in the army and Hungary didn't like it. Of course Romanian was not the language of the army in HUNGARY... The Hungarian nationalism thing is BS. It's totally false. As if Turkish would not be the language of the German army and you would say it's German nationalism.

*Pieter M. Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History, Belknap Press, 2016:* (pp. 431 - 432)

@@timeanagy8495 The only strange thing here is the way you obsessively deny the historical facts&reality. Maybe you should read and find out more about the past, instead of the BS your are spewing here and there... To help you, I just posted some more quotes from Western historians. Enjoy!

​@@CborgMega Because Austria and Hungary were different countries. Austria was a multiethnic Empire, with Bosnian, Slovene, Polish, Romanian, Czech and other territories,while Hungary was an old state with some minorities, but it was not an empire. Btw Austrians were often very oppressive, many Hungarians had to speak German for a long time. Not speaking about the oppression of Hungary for centuries. Hungary didn't have policies of linguistic assimilation. Most of the minorities didn't even speak Hungarian at all... It's just BS by some "historians" who believe in the Romanian-Slavic propaganda about the barbarian, mongoloid Hungarians... The main anti-Hungarian historian, Seton-Watson, who was very instrumental in Trianon, was so freaking stupid that he didn't know that spontaneous assimilation exists everywhere, so he thought that the assimilated people were forced to assimilate in Hungary. He believed that many Hungarians were originally Slovaks in Upper Hungary... In fact the number of Hungarians increased mainly with the assimilation of Germans and jws in the cities (more than 1 million jws lived in Hungary).

@@timeanagy8495 *"Hungary was an old state with some minorities"* 🤣🤣🤣 Seriously? When Magyars were less than half of the population before 1900, and after 1900, the increase of the number of Magyar speakers was accomplished only by adding the assimilated Jews and Germans? Well, you could deny it as much as you want, but this is already established knowledge, also admitted by Hungarian historians, not only by the Western ones... ( Tibor Frank, "Nation, National Minorities, and Nationalism in Twentieth-Century Hungary", in Peter F. Sugar (ed.), _Eastern European Nationalism in the Twentieth Century,_ The American University Press, Washington, D.C., 1995, pp. 222-223)

Croats are Slavs, but unlike the others they had autonomy in Croatia-Slavonia and so weren't subject to the same Magyarisation pressures.

They seem to be ruled from Moscow, no? That's the general impression. The Hungarian defence minister is shareholder in a machine-building plant in Russia that also supplies the Russian defence industry. What a joke!

Let's recall that Romanian president is German (Transylvanian Saxon) and he explains how Transylvanian Germans voted to join Romania in 1918. He also opposes breaking up Romania into "People's Republics", just because a 3% MINORITY in the centre of Romania was instigated by Orban Khan to request this.

@@gigikontra7023 Szekely have this mythical view of Hungary and themselves, even though they trace their roots from Turkic tribes and nowdays, the youngsters either work in Hungary and feel unwelcome or are far more knowledgeable of Romanians not really having an issue with them than their parents cared to know. Is not their fault alone, Ceaușescu had a hand in their isolation at some point...

@@yamataichul yeah, the Romanian Communist Party was full of Szekely and Hungarians. So much for the "isolation" myth. Let's just remember names such as Verestoy Attila, Marko Bela etc. You don't fool me guys... Verestoy, in particular, was one of the richest Romanian MPs, having been a senator for a whopping 28 years (before he died of pulmonary cancer).

@@gigikontra7023 ?? Oh you're that type of individual... The colors on you speak volumes.

@@yamataichul "the colours on me"? What is that supposed to mean? Sadly many Hungarians have problems with foreign languages due to the massive difference between Hungarian and all other languages in the "decadent west".

You got me for a second there 😆

@@LookBackHistory ikr he had me too. Btw great explanation.

There was no national Austro-Hungarian flag, only individual flags for the two parts.

Hello

👋

@@veersavarkar5857 hi

Hey there 😄

Slovakia only exist after 1993

@@gachibass3639 And Czechoslovakia only after 1918. This flag was not used before as national flag in any movement.

@ At least they already had principality at mid 7th century.

@@gachibass3639 Actually, the first Slovak republic formed in 1939 (though it only lasted for 6 years)

@@boredweeb867 ​It was only a puppet government not a real state.