Was slav nationalism to blame for the fall of Austria-Hungary?

Answer 1

Austria-Hungary was more or less the achievement of a familly (The Hapsburgs) rather than of a conquering nation. They have brought togather a huge land in which many different nations lived (Hungarians, Czechs, Germans, Slovenes...) at a time when nationality seemed irrelevant. The peoples of the Empire lived seperatly in rather autonomous kingdoms, duchies etc.

The tensions began when the absolute emperors sought to relinquish the autonomies of the provinces in favour of a centralized government which started to promote the German language by which threatening the other nations of the empire which formed an overwhelming majority.

With the spread of German nationalism other concurring nationalisms began to take hold. As opposition to Germanisation grew strongerthe Germans decided to share power with the second largest nation, the Hungarians.

Then both sides, the Austrian and the Hungarian in their respective parts, tried to build a unitary state through assimilating the other nations they had ruled over out of that multinational feud of the Hapsburgs. This was met with fierce resistance from all the other communities most notably the Czechs and South Slavs who demanded equal rights for their languages and autonomy within their historic territories. This brought few results.

And when the government in Vienna forced the country into a futile war nobody but the Germans would have benefited from, those oppressed nations and their leaders decided to leave the empire for good and follow the path to independence.