Austria-Hungary

Five great empires entered World War One, and only one emerged. Germany, Austro-Hungary, Russia and the Ottomans all lost their empires as a result of the war. Germany was shorn of its colonies at the Versailles Peace Conference and a republican democracy was created. The Kaiser abdicated and the Hohenzollern throne was no more. The Hapsburgs had ruled in central Europe for hundreds of years, and their "Dual Monarchy" in Austria-Hungary was broken up into smaller nations. The Ottoman Empire had ruled Asia Minor and the Middle East for four hundred years. The Middle East was taken away and divided into new nations, and mandated territories under the League of Nations under French and British control. All that remained of the once vast and powerful Ottoman Empire was Turkey, and the Sultan was dethroned. The Romanov dynasty in Russia did not survive even until the war was over. The Soviets took over Russia, ending hundreds of years of Czarist rule, and imposed a communist regime that lasted for seventy years and forced the Cold War upon the rest of the world.

Germany was forced to "admit" at Versailles that it was solely responsible for World War One, a judgment which is not entirely accurate but which was in accord with French feelings and a vindictive desire to punish the Germans. The harsh terms imposed on Germany, the reparations demanded, ensured that German resentment would simmer and the world would be treated to a sequel, which came to pass within a generation.

Britain managed to hang on to its empire but was vastly weakened. The nation was bankrupted by the immense expenditure of treasure in fighting the war.

France was similarly devastated. As in Britain, an entire generation of young men was in the cemeteries or maimed for life, with spirits broken by the horrific ordeal of the western front. The Treasury was empty. Most of the fighting on the western front had taken place in France, and the land was ravaged, pocked with craters, poisoned with gas and full of metal shell fragments. Cities, towns and villages were insignificant heaps of rubble. To this day there exists a "Zone Rouge" in France where the land is uninhabitable, though it shrinks every year, the soil so poisoned by the war that it cannot support life. Farmers in parts of France and Belgium require armored tractors to plow their land, so they will not be killed when their plows strike and detonate long-buried unexploded artillery shells from the Great War. Someone is still killed every year from this menace, though efforts have been continuous over the last ninety years to find these explosives. For a generation after the war people made a living gleaning metal shell fragments from the battllefields for scrap metal recycling.

The United States was deeply disillusioned by its experience. The people of the US had thought to settle this horror between "civilized" people so that the rule of reason could return and peace be nourished. The bitter, greedy squabbling of the peace process and the vulgar grasping that went on there convinced most in the US that the effort had been wasted, and that Europe was irredeemable. Most people in the US wanted to go back to the way things had always been, with the US minding its own business, taking little part in international affairs, and certainly none in the incessant bloodbaths of Europe, which , after all, many of their ancestors had crossed the ocean to escape. The United States wanted only a "return to normalcy" and isolationism.

Northern France after the war was in receipt of clothing from England

For a period of time most of the affected nations were involved in the formation of the League of Nations, proposed and spearheaded by the United States under the aegis and will power of President Woodrow Wilson.

Since their role included flying missions across the Adriatic Sea, their navy operated a variety of seaplanes. The Austrian pilots were issued parachutes like the Germans(but not the Allies). On August 22, 1918, Friedrich Hefty became the first A-H pilot to save his life with a parachute.

The Austro-Hungarian uniform was different, as well as the medals and awards the aces earned. Some A-H airplanes were painted in a mottled paint pattern that produced an effective camoflage scheme, which is seldom found on WW1 aircraft.

The Navy aircraft usually had hughe Red/White/Red stripes painted on wing tips or on the tail surfaces. One point of interest is the National markings used on the Austro-Hungarian airplanes were slightly different than those on German a/c.

Late in the war when Germany adopted the straight cross, some A-H aircraft were painted with the same cross as seen on WW2 German aircraft.

2- Julius Argia - 32 kills. He was one of 4 winners of the Gold Medal for Bravery. He believe that his extra large nose gave him a sixth sense of weather conditions before a mission. During World War 2, he was an instructor pilot and the commander of a fighter pilot school at Schwechat where he taught Major Nowotny(258 kills) and Oberleutnant Hans-Joachim Marseille(158 kills). He died in his sleep in 1981.

3- Benno Fiala - 28 kills . A great fighter pilot and avaition enthusiasts who served 40 years in avaiation. After the war, he became an assistant at the Junkers firm and later became the chief engineer. He was sent to Japan to setup the Mitsubishi Aircraft Company in their production of all-metal aircraft. During WOrld War 2, he would not renounce his Austria citizenship to become a German. He was a base commander during the World War 2.

4- Frank Linke-Crawford - 27 kills. He wore a red flying helmet; this his nickname "red head". At 24, he was shot down by an Italian flying a Hanroit HD-1.

5- Josef Kiss - 19 kills. On Jan 27, 1918, he was shot through the abdomen and had part of his bowels removed. Miracously he recovered and went back into combat only to be shot down on May 24, 1918.

Reference source: "Air Aces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1914-1918" by Dr. Martin O'Connor.

Serbia accepted nearly all the points in the ultimatum, and the 'doves' in Vienna wanted to accept. At this point the German General Staff used all its influence to strengthen the position of the hardliners in Austria-Hungary.

At a late stage in the crisis of July 1914 there seems to have been some internal disagreement at top in Germany. The Foreign Minister of Austria-Hungary, Count Berchtold, noticed apparent discord in Berlin and asked, 'Who is in charge in Berlin - Bethmann-Hollweg [the Chancellor] or Moltke [the Chief of the General Staff]?' It was the latter who was particularly keen on war and on egging Austria-Hungary on ...

A meeting of the German General Staff held in December 1912, chaired by Kaiser Wilhelm II (without even the Chancellor present) resolved in principle to use the next suitable major international crisis to go to war against France and Russia, which they thought were trying to 'encircle' Germany. This is on record, but there is room for discussion as to how far this decision should be taken at face value. (Normally, one would have expected that there would have been substantial follow-up work, but there wasn't. In order words, it's possible that the General Staff was just saying 'yes, yes' to the Kaiser, who was rather keen on this decision in 1912).

Any suggestion that an unwilling Germany was dragged into World War 1 by an aggressive Austria-Hungary is wildly inaccurate. The German General Staff used Austria as a stooge.

To avoid misunderstanding, I'd like to stress that this isn't a point of view dating from the Versailles Treaty. It was the considered opinion of a respected German historian, Fritz Fischer (1908-99), writing in the 1960s with full access to the German and Austro-Hungarian archives.

Fritz Fischer stressed that his findings don't substantiate Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, as the latter treated every German - man, woman and child - as responsible.

With modifications, Fritz Fischer's view is pretty standard in Germany and in much of Europe among professional historians of World War 1, though there is disagreement about various aspects.

Popular history in the U.S. (and much of the information availalbe online) is strangely hostile to these views. In the U.S. there is a tendency in 'popular' history to cling to outdated views on this.

See the links for "Wikipedia: Fritz Fischer" and for "In Memoriam: Fritz Fischer" below.