Cornwall M. The Undermining of Austria-Hungary: The Battle for Hearts and Minds

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434 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

which was consciously or unconsciously manufactured by the propagandists

themselves or their opponents.

While all

of the belligerents dabbled with some front propaganda in the early

years of the war, it required a coincidence of factors for proper campaigns to

emerge in 1917. After 30 months of warfare all sides were at a turning-point,

having to think more carefully about the purpose of hostilities and about new

ways to achieve a quicker end to the war (thus the general announcement of

war aims or Germany's U-Boat offensive of early 1917). With the fall of the

Tsarist regime in March 1917, the Russian armed forces suddenly appeared

more receptive to their enemies' overtures for peace. Out of these hints on

the Eastern Front there developed a major propaganda offensive which, not-

withstanding any

questions about its actual effectiveness, had a crucial impact

on the further evolution of front propaganda. The Austro-Hungarian military,

on the basis of the benefits which seemed to accrue from the campaign in the

East, turned to employ their `new weapon' on the Italian and Balkan Fronts. At

the same time, the reputation which enemy propaganda secured in the Russian

cle

was one of the decisive factors in the creation of Lord Northcliffe's

`Enemy Propaganda Department' in Britain. It was thus an initiative by the

Central Powers which snowballed and caused an accelerated response in the

Allied camp. Admittedly, the Italian military did not simply take lessons from

others in their use of front propaganda; their more enlightened Intelligence

officers had slowly begun to practise some effective psychological warfare from

1916. But the elaborate campaign which was launched in April 1918 on the

Italian Front was still, in part, a reflex action to Austria-Hungary's own efforts in

that theatre in the previous six months. Thus the belligerents from 1917 were

interacting as they created their own organizations of front propaganda, learn-

ing as

much from the `cunning' behaviour of the enemy as from their own

teething problems with the weapon.

Just as

each campaign of front propaganda caused an offensive reaction in

the enemy camp, so it bred defensive responses as well. The Italian military's

shock after Caporetto, a trauma which was surrounded by rumours of enemy

propaganda and domestic subversion, led to systematic action in the Italian

war zone to improve morale. It was a move which, arguably, played its part in

immunizing the troops against an Austrian propaganda campaign which in

early 1918 seemed to be well-tuned to the hopes and fears in the Italian

trenches. The Austrian High Command's comparable defence, its Feindespro-

paganda-Abwehrstelle, was set up because, even more than the Italians, the

AOK felt that it knew what could be achieved through propaganda and had

learnt lessons from what the other belligerents were doing. Germany had begun

patriotic instruction in mid-1917, the Italian army was known to be `regenerat-

ing' itself

through defensive propaganda. On the other hand, Russia served as a

constant example to the Austrian military of what could happen if an empire's

Conclusion 435

psychological defences were left unmanned. When they perceived that the

poison of Bolshevism was seeping into the Monarchy, as revealed in the

domestic unrest of January 1918, and when one of their enemies, the British,

openly announced that they would try to subvert the Central Powers by pro-

paganda, the

Austrian military finally turned their thoughts to some coordin-

ated defensive

propaganda of their own. It is clear that the AOK in the last year

of the war was fully alert, if not paranoid, in the face of `enemy propaganda'.

This anxiety was a by-product from Austria-Hungary's own use of the weapon

from 1917, but the sense of helplessness which seemed to grow in 1918 was also

caused in part by an ill-defined and nebulous interpretation of the phenom-

enon. Despite

this, the Austrian military retained a principally offensive per-

ception of

front propaganda until June 1918 when it was clear that their

campaign against Italy had failed and ought to be temporarily shelved. Only

then, when it was far too late, was the defensive propaganda organized by the

FAst given a clearer priority. In this way the `primacy of the offensive', which

was always one of Conrad von Ho

tzendorf's

maxims, was evident too in the

field of psychological warfare and had very damaging consequences for Austria-

Hungary.

In each

theatre of the war, those who practised front propaganda had com-

mon experiences

and learnt similar lessons. But the fact that the weapon was

wielded in a variety of ways indicates that the propagandists had to adapt

their work on the different fronts. The same methods could not always be

used, nor did the targets have the same characteristics, and in the creation or

coordination of propaganda machinery there were difficulties peculiar to each

belligerent or theatre. On all sides among the military there was always a

certain amount of scepticism about the new weapon. The view of one British

commander, General Herbert Plumer, that it was an `unfair' activity which was

no substitute for `proper fighting', was by no means a purely British trait.

It was

equally commonplace in the Italian forces, where it was entrenched because

many remained deeply suspicious about the Slav agenda of Italy's front propa-

ganda and

never fully trusted the Czech or Yugoslav volunteers who were

operating in the front line. A similar mistrust was evident in the Austrian

military hierarchy where local commanders tended to use the English word

`unfair' to describe an interloper who seemed to be debasing the chivalrous

conduct of war.

As in the Italian army, Austrian scepticism about front propa-

ganda was

fuelled all the more by a fear among the Monarchy's conservative

leadership that such a subversive weapon might be double-edged and, simply

by being used, might be harmful to discipline in the Austro-Hungarian ranks.

Emperor Karl himself expressed such anxiety about Austria's campaign in the

East, but seems also to have shared the general irritation of Conrad and other

commanders at the idea of introducing propaganda or `advertising' into milit-

ary or

Imperial affairs in order to shape people's minds. If we are to believe one

436 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

observer, the Emperor commented on one occasion that thoughts and ideas

`could not be recommended like laxatives, toothpaste and foodstuffs'.

There were thus always those who from different prejudices resisted front

propaganda, whether it be local commanders who neglected to coordinate their

operations with propaganda personnel in the front line, or airmen who refused

to distribute `dishonourable' manifestos. Alongside them, however, there

emerged groups of enthusiasts, or those who increasingly felt that the new

weapon should not be neglected or left solely in enemy hands. Intelligence

officers like Tullio Marchetti, Cesare Finzi or Max Ronge came naturally to

appreciate what might be achieved through `throwing out the seeds of future

discord'.

In turn, some like Delme

-Radcliffe or Captain Frydman, the head

of 11AK propaganda, were enthused to perceive front propaganda as `an essen-

tial, modern

weapon of warfare' because of their close involvement in its

genesis. Others in the Allied camp, such as the grouping around the Corriere

della Sera, the propagandists of Crewe House or the delegates of Slav e

migre

organizations, all had their own political agendas which they brought to bear

when participating in Italy's campaign. Their input gave that campaign a

special colouring which was symptomatic of the fresh political-military mobil-

ization which

took place in Italy after Caporetto; they were trying to inject

more political arguments into a largely military phenomenon. Yet it was the

commitment of the military, particularly the High Commands, which was

crucial to advancing front propaganda. It may have been due to pressure from

their subordinates, and a set of particular circumstances on the fronts, that the

AOK and the CS realized in early 1917 and early 1918 respectively that front

propaganda ought to be fully sanctioned. Thereafter, they took initiatives

which facilitated the comprehensive organization of the weapon; they did

much to set new targets for front propaganda, on the premise that it was indeed

producing significant results.

From being

an isolated activity associated with Intelligence work, front pro-

paganda by

the end of the war had secured a place within each army's overall

strategy. It always retained its Intelligence dimension. The Austrians' Nachrich-

tentruppen,

who distributed material but also acted as Intelligence scouts,

acquired their more dangerous counterpart in the form of the Italians' Slav

patrols; and deserters who came from the enemy with useful information were

an indirect Intelligence benefit of psychological warfare. But by 1917±18, front

propaganda came to have a wider strategic significance for military operations,

and this was common to the campaigns against Russia, Italy and Austria-

Hungary. In each case, the military leaders gradually viewed front propaganda

as a valuable precursor to any offensive, expecting that after sustained subjec-

tion to

the weapon, the enemy troops would show their true moral weakness

when attacked. The propagandists assured their military leaders that this

process had occurred successfully during the Galician battle of July 1917, at

Conclusion 437

Caporetto in October, and in Austria-Hungary's last offensive in June 1918. In

each case, against Russia, Italy and Austria-Hungary, the propagandists then

intensified their efforts after the battle with the view that propaganda could

perform a coup de gra

ce upon a disillusioned and demoralized enemy. If this

did not immediately occur (and it did not), the military leaders still came to see

clear benefits from continuing a psychological campaign, not least the fact that

the offensive of words or ideas could be a substitute for standard military

operations which were often likely to waste precious manpower. This percep-

tion is

clear in all of the campaigns, and it frustrated those, like Lord Cavan or

General Alfred Krauss, who always gave primacy to conventional weaponry.

Those who believed in the power of front propaganda always felt that the fruits

which they were nurturing in the enemy camp might take a long time to ripen.

But the effects were always expected to be clearer during the next major

military engagement. Hence the Austrians' disappointment when their propa-

ganda failure

was exposed in June 1918. Hence the Italians, after their `success'

in this propaganda duel, persisted with their efforts and again expected to see

the results in their autumn offensive.

The propagandists

were therefore not particularly worried if demoralization

seemed to be a slow process, although occasional glimmers of success were vital

to their own credibility. Indeed, since in each campaign it was an accepted

premise that propaganda in the enemy trenches was interacting with an un-

stable enemy

hinterland, long periods of sustained propaganda work could be

exactly what was required so that the `common yeast' could ferment and have

an impact. A collective trait in the three campaigns against Russia, Italy and the

Habsburg Empire was a belief that enemy soldiers, steadily subject to propa-

ganda, would

take the subversive messages back into the hinterland, where

they would have an impact which would rebound on the front. The AOK

believed that this had happened in Russia, and was overconfident in expecting

that the same process would occur in Italy. Some of Italy's propagandists seem

to have learnt a similar `lesson' from Russia's collapse, namely that effective

propaganda at the front could interact fatally with unrest in the hinterland. The

evidence shows that such a process was indeed occurring in Austria-Hungary in

1918, with Padua's manifestos having some small impact. By the last months of

the war, moreover, the Italians themselves were taking their propaganda direct

to the Austrian hinterland. With sheer bravado, Italian pilots flew over Vienna,

Zagreb and Ljubljana, importing a subversive message directly to the rear in a

way which the Austrians could only theorize about attempting in Italy.

It might

be argued that the Austrians were less imaginative in their methods

of propaganda distribution. But it would be more correct to say that they

were increasingly circumscribed by the reality of the Monarchy's military and

political weaknesses. From its Eastern campaign against the Russians, the

AOK judged that oral propaganda was the most effective of techniques since

438 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

personal contact with the enemy, despite its obvious dangers, enabled well-

trained propagandists to be flexible in their approach as well as being a parti-

cularly effective

touchstone for the actual state of enemy morale. These benefits

were absent when propaganda was made simply with the written word. There-

fore for

the AOK, manifestos or newspapers were the preferred medium only

when the Eastern Front was moving or when the opposing forces were hos-

tile to

any personal approach. The type of literature then distributed was a

combination of pictures and slogans with longer factual newssheets, thereby

appealing to the Russians' wide range of tastes, their levels of literacy and

particularly their curiosity about the turmoil in the Russian hinterland.

However, when

the AOK turned to apply these `proven techniques' elsewhere

it faced major obstacles which, if partly the result of technical difficulties, were

also symptomatic of the Monarchy's military inferiority. True, the evidence

suggests that in its Serbian campaign, although hampered by a lack of Serbo-

Croat Intelligence troops, the AOK was quite able to adapt the techniques

which had been used against Russia. But on the Italian Front, the type of oral

contact which the AOK envisaged was impossible because of the terrain, and

the `secondary method' of spreading written material, even if ingenious ways

were explored, tended to founder because the Italian opponents were not

receptive enough. The propaganda duel which developed on the Italian Front

in 1918 revealed not that the Austrians were less imaginative than the Italians;

indeed, many characteristics of Austrian propaganda, such as their newssheets

or even their front-line patrols, were an example which the enemy tended to

copy. Rather, the Austrian campaign was noticeably limited in its resources and

hampered by enemy strengths. The AOK was only too aware that mass distri-

bution from

the air would be an asset (it had successfully explored that dimen-

sion in

the East), but on the Italian Front it was the Allies who controlled the air

space. As Padua's manifestos were daily disseminated from the air, the Austrians

were persistently reminded of their military inferiority, so that the constant

phenomenon of enemy propaganda raining down was perhaps more psycho-

logically destructive

than any arguments contained in the leaflets. While the

Austrians could never respond in kind from the air, their weakness in oral

propaganda also indicates more fundamental problems. It was not simply the

terrain which was a barrier, but the growing weakness of their overall campaign

when compared to the enemy's. Their arguments across the trenches could

rarely match those used by Italy's Czech and Yugoslav propaganda troops. It

was the latter who came to dominate `trench propaganda'. It was also they who

confirmed by their results that oral propaganda, the method so favoured by the

Austrians, could under the right circumstances be the most effective way of

practising front propaganda.

From this

one can justifiably infer that, however sophisticated the mechanics

of any propaganda machinery, what was most important was the type of

Conclusion 439

material which the propagandists could distribute and its ability to resonate

among the target audience. If a consistent `resonance' occurred, it meant that

the propaganda campaign was pushing at an open door, or in other words the

weapon could be usefully employed to act as a catalyst upon existing unrest in

the enemy camp. In each of the three major campaigns which we have studied,

a certain resonance had sounded, but only in those directed against Russia and

Austria-Hungary was it consistent and incremental. The arguments which

Austria employed against Italy from late 1917 might seem highly suited to

the desperate mood after Caporetto when many of the Italian rank and file

assumed that the war was over or that Italy's allies were needlessly prolonging

it; the Austrians also had extra cards to play in the shape of their peace with

Ukraine, or the enticement which went with their occupation of Venetia. Yet

after only a few months Austria's propaganda arguments, notably the messages

of despair, had lost much of their vitality; a certain Italian remobilization had

been achieved while rumours about Austria-Hungary's own domestic instabil-

ity began

to circulate in Italy. With the substantial `truths' of their propaganda

weakened in this way, the Austrians found that the weapon had lost its edge: it

could never function effectively as a lone instrument. They could not wield it as

on the Eastern Front, where over a period of many months they had played

successfully upon the Russian aspirations to peace and land, adding their voice

to others like the Bolsheviks who were proclaiming the reality of turmoil in the

Russian interior. Instead, as some of the Austrian propagandists always feared, it

was their own Empire rather than Italy which increasingly began to assume

disintegrating `Russian characteristics' and prove a suitable target for the pro-

paganda weapon.

The strength

of Italy's campaign against Austria-Hungary lay in the degree of

resonance which its front propaganda could maintain, playing consistently on

a set of mounting grievances in a way wholly reminiscent of the Central

Powers' campaign on the Eastern Front. What sharpened Italy's weapon, how-

ever, was

the fact that it not only exploited pacifist or social discontent but, in

Finzi's words, `spread dissension and mistrust among the various races'.

Strik-

ing in

this way at `Austria's real weakness', the propaganda campaign used

arguments which threatened the very existence of the Habsburg Empire, and

did so often from sources within the Monarchy itself. Contrary to one recent

view of the phenomenon, here was an example of `propaganda for foreign

consumption' which was indeed closely linked to `the actual conditions or

prevailing sentiments within a given state'.

Via the bureau run by Borgese in

Switzerland, the Padua Commission was able to secure a steady supply of news

thanks to the freer flow of information in Austria-Hungary. Suitable items were

then selected for each nationality, the premise being that although the Austro-

Hungarian forces had common hopes and anxieties, the troops of different

nationality always retained parochial concerns, including their own strong

440 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

cultural identities. Each might be lured in a particular way: the Poles with news

of Galicia and a Catholic slant, the Czechs with evidence of national resistance

at home and memories of past martyrdom, the Magyars with pointed remarks

about Count Tisza's elitism or suggestions that they were abandoning their own

heroic traditions from 1848.

If Padua's

arguments about national polarization in the Monarchy were often

exaggerated (and assumed too much of a politicized national consciousness in

the recipients), they were still firmly rooted in the reality of domestic disinteg-

ration, communicating

and reinforcing perceptions which were already cur-

rent. Indeed,

the propaganda campaign highlighted for the Habsburg army

commanders and many of their troops the ideological struggle in which

the Empire was now engaged. Many of those targeted by Padua in the

trenches were undoubtedly indifferent in the face of enemy propaganda, just

as they were apathetic towards any patriotic instruction from the FAst

network. But evidence from the clash of the FAst's instruction with Padua's

message shows that both of these `propagandas' could garner adherents in the

Austro-Hungarian army in 1918. Even so, it was the FAst which had the steeper

hill to climb. The organization was very much on the defensive, suddenly

trying to reinvent an image of the Empire which for many educated

soldiers was absent even in 1914, an image also now challenged by obvious

realities in the hinterland, where the Habsburg authorities had effectively lost

control.

If Italy's

front propaganda could mirror developments in the Monarchy fairly

faithfully, it was on somewhat shakier ground when it discussed Italian or

Allied commitments to the various nationalities. It is true that the presence of

the Czechoslovak Legion was a powerful symbol of that commitment, perhaps

in itself the single most important piece of Italy's front propaganda. It is also

the case that with the depressing or uplifting news of Allied military advances

from July 1918, it probably mattered little if Padua's manifestos contained only

vague Allied promises for the nationalities' future. Certainly, the basic Allied

commitment to the Czechs and Poles was evident in Italy's propaganda and,

partly via this medium, such `morally disturbing information' must have

reached many in the Austrian trenches.

Even so, official Italy's perpetual

ambiguity over the Yugoslav question was important for a number of reasons.

To some extent, it hampered the work of the Padua Commission since it soured

relations between various employees who queried the type of Yugoslav propa-

ganda which

was being issued; these tensions dovetailed with others which

owed much to Ugo Ojetti's view that he was running an Italian, not an Allied,

campaign. The Yugoslav issue also regularly surfaced to reveal that all was not

what it seemed in the Italian or Yugoslav camp in 1918. If many Italians in

positions of authority were cynically donning the mask of `nationality politics'

in order to win the war, the evidence from Italy's front propaganda shows that

Conclusion 441

they were right to be rather sceptical about the idea of a burgeoning Yugoslav

consciousness in the enemy trenches or territory. The reality was that in 1918 a

`Yugoslav mentality' was not at all as prevalent as some tried to insist (witness

Ljudevit Pivko's vain attempts to recruit for his volunteer force among Croats

and Slovenes). Those propagandists like Steed or Ojetti who suggested other-

wise were

trying to shape propaganda far ahead of reality.

At the

same time, it is clear that Italy's ambiguous stance could only tarnish

its reputation among potential allies and hinder a clearer (even if more ideal-

istic) message

in front propaganda. The Yugoslav issue remained Italy's Achil-

les' heel

in the campaign of 1918, one which the Austro-Hungarian authorities

might have done a lot more to attack at the front, or at least actively challenge

with some domestic propaganda in the Croat and Slovene regions of the

Monarchy. As an Achilles' heel, this was an issue similar to that of Germany's

annexationist goals in 1917 which had threatened to weaken the viability of

the Central Powers' propaganda against Russia. Both cases showed that there

could be serious repercussions, both among allies and in the theoretical effec-

tiveness of

front propaganda, if the latter tried to perpetuate an image which

diverged too far from reality.

Yet under

the circumstances, official Italy's ambiguous stance over the Yugo-

slav question

becomes more understandable, being rooted not simply in the

Treaty of London but also in certain realities about the concept of a `Yugoslav

nationality'. In assessing both the official Italian and Yugoslav standpoints, we

can see that the uneasy interaction of 1918 served as a significant prelude to the

bitter clashes between the two sides at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The

Yugoslavs felt all the more deceived in 1919 when Orlando fully threw off the

mask of `nationality politics', labelled the Croats and Slovenes as enemy peo-

ples, and

insisted on the London treaty with its territorial prizes on the eastern

Adriatic coast. By June, when he fell from power on a vote of parliamentary

confidence having failed in his objectives, Orlando had done much to feed the

roots of fascism in Italy and much to sour the relationship with Yugoslavia. In

turn, the Yugoslav leaders in 1919 continued to demonstrate many of their

wartime weaknesses, including their lack of any firm Allied support for their

cause, and those basic ethnic divisions which existed under the `Yugoslav

label'.

As a result, after 1919, the hopes of neither Italian or Yugoslav propa-

gandists involved

in Padua's campaign became a reality. Those like Borgese or

Albertini, who had expected to win Italy a prime place of influence on the ruins

of Austria-Hungary, were disillusioned. So were those like Trumbic

or Jam-

bris

ak,

who had proclaimed a Yugoslavia which would be harmoniously united

together and closely associated with an Italian ally. The ideals of Italian±

Yugoslav friendship or of a Yugoslav utopia had been temporarily propagated

in 1918. But both then succumbed to underlying `realities' when the common

danger of Austria-Hungary had disappeared.

442 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

If it is doubtful whether Padua's Yugoslav propaganda had much impact

(although we have noted the potential in a sample Croat division and some

clear results from the flights over Zagreb and Ljubljana), a more taxing question

is the overall effect of the campaigns of front propaganda. Could they or did

they significantly influence enemy behaviour? The propagandists themselves

were, of course, the first to triumph their own success, that front propaganda

had helped to `break Russia' or had caused an `unprecedented disruption' of the

Austro-Hungarian army.

More realistically, the evidence suggests that the role

of this weapon was to act as a small catalyst upon prevailing moods in the

enemy war zone, at times provoking a few desertions, but usually contributing

some `yeast' to a general fermentation which was lowering morale. The over-

riding factors

which determined the state of morale in the Austro-Hungarian

trenches were the food and material situation; the cohesion and camaraderie

within each military unit as part of a hierarchical structure; the relationship

with life in the hinterland; and the overall perception of whether the war was

worth fighting. While a combination of these determined the behaviour of

individuals or military units, enemy propaganda can only ever be viewed as a

secondary, extra ingredient.

Even so,

it is clear that `trench propaganda', by patrols on the Italian or

Eastern Fronts, did have a strong psychological impact when in the right

hands, besides also producing valuable Intelligence benefits. When Czech sol-

diers were

found to be serving in the front line against their co-nationals in the

Habsburg forces, the underlying reason why the Monarchy was waging war was

directly challenged. The Austrian military's attempts to weaken the impact of

such Czech forces, though sometimes quite ingenious, increasingly backfired

because Czech propaganda from outside the Monarchy had a strong resonance

in Bohemia-Moravia. Czech soldiers in the Austrian trenches gradually learnt of

nationalist agitation in front of them and behind them, and this certainly

influenced the behaviour of some individuals (even if many only challenged

Habsburg authority in the final days of the war).

In contrast,

the actual effect of Padua's manifestos is far more difficult to

gauge. We have seen that the potential to persuade was most promising because

Padua was skilfully utilizing the Monarchy's press and trying to invade a `news

quarantine' in the Austrian war zone. It supplied not just slogans to the various

nationalities, but accurate items of news which dovetailed neatly with rumours

reaching the war zone from the hinterland. For those who were politically

minded, Padua's material might fill an information vacuum which FAst mater-

ial was

unable to handle; all the more so since, in contrast to Allied armies,

there appear to have been few `trench newspapers', composed by the soldiers

themselves, which did not stem from official Austrian sources. Padua's propa-

ganda was

also carefully tailored to meet the supposed outlook of each nation-

ality, here

again gaining its potency from the news sources it used from the

Conclusion 443

Monarchy. In this way, and by employing `national delegates' at Padua, the

manifestos to some extent avoided propagating simple nationalist stereotypes.

Not that the latter were wholly absent: but alongside material which was short,

crude and colourful, there were messages which tried to appeal more deeply to

an historic `national patriotism'. For many soldiers these arguments were still

perhaps too sophisticated (or idealistic in the Yugoslav case), especially since

they were rarely pictorial and usually in written form. Indeed, in questioning

the direct effects of the leaflet propaganda upon troop morale, one can never

ignore the major practical obstacles which always existed. One was illiteracy,

another was the basic problem of matching a leaflet's language to the recipi-

ent's; finally, there was the issue of whether those who read a leaflet would give

its arguments any serious consideration anyway. In view of this, it is difficult to

ascribe to Padua's manifestos more than a minor role of persuasion in the

Austro-Hungarian trenches.

Yet it

has been argued in this study that the phenomenon of front propa-

ganda is

still important in itself for what it reveals about the perceptions of

those who wielded it. The Italian military anticipated definite results, the

Austrian military feared them: on both sides, there were many who believed

at the time that the new weapon was having a dangerous impact. Moreover, by

viewing the Habsburg Empire through the prism of front propaganda we can

draw some clear conclusions as to why the Monarchy collapsed in 1918. The

`primary reason' was internal. During the war, the Austro-Hungarian authorit-

ies lost

the battle for hearts and minds to those who believed in new state

structures and new forms of government. Not only did the Empire fail to

propagate its own raison d'e

tre sufficiently. Even if it had done so, the evidence

suggests that its own propaganda would have been wholly inadequate and ill-

matched to deal with the many unresolved political and national issues from

the prewar period. These issues festered increasingly during the war, exacer-

bated by

war-weariness and the critical food situation. They formed the es-

sential domestic

basis which enabled outside forces, the `secondary reason', to

contribute to the Monarchy's dissolution. Whether in the shape of Allied

pronouncements (such as recognition of the Czechoslovaks as allies), or

through the work of Czech legionaries on the Italian Front, these external

influences had the effect of spurring on domestic nationalists, so that they

made crucial moves away from the Empire at an opportune moment, when it

was clear that the war was lost. Only in this way might one agree with Henry

Wickham Steed's `modest' conclusion: on 29 October 1918, he told the EPD

that Allied propaganda `could claim credit not for the actual breaking up, but

for very materially accelerating the break-up of Austria'.

But even this state-

ment seems

excessive. At best it can be said that the undermining of Austria-

Hungary depended on a consistent interaction between internal and external

factors, but the decisive ones were domestic.