Comments by "Alan Pennie" (@alanpennie8013) on "Nationalism DOESN’T explain WHY Austria-Hungary collapsed" video.

It worked partly because the country was the centre of s world empire and had plenty of food available if it could ship it across The Ocean, which the u - boats could never prevent it from doing.
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I'd say they had exactly two reasons. 1. That The Dual Monarchy had in effect been assimilated to the German Reich and it was hard to see how the two could be separated again. 2. President Wilson wanted it.
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@therealignotus7549 Franz Josef was a stickler for legality, and correctly imo since The Empire had nothing else to hold it together.
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In discussing the role of nationalism it's worth considering that beginning around 1860 the European powers began to implement systems of "national education" (to use a term current in The UK at that time) to effectively "nationalise" the population. Not being dominated by a single nationality The Empire couldn't do this and this was a major reason why defeat caused it to collapse.
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I agree. You could think of The Dual Monarchy (and its German ally) as besieged fortresses. All the authorities could do was manage the inevitable shortages as best they could.
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@jimtaylor294 Indeed. The Hapsburg Monarchy was both resentful (at having to ask for Russian assistance) and anxious (that the Russians would now permanently occupy The Danubian Principalities.) In the aftermath the two powers became permanently hostile to each other.
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@TheImperatorKnight Part of the reason was that the various nationalist movements inside The Empire had branches in The USA because there had been a great deal of recent emigration across The Atlantic. This gave the movements some currency inside The USA while at the same time the American branches educated the folk still in The Monarchy on how to structure themselves for maximum appeal to US opinion. I don't think the British and French had any particular desire to break up The Empire but their dependence on The USA was by now so great that they could not effectively oppose American wishes.
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The Hapsburg Monarchy was the creature of the Catholic Counter Reformation. It may be that it was what historians call, "the secularisation of The European Mind" in the second half of The Nineteenth Century which debilitated it to the point that it could not survive a major crisis.
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