Page 271 - Il 1919. Un’Italia vittoriosa e provata in un’Europa in trasformazione. Problematiche e prospettive - Atti 11-12 novembre 2019

IV Sessione - L’Italia a Versailles. Aspetti di politica internazionale 269

Forming a new army. Austria’s armed forces

and the impact of the peace treaty of “St. Germain”

di M. Christian ORTNER 1

From the Imperial and Royal Army to the provisional Volkswehr
(1918-1919)

ovember 1918 certainly is one of
Nthe decisive turning points not
only in the political history of Austria but
also regarding the development of Aus-
trian armed forces. The “old” army, with
some of its oldest regiments looking
back on an almost 300-year-old tradition,
had ceased to exist alongside the Imperial
and Royal Habsburg Monarchy. After a
struggle of almost four-and-a-half years
and more than one million dead soldiers,
550,000-600,000 of whom were killed in
action, for Austria-Hungary the Great War ended with the armistice of 3 No-
vember 1918, signed at the Italian Supreme Command in the Villa Giusti outside
of Padua. At this point, the end of hostilities having been stipulated for 4 No-
vember 1918, the Habsburg Monarchy already was in a state of political dissolu-
tion and the Imperial and Royal Army spent the last days of its existence without
belonging to any state. The crown lands or rather the nationalities one after the
other had declared their independence, even though the actual border demarca-
tions remained vague because of various argumentations – with national or his-
torical undertones. At first, because questions of territorial expansion of the
successor states and the bordering victorious countries had to be given priority
in the political discourse, this had effects on the respective approaches of security
policies and subsequently led to an elaboration of first concepts for armed forces
of one’s own and military matters. For “German-Austria”, newly constituted on

1 General-Director of the Museum and Institute of Military History – Vienna.