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North/South: the Great European divide

The 900-year-old Hapsburg Monarchy – Austria/Hungary as it was usually known from 1867 to 1918 – had been completely destroyed by the first World War, having faced several disasters in the previous century. In 1809, Napoleon had forced the empire that stretched across East-Central Europe into a humiliating peace, carving off sizeable slices of territory in the process and leading to the final, disastrous decision to go to war against Serbia in 1914. The result was that in the subsequent peace treaties Austria and Hungary were treated as defeated states responsible for starting the war, whilst in the ‘new Europe’, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia and Rumania were treated as victor states having gained their independence from the empire. The eloquent chapters which make up this volume set out to analyse how the Great War was interpreted or forgotten across all the ex-Hapsburg territories. The 12 authors taken together offer a comparative dimension to how it was experienced by both victors and defeated. How was the transition to peacetime managed, whether by the politicians, the veterans or national minorities? How was the sacrifice and the memorialisation of millions of dead digested? It is suggested here that this ‘splintered war memory’ does much to explain the fractious character of inter-war Eastern Europe which arose from the ashes of the Hapsburg monarchy. Far too little of the vast scholarly output of the First World War has engaged with these difficult questions, and this book will be welcomed by scholars and advanced students of modern history especially in many of the societies still riven, guilty or mystified by the war and its aftermath.