JUNE 15-23, 1918: AUSTRIA-HUNGARY'S LAST GASP. ... to warn that it would almost certainly lead to defeat and the collapse of the Habsburg Army, probably followed by the empire itself.

Vienna, 5 November 1918 - Austria-Hungary is out of the war. Germany’s last remaining ally signed an armistice with Italian authorities, acting on behalf of the Allies, yesterday.

There was an air of Götterdämmerung about Austria’s collapse in 1918. Like the final part of Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle, this felt like the twilight of the gods.

In his study of “how Europe went to war in 1914,” The Sleepwalkers, Christopher Clark challenges the conventional wisdom that Austria-Hungary was an empire in decline heading toward an ...