The First World War

The well-respected historian Manfried Rauchensteiner analyses the outbreak of World War I, Emperor Franz Joseph's role in the conflict, and how the various nationalities of the Habsburg Monarchy reacted to the disintegration of this 640-yearold empire in 1918. After Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassination in Sarajevo in 1914, war was inevitable. Emperor Franz Joseph intended it, and everyone in Vienna expected it. How the war began and how Austria-Hungary managed to avoid capitulation only w ...