Recruits from Austria-Hungary, illustration, before 1917

The last decades of Emperor Franz Joseph’s rule were marked by conflicts between the various nationalities within the Habsburg Monarchy. The competing national demands were increasingly incompatible with the idea of a supranational Austria-Hungary.

In the First World War the unique multinational concept underlying the Habsburg Monarchy’s army, according to which the different ethnicities were committed to the emperor and the idea of a common ‘fatherland’, led to different forms of military masculinity determined by region, faith and social background.

The idea of the all-inclusive enthusiasm for war long dominated the historiography of the First World war. More recent historical research has however unmasked the theory of a euphoria encompassing all classes and political parties as a legend and attests that this view is biased and one-sided.