“In breaking up A-H, he created the little states that Hitler was able to occupy one by one in the run-up to WW II.”
Austria-Hungary was destined to fail; while Austria and Hungary could have stayed together, there was no way so many different ethnic and religious minorities were going to be ruled by foreigners from the north. The number of languages spoken alone made it impractical.
Ugh, sorry for the late reply.
Although I don’t believe the empire could have survived in its contemporary form, it didn’t have to be annihilated. I see Wilson’s insistence on “democracy for the peoples’ of Central Europe” as an early form of Bush II’s “democracy in the middle East” project. Neither region was ready for it. Had some stronger confederated power block been allowed to survive, Hitler might not have had such an easy time of it. He might have been stopped, or at least hemmed in, before the disaster of Munich.
The destruction of Austro-Hungary was an overwrought reaction of the victors and smacked of shear vengeance. It was similar to the ruinous reparations visited on Germany. Neither policy was prudent, leaving both Germany and lands of the former empire prostrate, but not destroyed. They became more susceptible to the demogogue’s siren song after being ruined by reparations and splintered by Wilson’s “democratic imperative.”
Of course the Czechs and some other nationalities benefited from a short-lived freedom, but didn’t it get them swallowed up first by Hitler and then by Stalin? Anyway, just my honest opinion. Stopping Hitler was going to be a close run thing not matter what happened to the empire.