A World Without the Hapsburgs, Part II

Continued from Part I

Much the same could be said for Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia which were all more or less ceded to Serbia after World War I to create what eventually became the Kingdom of Yugoslavia but which was effectively the “Greater Serbia” that Serb nationalists had been longing for. In some ways things were better, but in others ways Yugoslavia was even more problematic than Czechoslovakia. One benefit was that the new created state was a monarchy, and even during the darkest days of World War II the monarchy was still able to unite many people, but it was the Serbian monarchy and an Orthodox monarchy and so was not as liable to be accepted by the great number of people who were not Serbian or Orthodox. True, the Hapsburg empire contained people of many different religious beliefs with Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Jews and Muslims but, outside of Bosnia perhaps, the largest majority of people in Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Austria and Hungary were Catholic just like their Imperial-Royal Family. And again, before, during and after World War I there was a renewed emphasis on nationalism and even without the religious differences there were bound to be problems between Serbs, Bosnians, Croats and Slovenes as well as other minority groups in Yugoslavia.

King Alexander I of Yugoslavia did his best to hold things together, outlawing political parties, regional distinctions (flags and such symbols), renaming things and centralizing power. How that may have worked in the long-run we will never know but in the short term it only embittered the nationalities further, though the King did have the good sense to ban the communist party which is always a smart move. The King was finally assassinated by a Bulgarian terrorist from a group that opposed Macedonia being part of Yugoslavia. He was succeeded by the young King Peter II, acted for by Prince-Regent Paul who was eventually forced into cooperating with the Rome-Berlin Axis. Ironically, the leaders of Yugoslavia, just like the last Emperor of Austria-Hungary, finally determined that the only solution would be to federalize their country but they were prevented by the outbreak of World War II. Prince Paul was overthrown in a coup, King Peter II broke with the Axis and embraced the Allies which prompted the German and Italian invasion of Yugoslavia. The country was divided up again and there was horrific violence and cruelty as a civil war was basically fought throughout Yugoslavia in conjunction with World War II. The bitterness and desire for revenge would last for many decades to come.

In the end, as with most of the other successor-states of Austria-Hungary, it was the communists who emerged as the victors and Yugoslavia was forcibly put back together under the dictatorship of “Tito” and was even almost merged with Bulgaria in what would have been an even bigger witch’s supper but Stalin nixed that idea. For some reason which eludes me, some people romanticize Tito’s dictatorship but, while certainly not as bad as Albania or Cambodia, it was a communist tyranny with all of the injustice, cruelty and suffering that goes with that. Today, amazingly, many people view Tito as some sort of romantic, revolutionary figure or the “good” communist dictator, for seemingly no other reason than that he wanted to be a dictator and not simply the stooge of Stalin in Moscow. This is a dangerous mistake. Just because Communist Yugoslavia was not as bad as Pol Pot’s Cambodia does not mean it was a picnic and the member states have still not recovered from the impact of communist rule even today. Additionally, as we all know, when Tito died in 1980 the country began to fragment in the absence of the dictator and within ten years bitter and brutal civil war engulfed the region as the former Yugoslavia broke up.

The break-up of Austria-Hungary was certainly traumatic but it was nothing compared to the horror of the conflict that accompanied the break-up of Yugoslavia with massacres, reprisals and accusations of ethnic cleansing from both sides. This revealed that the unity of the old Yugoslavia had always been a complete fabrication and as soon as the iron grip of tyranny slipped for an instant the long-smoldering rage between the member ethnicities erupted into a conflagration which finally took outside intervention to restore some semblance of peace and order. The immediate question, of course, is whether the Hapsburg monarchy could have made any difference in preventing this tragedy. No one can ever say definitively what ‘might have been’ but the most probably answer is clearly “yes”. Much of the conflict (certainly not all) was between Croats and Serbs and with Croatia inside Austria-Hungary and Serbia outside of it, these two could have brought their full force to bear against each other. Further, we have the historical record to show that in all the years of Hapsburg rule such a bloodletting never took place. It may not satisfy idealists, but one practical reason for this was that minorities were sufficiently divided between the Austrian and Hungarian halves of the Dual-Monarchy that no one group could come together in sufficient strength to cause much trouble.

It is also worth noting that most of the bitterness seen in the civil wars can be traced back to some extent with the creation of Yugoslavia itself but even more so events in World War II rather than to Austria-Hungary. After World War I there was some, for lack of a better word, “bullying” by the victors against their defeated foes. This was not uncommon; the Poles were sometimes unkind toward the Germans in their country, though in light of subsequent events they attract little sympathy. Then, during World War II, the tables were turned and horrible reprisals were meted out, often with the backing of the Axis powers, and then after the Axis defeat there were reprisals of the reprisals and hatred grew and grew. It is beyond the realm of possibility that this could have happened under Emperor Charles I or a potential “Emperor Otto”. A Hapsburg Emperor, and this is certainly in keeping with the character of Archduke Otto, would have discouraged nationalism and ethnic hatred and with his combined forces could have restrained such radicals were that to become necessary.

Concluded in Part III

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A World Without the Hapsburgs, Part I

For most countries, when monarchy comes to an end there may be some wider repercussions but, for the most part, the impact is felt by the individual country in question alone. When it comes to the fall of the House of Hapsburg and the dissolution of that entity formerly known as Austria-Hungary, the absence of the monarchy has impacted numerous countries to the present time. Leaving aside the large or small pieces incorporated into other neighboring countries, there is still the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Hungary and Slovakia that, in their entirety, were formerly part of the Dual-Monarchy of the House of Hapsburg. How have these lands progressed on their own without the monarchy that once bound them together? The short answer, obviously, would be, ‘not very well’. Whereas the Empire of Austria-Hungary, that last bastion of old Europe, while not a major world power, was certainly on the top tier on the world stage and a force to be taken seriously; separately, each of these powers is today barely known to most people around the world. This was something that most realized even at the time of the fall of Austria-Hungary or at least in the immediate aftermath.

This can be seen most clearly in our first case; Czechoslovakia. The first, most obvious thing that stands out about Czechoslovakia is that it was exactly what critics had previously dismissed Austria-Hungary for being, only worse; an inorganic state (which most of Austria-Hungary was not) that lumped together two major and various minor nationalities into one political unit. This was undeniably a weakness for the Austrian Empire, later Austria-Hungary, but it survived as long as it did because it was never based on nationality and never pretended to be. It was based on loyalty to a shared monarch which, obviously, Czechoslovakia lacked and in due time it broke up into the Czech and Slovak republics which exist today. Even then, however, it broke apart much sooner but was artificially put back together after World War II with the imposed unity that came with communist military force. Czechoslovakia was beset by problems between the Czechs and Slovaks from the very beginning (though this is often overlooked) but it also contained other minorities which proved to be problematic and in the same way that certain minorities were a problem for Austria-Hungary. This was the case when it came to ethnic minorities that did not lack a state but which existed outside a neighboring nation-state.

What is perhaps most ridiculous about this is that it was so clearly recognizable at the time and of course the minority that would prove most problematic would be the German minority, right next door to an increasingly racialist nation-state after the Nazis came to power in Germany. This was obviously going to be a problem as can be seen in the case of Italy for example. When the Allies, rather than taking away from the spoils promised to Serbia, handed Italy the Trentino-Alto Adige many Italian leaders, civil and military, were less than overjoyed, specifically because they feared that a concentrated German-speaking population would mean nothing but trouble in the future (and all the while there were Italian-populated areas that went to the new Yugoslavia). So no one can claim that, in the aftermath of the Great War, no one could foresee such difficulties might arise as certainly did arise for Czechoslovakia regarding the Sudeten Germans. The only hope Czechoslovakia had for her survival was in collective security, trusting to foreign alliances to keep them from being taken apart bit by bit at the expense of their neighbors. Allied leaders may, perhaps, have had a problem explaining why this was superior to the collective security that had previously been provided by the union of Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Magyars, Slovenes, and Croats etc under the banner of Austria-Hungary. Czechoslovakia was, essentially, simply a smaller and weaker version of Austria-Hungary which lacked the strengthening forces of shared history and the Hapsburg monarchy.

Under the House of Hapsburg, everyone at least had one monarch in common but, in republican Czechoslovakia, what did the Germans, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ukrainians and Hungarians have in common? Moreover, whereas Emperor Charles I of Austria-Hungary had been prepared to federalize his empire, granting all groups equal status, in Czechoslovakia, despite what promises existed on paper, minorities were often treated badly. It may not be popular to say today in light of later events but the German population was really not treated terribly well and even the supposedly equal Slovaks were often frustrated by the fact that they came to hold a noticeably secondary status to the larger Czech community. The country eventually fell apart because of Nazi Germany, yet, the leadership of Czechoslovakia had always been more worried about the Hungarians and the “Little Entente” of Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia was primarily aimed at Hungary. In one way this might be understandable as Hungary certainly had cause to be resentful as the Hungarians lost more than just about anyone in the post-war carve-up, but that is also partly why it did not work, because Yugoslavia and certainly Romania (at least when it came to Hungary) had more to lose than Czechoslovakia if war ever broke out with a Hungary intent on re-taking their lost territories.

So, in the end, Czechoslovakia fell apart. The Czech half fell under the domination of Hitler as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Hungary and Poland took a slice and Slovakia only remained independent, essentially as a German protectorate, because Hitler, in so many words, told them that if they did not cooperate with him, he would let the Hungarians have at them. After World War II, Czechoslovakia was reestablished by Allied agreement, though with the Soviet Union taking a slice of territory in the east and they brought decades of oppression, murder and an ever higher rate of poverty to a country that had previously been fairly prosperous. They also, contrary to the very Catholic Hapsburg monarchy, imposed a campaign of atheism on the country that proved horribly effective. Particularly in the Czech Republic, religious belief has declined rapidly to the point that the republic is, today, one of the least religious countries in the world. It is bad. If things continue at the rate they are going, one of these days they will be putting the Infant of Prague up for adoption. And, of course, as mentioned earlier, on the first day of 1993 the Czech and Slovak peoples divorced and have since joined the European Union -another multi-national collection of countries with little to nothing in common. The more things change right?

Continued in Part II

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Favorite Royal Images: Norwegian Princess

HH Princess Martha Louise of Norway

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The Caliph of Islam in Turkey

It was on March 3, 1924 that the last Muslim caliphate was officially abolished and Abdul Mejid II, the last Caliph of Islam (and heir to the last Ottoman Sultan, his cousin) was removed from his position and expelled from Turkey by the first republican and then secular government of modern Turkey. Looking back, perhaps because of all that has happened in the world of the Middle East since, it seems slightly strange that the two positions did not disappear at the same time or that it was the position of Padishah Sultan that was abolished first. To be denied the title of Sultan while still retaining the title of Caliph seems rather like telling someone, ‘we do not trust you to be the ruler of our country but we still believe you are the representative of God on earth”. Does not quite make sense to me. For Turks who hold fast to their faith and the system of traditional authority embodied by the Sultan and Caliph this can only be a sad anniversary. Yet, outsiders should consider the occasion as well. The fall of the caliphate has not yielded much benefit for anyone; Turkish or not, Muslim or not.

Whether things would be a great deal better if there was still a Caliph in Turkey no one can say, but it could only be an improvement. Look beyond the Turkish borders for a moment and consider the worldwide problem today with terrorism. There are people of the worst sort, who are both murderers and cowards, carrying out terrible and despicable deeds all in the name of Islam. They butcher helpless innocents and call themselves “holy warriors”. And no one should make any mistake about what is in the hearts of these criminals, after all, the terrorists who carried out the 9-11 attacks in America spent their last night on earth at a strip club. The faithful these are certainly not. Yet, they have fooled many people into thinking that they are and by making such a claim they have blackened the name of Islam, perhaps worse than at any other point in history. I say that because, even in the days of the Crusades, a Christian like King Richard I could look at a Muslim like Sultan Saladin and consider him a brave and worthy adversary. Even in those days of open religious warfare Christians could respect the gallantry of their Muslim foes who would send their doctors to care for the Christian King.

There were terrible things that happened of course, but things were more organized and certainly it would be helpful if there were a Caliph of Islam who could speak with authority in denouncing the atrocities of the terrorists who kill the defenseless and claim to be religious men. However, as beneficial as that could be, there is also the very real possibility that such a Caliph would be ignored. Would Arab and other Muslims react positively to a Turkish Caliph of Islam? The question must be asked, I think, because the Ottoman Empire, led by the Sultan and Caliph, was brought down in part by Arab and other Muslims rising in rebellion against the Turkish Sultan and joining with the Allies (primarily the French and British) in bringing down and eventually breaking up the Ottoman Empire; the last caliphate. When, in the midst of World War I, the Sultan formally pronounced a jihad against the Allied powers, he was, for the most part, ignored by the rest of the Muslim world.

There is also the question as to whether or not our increasingly anti-traditional world would even tolerate such a figure. Turkey, for some reason which completely escapes my comprehension, seems desperate to join the European Union and the E.U. has certainly not shown itself to be favorably inclined toward organized religion. Would they allow Turkey into the E.U. if the Caliph was restored? Personally, I think that would be all the more reason to do it but I’m not Turkish and most seem to want to join the European Union. However, although the amount of wider good a restored Caliph might do is debatable, one certain thing is that the people of Turkey would have a better form of moral guidance and by going that extra step to restoring the monarchy there would be greater consistency and a form of government more in keeping with Turkish traditions and hearkening back to the days when Turkey was a great nation, a major world power and not reduced to the status of appealing for favors from the EU government in Brussels. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, having the Sultan and Caliph back would do none harm and possibly be of great benefit in countries far distant as a voice of legitimate authority.

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MM Sunday Scripture

Let every soul be in subjection to the higher power; for there is no power but of God, and the powers that be are ordained by God. Therefore, he that resisteth that power, withstandeth the ordinance of God; and they that withstand shall receive to themselves damnation.
-Romans 13:1-2

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Royal News Roundup

Not a great deal of big news to report this time. Perhaps a slow news week or perhaps the headlines were too full of coverage on the last day “in office” for Pope Benedict XVI that little else was reported on. That was certainly the big news, the Pope leaving the Vatican but, having already commented on that, here is a short rundown on some royal events that made the papers:

Beginning, as usual, in the lands of Eternal Asia, the former Crown Prince of Nepal remains in critical condition in hospital in Bangkok, though doctors report some slight improvements. Family members have gone to be at his side and the former King Gyanandra cut short a trip to Simara to return to the capital, presumably because of the condition of Crown Prince Paras. Royalist groups in Chabahil held a “pooja” at Ganesthan Temple calling for a speedy recovery for the former royal heir. Elsewhere, the King of Tonga visited New Zealand this week where he was greeted by native Maori warriors and in The Philippines, President Aquino issued a stern warning on Tuesday to the elderly Sultan of Sulu that he would face the “full force of the law” unless the gunmen operating in his name withdrew from Malaysia. However, the 74-year-old Sultan Jamalul Kiram III held a press conference of his own, defiantly stating that the standoff with the forces of the Kingdom of Malaysia would continue until his demands are met, though he also insisted that his forces would not initiate any violence with the Malaysians but that they are prepared to defend their “lives and aspirations”. On Friday, three days after passing the extended deadline for the Filipino forces to leave, Malaysian police moved in on the group and a skirmish broke out, resulting in several casualties. Malaysian authorities regained control of the area but some of the gunmen reportedly escaped, promising to continue the fight. The Prime Minister of Malaysia has authorized security forces to take “any action” to eliminate the threat from this group.

On the European front, in Great Britain it was announced this week that Prince and Princess Michael of Kent are set to become grandparents for the first time with the news that Lord Frederick Windsor and wife Sophie Winkleman are in a “family way”. The couple live in Los Angeles where Lord Frederick is a financial advisor and Sophie is an actress. Back home, in keeping with tradition, the new Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby was received at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday to formally pay homage to HM the Queen. It was also announced that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will visit Ireland next year and this week Prince Harry made the trip down to the south African Kingdom of Lesotho to check up on the work being done by his charity there. Prince William is also keeping up with his rescue-pilot duties, coming to the aid of a stranded pair of walkers in freezing conditions in Snowdonia after being reported missing by a friend. In more unfortunate news, HM the Queen had to cancel a planned to trip to Swansea for St David’s Day after coming down with gastroenteritis. We wish Her Majesty a speedy recovery.

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Sede Vacante

It is now official, the see is vacant, the throne is empty, there is no longer a Pope. At least until the conclave holds their next election anyway (sorry if that seemed over-dramatic). Yesterday, Pope Benedict XVI left the Vatican as, well, not exactly a common cleric but as someone who is no longer the Roman Pontiff. He will still wear a white cassock, will still be addressed as “Your Holiness” but he has turned in his red shoes, will be protected by ordinary Vatican police rather than the Swiss Guard and his Fisherman’s ring has been smashed. A sad day but, from my point of view, somewhat anticlimactic but that was probably unavoidable. Nothing could really be done that would fittingly mark an occasion so historic that it has literally never happened before. One must go back six centuries for a papal “resignation” and even then, on the rare occasions it has happened, it was never really like this. As most readers know, I have been rather upset by this but, in case there is any confusion, I want to make it clear that I would not be as upset by it if not for the fact that I have always held Benedict XVI in the highest regard. He always seemed a very trustworthy hand on the helm. Yes, I know someone will say that God is always in charge and all that, so there is no need to worry, but it seems to me there is a Pope for a reason and any look at history will show that who that man is does matter.

For my part, a great deal of the anxiety over his resignation stems from the fact that Benedict XVI has, to my mind, done an excellent job in his years on the throne. Very early on I considered him one of the best popes of modern times, realizing that for some of the same reasons I thought so, he would never be accorded that status by the majority. I would think (though I cannot say for certain) his writings may have been his greatest achievement from a Christian perspective though I do not know personally anyone who has actually read them all. Certainly he will stand out for his establishment of the old Latin mass as the secondary “extraordinary form” of the mass and his efforts to make it more widely available. Sadly, the bishops did not seem to be very cooperative in this endeavor. Still, his efforts raised the status of the Latin mass considerably and probably changed the mainstream perspective on the Latin mass to something that should be accepted and honored rather than shrinking away from it as the territory of the disobedient and the schismatic. That is a considerable accomplishment on its own.

The outreach to disaffected Anglicans is another hallmark of his reign, though one that is not without some controversy. Some Anglicans were, of course, upset by this and saw it as an effort to encourage defections from their own dwindling ranks. There was a time when I might have been more broad-minded about such an issue, taking into account that each side believes they represent the true Christian message but, frankly, I can no longer do so. The state of the Anglican communion is entirely of their own making and given the extent to which so many have flagrantly turned their back on traditional Christianity, to the point that even the Bible itself can be repudiated, leaves me with little room for even theoretical sympathy with their point of view. As someone who favors the oldest and most traditional sort of Christianity, I was hopeful that, in welcoming disgruntled Anglicans (most of them very ‘high church’ types) into the Church of Rome it might work together with other actions by the Pontiff to ease Catholicism back into a more traditional direction than it has been on since the Second Vatican Council.

On that subject, I considered it a positive thing that Benedict XVI spoke of the need to ‘reform the reform’ (or words to that effect) in reference to Vatican II. Others can speak with greater authority on the wide array of subjects inside the Catholic Church related to the Council but to me there seems to be no room for doubt that things have grown progressively worse for the Catholic Church since that time. The ‘how’ and the ‘why’ can, and have been, debated at length but anyone can look at the basic statistics and see that, for whatever reason, Church attendance, numbers of priests and religious have all fallen off dramatically since the Council and, while I see nothing wrong with the content of the documents produced, again I think anyone can see that they were not implemented correctly. Could anyone honestly say that Pope John XXIII or Pope Paul VI would have approved of “clown masses”? I think not. Whether such a ‘reform of the reform’ will go forward under the next Pontiff remains to be seen but I would hope so.

Many have said that the changes of Vatican II were, in large part, about reaching out to Protestants. If so, it doesn’t seem to have worked very well in that regard and another area I recall Benedict XVI attracting considerable controversy was in his statement that the Protestant denominations are not true churches but that the “Church” is to refer only to the Catholic and Orthodox communities (though sadly these two had a tiff and have spent quite a few centuries giving each other the silent treatment). This seems to have outraged many Protestants though I cannot imagine why. I can understand anyone being upset that someone would say their church is not a “real” church in general but I do not really understand why a Protestant would be upset at the Pope saying that. It would be like a Christian getting upset at the Ayatollah for saying that Christianity is a false religion. He’s the Ayatollah -I would expect him to think that and say that. In the same way, if a Protestant, let us say a Lutheran, were to hear the Pope say, while sitting in the pew on Sunday, that he or she was in the “real” Church, I would think the Lutheran in question would probably run outside to check the sign in the front yard to make sure they were not in the wrong place. Are we all so sensitive these days or do so many people really not understand the fundamental difference between the Catholic and Orthodox on one side and the Protestant denominations on the other?

There was also the “controversy” over Benedict XVI making mention of religious conversions through violence being a bad thing (who would have though it would be) but I hesitate to even mention that as it seems so much a case of much ado about nothing. However, it was a far cry from that silliness once displayed at Assisi. Taken altogether, as well as with the efforts to reconcile the Society of St Pius X to the rest of the Catholic Church the reign of Benedict XVI can be seen as one favoring tradition, old-style Catholicism (winking at the odd coat of arms and the resignation itself) as well as one encouraging a defense of traditional values and an open and honest stand for basic Christian principles. All in all, I think he had a good run and I only wish it could have gone on longer. Still, we wish His Holiness a happy retirement and will wait and see who the Sacred College chooses to follow after him.

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