Transatlantic Relations and the Great War: Austria-Hungary and the United States By Kurt Bednar. New York: Routledge, 2022. Pp. 230. Cloth $160.00. ISBN: 978-1132064086.

Abstract

Departing from traditional historiography, this work posits that most of the diplomatic events between the United States and Austria-Hungary during the Great War could have taken alternate courses and that the dismemberment of the Dual Monarchy at the end of the conflict was not a fait accompli. It should come as no surprise that the relationship between the upstart democratic republic and the venerable autocratic monarchy was fraught. Neither country understood nor cared for the other. Belated inquiries and official reports made by US scholars and diplomats about the condition of the Habsburg Empire before the Paris peace talks were ignored by Woodrow Wilson. These factors, melded with the US president ’ s hubris led the US to act “ negligently against better knowledge in allowing, even encouraging, the familiar structure in Central Europe to splinter (without a trustworthy surrogate in place) ” (xiii). Relations between Austria-Hungary and the United States have long been overshadowed and relegated to a back burner. Kurt Bednar seeks to refocus the narrative.