The cool breeze rose, the autumn leaves were gone, and the fruits were abundant, and the autumn of 1943 arrived as usual. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 During this period, the summer offensive launched by the Soviet Russian army in the Northeast Asian theater was coming to an end, and they not only liberated the entire territory of the puppet state of Manchukuo, but also invaded the Korean Peninsula from two directions, and with the cooperation of the Korean resistors, they conquered many towns and strongholds, and the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, which the Japanese top brass had worked hard to build, was becoming fragmented.

In north-west Europe, where Ireland and Wales form the United Kingdom, and most Welsh people are realistically accepting the optimistic prospects of a union between the two countries, the dominant Irish government seems to be just waiting for a suitable opportunity, while in southeastern Europe, the 76-year-old Austro-Hungarian Empire is facing a crisis from the inside out. In recent years, under the rule of this special consortium, the Austrian Empire, which was dominated by Germanic peoples, was deeply influenced by Great Germanism, convinced that the German nation was the best race in this era and in the world, and the phenomenon of crowding out and suppressing other peoples within the empire has intensified, which has aroused strong resentment among the Kingdom of Hungary, which is dominated by Magyars, and the autonomous kingdoms (Kingdom of Bohemia, Croatia-Slavonia, Dalmatia, Galicia-Lodomeria, etc.), Minorities such as Poles, Ukrainians, Croatians, Slovaks, Serbs, Slovenes, Italians, and other minorities in the empire are also actively seeking national liberation and national independence......

In the face of the turbulent national movements in the empire, Emperor Karl I initially adopted the same strategy as his predecessors, which was to suppress them by force and co-opt them on the other. Just this past summer, Karl I used a series of troops in the western and southern regions, and his troops loyal to the Emperor arrested tens of thousands of suspicious elements, and hundreds of those who resisted were killed or executed. In Tyrol, where there were more Italians, the repression of the Austrian army led to the death of a number of Italians, which provoked serious protests in the Kingdom of Italy. As the Italians in Austria-Hungary continued to be suppressed and persecuted, the Italian government offered Austria-Hungary a territorial exchange for South Tyrol with Germanic settlements close to the border, which Austria-Hungary ignored.

Seeing that it was difficult to achieve the desired results with a tough hand, Karl I made a second move, introducing political reforms at home, allowing ethnic minorities to participate in the government, and even considering the formation of a federal state, but such reforms were strongly opposed from the beginning by the Austrian aristocracy, and the Hungarian aristocracy feared that their position would be weakened. Karl I, who had been on the throne for 27 years, had built a reputation within the empire and internationally that was far from comparable to that of the elder Emperor Joseph Franz I, and his statecraft and skill were too mediocre, and the reforms he promised to the people were not carried out wholeheartedly, leading to growing discontent among the minorities.

On October 19, 1943, at the instigation of some conspirators, hundreds of South Tyrolean autonomousmen staged an armed uprising in the area near the border, first relying on the terrain to resist the encirclement and suppression of the Austro-Hungarian border guards, and then fled into Italy on the night of the 25th. The central government of Austria-Hungary demanded through diplomatic channels that Italy arrest and repatriate these defectors, but the Kingdom of Italy flatly refused, and the two countries each sent additional troops to the border area, and bilateral relations deteriorated rapidly.

At the end of October, with the covert support of the Kingdom of Italy, there was another armed Italian uprising in South Tyrol, in which the rioters seized the local police station and prison, seized local officials, released prison prisoners, and then fled into the mountains to fight a guerrilla war against the Austro-Hungarian army. In a battle that followed, the Austro-Hungarian army captured an Italian soldier who had entered the country as a volunteer, which caused an uproar in Austria, especially in Austria, and calls for diplomatic sanctions against Italy, but Italy clearly had an advantage over Austria-Hungary in terms of domestic political stability and national cohesion. Clearly aware of his own shortcomings, Karl I did not impose severe punitive measures on Italy, but submitted the dispute to the League of Nations for arbitration. The Austrian emperor apparently did not expect that the so-called League of Nations Arbitration Commission did not arbitrate from an objective and impartial standpoint, but demanded that Austria-Hungary and Italy each withdraw their troops from the border area of South Tyrol, and that the peacekeepers would go to the area to maintain order until the two sides negotiated a settlement of the dispute.

The entire territory of South Tyrol was located in the territory of Austria-Hungary, and the Italian government quickly expressed its support for the League of Nations arbitration resolution, agreed to withdraw troops from the border areas, and fully cooperated with the intervention of the peacekeeping forces, which fiercely defeated the Austro-Hungarian army and triggered a series of chain reactions - the central government of Austria-Hungary was still arguing with reason, Serbs and Romanians inhabited areas rioted one after another, and then immediately a civil society organization submitted a peacekeeping request to the League of Nations in an unofficial name. According to the procedure of the League of Nations, this situation can only be sent by the League of Nations if the government of the country concerned explicitly accepts the League of Nations to maintain peace, or the situation is completely out of control, and the Austro-Hungarian government, as a member of the League of Nations, has the right to veto, so that the League of Nations' plan to send troops to South Tyrol, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Bukovina and other regions for peacekeeping finally failed, and the direct result is that the Italian government continues to increase troops in the border areas, and the armed insurrectionists in Austria-Hungary are brutally suppressed.

On 13 November, in the city of Chernivtsi in the Duchy of Bukovina, the Hungarian infantry refused to open fire on the demonstrators, much to the outrage of the Austro-Hungarian leadership, and Karl I ordered a thorough investigation of the matter, and only two days later, several Hungarian officers were arrested and escorted to Vienna to be investigated and tried by a military tribunal, much to the outrage of the Hungarian military and civilians. Tens of thousands of people rallied in Budapest to petition, and thanks to the efforts of Hungarian officials, the Imperial Central Government relented and handed over the Hungarian officers involved to the High Military Court of the Kingdom of Hungary for jurisprudence, and appointed the Inspector General of the Imperial War Department to supervise them. In the face of tremendous pressure from above, the Hungarian High Military Court decided to hold a closed trial, and although the five Hungarian officers involved were finally convicted of relatively minor charges of dereliction of duty rather than treason as considered by Austrian public opinion, this verdict still aroused strong dissatisfaction from all walks of life in Hungary, who not only regarded Colonel Zibber, the commander of the Hungarian infantry regiment, who refused to give the order to open fire at that time, as a hero, but also pointed the finger at the Hungarian government, believing that it was subservient to the will of the royal family and the central government of the empire. The lack of courage and determination to defend the interests of the Kingdom of Hungary led to the need for reform of the existing political system.

Troubled by a series of events, Karl I left Vienna in late November for a so-called state visit to Berlin, hoping to reach an understanding with Kaiser Wilhelm the Younger, so as to gain support in the Council of the League of Nations and strive for a faceless solution to the South Tyrolean question. The reason why Germany attacked Austria-Hungary and Italy in the past was nothing more than that they ignored the League of Nations sanctions resolution and sold a lot of military technology and arms to Japan, which damaged Germany's strategic layout in overseas regions. Now that Karl I has come to his door to seek reconciliation, the Germans will not be so kind to make big things small and trivial, and William the Younger took the opportunity to make a territorial claim, asking Austria-Hungary to transfer the German-speaking inhabited areas of the northeast and northwest of the Kingdom of Bohemia to Germany, which includes the Sudetenland and the Ore Mountains, and the "Sudetenland" that caused the war crisis in the old time and space is composed of these two regions plus the Bohemian forest area in southwestern Bohemia.

The Sudetenland and Auray Mountains have been home to a large number of Germanic people for generations, numbering more than 1.2 million in the early 40s of the 20th century, and because of the border with Germany and witnessing the growing strength of Germany, these Germanic inhabitants are generally full of favor for Germany, and at the same time disgusted by the lazy and lazy bureaucracy of the Viana leadership, so whether it is directly or in this region, a referendum is held to decide the ownership, and even by force, Germany can succeed smoothly.

In order to enable the Austrian Emperor and the central government of Austria-Hungary to give an account to the people, Germany is willing to set aside an 800,000 square kilometers of land in German East Africa and the right to exploit four oil fields in the Persian Gulf region to Austria-Hungary, or provide a one-time economic compensation of 2.5 billion marks to the Austro-Hungarian government.

On the surface, the loss of these two economically underdeveloped regions by Austria-Hungary, the acquisition of a hundred times the colonial territory and four oil fields, or a large amount of cash enough to improve the government's revenue and expenditure, are relatively cost-effective deals, but after calculating the political account, Karl I was unwilling to cede these two regions to Germany in any case, once there is this precedent, the Germanic inhabitants of the economically underdeveloped areas will inevitably be ready to move, and many Austrian nobles will also have dissenting thoughts, so that The dominance of the Germanic peoples in the Austro-Hungarian Empire would be greatly shaken, even leading to the end of Habsburg rule. Karl I was not extremely intelligent, but he still had this basic political sensitivity. He could not accept Kaiser Wilhelm's request, and he did not have the confidence to walk away, so he tactfully made a request, as long as it did not involve territorial sovereignty, other conditions could be considered.

The Germans, who intended to consolidate their hegemony in the world, of course, would not miss such an opportunity to weaken their neighbors, and Kaiser Wilhelm made it clear that Germany lacked nothing at the moment, and that the Sudetenland and Auray regions in Bohemia were mainly for the purpose of protecting the local Germanic population, after all, in such an autonomous kingdom as Bohemia, the Germanic people were a "minority", although they still dominated the Kingdom of Bohemia, and this dominance has lasted for more than four hundred years, However, with the quiet rise of the Czechs and Slovaks in their sense of national revival, this rule relying on the Habsburgs was not as stable as one might think, and it was better to take precautions than to send troops directly to protect the Germanic population of the Kingdom of Bohemia during the political turmoil. As compensation to Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Bohemia, Germany could consider transferring the tens of thousands of square kilometers of fertile land in the central Polish plain and all the industrial facilities therein intact. If Austria-Hungary still refused, then Germany would not force it, but if the Kingdom of Bohemia was in turmoil and Austria was unable to intervene, Germany did not rule out the possibility of directly sending troops to protect the local Germanic population.

(End of chapter)