The treaty declared that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was to be dissolved. According to article 177 Austria, along with the other
Central Powers, accepted responsibility for starting the war. The new
Republic of Austria, consisting of most of the German-speaking Danubian and Alpine provinces in former
Cisleithania, recognized the independence of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The treaty included 'war reparations' of large sums of money, directed towards the Allies (however the exact amount has never been defined and collected from Austria), as well as provisions for the liquidation of the
Austro-Hungarian Bank.
Territory Cisleithanian Austria had to face significant territorial losses, amounting to over 60 percent of the prewar Austrian Empire's territory: • The
Lands of the Bohemian Crown, i.e. the
Bohemia and
Moravia (modern day Czechia) crownlands (including small adjacent
Lower Austrian territories around
Feldsberg and
Gmünd) formed the core of the newly created state of
Czechoslovakia. The
Austrian Silesia province which was the subject of the
Polish–Czechoslovak War of January 1919, was split between
Czech Silesia and Polish
Cieszyn Silesia, and incorporated into the
Silesian Voivodeship. These cessions concerned a large
German-speaking population in
German Bohemia and
Sudetenland. • The former
Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, made up of the territory the
Habsburg monarchy had annexed in the 1772
First Partition of Poland, fell back to the re-established Polish Republic. • The adjacent
Bukovina in the east passed to the
Kingdom of Romania. • The southern half of the former
Tyrolean crownland up to the
Brenner Pass, including predominantly
Southern Bavarian–speaking South Tyrol and the present-day Trentino province, together with the Carinthian Canal Valley around
Tarvisio fell to Italy, as well as the
Austrian Littoral (
Gorizia and Gradisca, the
Imperial Free City of Trieste, and
Istria as recognized by the
Treaty of Rapallo in 1920). • The main part of the former
Kingdom of Dalmatia, the
Duchy of Carniola and
Lower Styria with the Carinthian Mieß (
Meža) Valley and Gemeinde Seeland (
Jezersko) was ceded to the
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, contrary to what was stipulated by the 1915 London Pact. Also
Bosnia and Herzegovina was given to it. The affiliation of the Southern Carinthian territory with its
Slovene-speaking share of population was to be decided in a
Carinthian Plebiscite. • Austria-Hungary's only overseas possession, its
concession in
Tianjin, was turned over to
China. • The predominantly German- and
Croatian-speaking western parts of the Hungarian
counties of
Moson,
Sopron and
Vas were awarded to Austria. The
Uprising in West Hungary led to a plebiscite which resulted in the transition of Sopron and its surrounding eight villages back to Hungary. Subsequently, other villages were returned or exchanged between Austria and Hungary up to 1923. In the end, the territories finally gained from Hungary were organised as a state of Austria named
Burgenland. The Allies had explicitly committed themselves to the cause of the minority peoples of Austria-Hungary late in the war. Indeed, US Secretary of State
Robert Lansing had effectively ended what slim chance existed for Austria-Hungary to survive the war when he told Vienna that since the Allies were now committed to the Czechs, Slovaks and South Slavs, autonomy for the nationalities–the tenth of the
Fourteen Points–was no longer enough. Reflecting this, the Allies not only allowed the minority peoples to help create new states (Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia), recreate former states (Poland), or join their ethnic brethren in existing nation-states (Romania, Italy), but allowed the successor states to absorb significant blocks of German-inhabited territory. However, the promise of self-determination ran up against the reality that no convenient line could be drawn to separate intermingled nationalities. In further cases,
irredentists would claim that some German or Hungarian-inhabited territories had actually been theirs. This was well rendered by the fact that only a few plebiscites were allowed in the disputed areas to ascertain the wishes of the local populaces.
Politics and military Article 88 of the treaty required Austria to refrain from directly or indirectly compromising its independence, which meant that Austria could not enter into political or economic union with the
Weimar Republic without the agreement of the council of the
League of Nations. Accordingly, the new republic's initial self-chosen name of German-Austria () had to be changed to Austria. Many Austrians would come to find this term harsh (especially among the Austrian Germans being a vast majority who would support a
single German nation state), due to Austria's later economic weakness, which was caused by loss of land. Because of this, support for the idea of
Anschluss (political union) with
Nazi Germany later proved popular.
Conscription was abolished and the
Austrian Army was limited to a force of 30,000 volunteers. There were numerous provisions dealing with
Danubian navigation, the transfer of railways, and other details involved in the breakup of a great empire into several small independent states. The vast reduction of population, territory and resources of the new Austria relative to the old empire wreaked havoc on the economy of the old nation, most notably in
Vienna, an imperial capital now without an empire to support it. For a time, the country's very existence was called into question. ==See also==