Serbia, Vienna soon agreed, due to the influence of Tisza, the Hungarian premier, was neither to be annexed nor destroyed.
Yet as the war continued and as it became clear that it would not be a short one, more extensive war aims developed. True, at the start of the war, Vienna had few specific war aims in mind apart from defeating Serbia militarily and making her a tributary or dependent state.
Fried insists in his work on three basic points: first, that Austro-Hungarian war aims were more offensive, expansionist and annexationist in the Balkans and in Poland than previously thought secondly, that the foreign ministry remained in overall control of the process of war aims formulation in opposition to the army’s policies and contrary to the German example and thirdly, that the war was prolonged due to Austria-Hungary’s at times almost delusional insistence on its principal war aims. Meanwhile he has published an article, ‘The Cornerstone of Balkan Power Projection: Austro-Hungarian Foreign Policy and the Problem of Albanian Neutrality, 1914-1918’. Fried’s views are summarized in his forthcoming article, ‘“A Life and Death Question”: Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the First World War’.
This will be published in 2014 by Palgrave Macmillan, London, with the title The Final Stab at Glory: Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the Balkans, 1914-1918. The most recent and significant foray into Austro-Hungarian wartime diplomacy is Marvin Benjamin Fried’s 2011 LSE doctoral thesis, War Aims and Peace Conditions: Austro-Hungarian Foreign Policy in the Balkans, July 1914-May 1917.
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