Germany is a country of tradition, contrast and discipline mixed with a craving for modernity and change. The actual Chancellor is a lady from the Centre/Right…
Category: Austrian history
The character of Franz-Josef (1830 – 1916)
It is difficult not to feel sympathy for Franz Josef, Emperor of Austria/Hungary. A dashing European prince of eighteen, he succeeded to the throne abdicated…
The SECOND Reich
We assume our studious blogwatchers know all that is to be known about the Third Reich, because it was notorious, racist, and the direct cause of half a…
A law in urgent need of repeal: the Royal Marriages Act
Yes I know that the majority of you don’t give a stuff about royalty anyway but quite a few nations prefer their Head of State to wear a…
The Final Solution
Researchers have tried to find cogent reasons for Hitler’s pathological hatred of the Jews. Nothing in his childhood in Austria happened which might have sown the…
The battle of Austerlitz
Map of the Battle of Austerlitz Anyone living at the beginning of the nineteenth century might have thought that the battle of Trafalgar, fought in October 1805…
Field-Marshal Radetzky
Josef Wenzel, Count of Radetz was born in Austria in 1766. He became a soldier aan fought the Turks at the age of twenty-two in one of…
Metternich
Of all the great statesmen and diplomats whose many different names have managed to confuse so many history students in the last century or two, this one is…
The Seven Years War
Most of the eighteenth century featured wars in Europe, as rulers came and went and tried to dominate other rulers. Nearly always the same countries were…