Germany invades Austria-Hungary in 1914

Is there any reason what so ever that Germany might invade Austria-Hungary in 1914, maybe in the defense of Serbia? POD can be before the turn of the century.

And, what are the effects? Do the German divisions cut through the Austrian border, liberating an independent Hungary and puppeting Austria? Are the Austrians (who did not have a particularly dazzling track record when it came to attacking Serbia) even able to hold the Germans back?

What is the opinions and actions of France; Russia and Britain from this turn of events?
 
Vienna Commune:

Communist insurrectionists kill Hapsburgs and seize control of Vienna, Budapest and Prague. Austrian Army is in disarray and asks for German help and asks for German help in quelling rebellion.
 

wormyguy

Banned
Maybe if the Austrians blame Germany for the assassination, for whatever reason.

(Or possibly Italy).
 
You're probably going to have to go a little further back than that, mainly because A-H was considered by Germany to be its most important ally by 1900 (the other intended 'cornerstones' were supposed to be Italy and the UK, naively enough). Messing with Bismarck's administration might switch things up enough.
 

Deleted member 1487

The POD would have to go back to the 1870's. Basically ASB if done in 1914.
 
Leaving aside that Austria was a German semi-dependency by 1914 and they had no reason whatever to invade, there's the domestic side of it. Nobody on either side wanted to go deploying troops against "German brothers". You'll note that even when their interests were contradictory, which was often, Austria and Germany never really clashed majorly after 1871: they couldn't.

It must also be understand that public outrage about the actual assasination was much like public outrage in Britain about the violation of an obscure treaty made in 1837: a useful cover for pragmatic interests. the Germans would never go to war with anyone just because they offed an Archduke, so that's out.

It's not beyond possibility that some commie or anarchist could provide a nice anational equivelant to Gavrilo Princip (not given what happened to Stuergkh), but no communes are a-springing up. By 1914, the Austrian Social Democrats were one of the principal parties in the Reichsrat and the dominant socialist party in most of the monarchy, and the last thing they wanted was dead Hapsburgs: the end of Franz-Josef would raise deep questions about the monarchy itself, and the Socialists were committed to the integrity of the monarchy and opposed a variety of local "national-socialist" factions (which, given the often radical nationalist character of these groups, is probably the origin of "German national socialism") as well as the conventional nationalists.

Now, Hungary is a somewhat differant question (Hungary and Russia were the two places to have home-grown regimes after the war, of course), but without the war you certainly wouldn't see a "Budapest commune" in a position to get the German army involved.

Oh, and Germany would not "puppetise" Austria whether it wanted to or not: on both sides, the pan-Germanist lobby was strong. The Germans were the strongest national group in the Reichsrat (that is, parties that were actively "German", not the mostly-German all-Empire parties, the Catholic Socials and the Social Democrats), and pan-Germans became highly influential in Germany during WW1.
 
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