On 28th October 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had its Humpty-Dumpty moment "and had a great fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again." While the Empire had been barely held together by administrative tape and violence for centuries, its internal contradictions were heightened by the Habsburg stupidity of starting the First World War. The unwillingness of the Hungarian aristocrats and oligarchs to a fair share of the burden as well as the Habsburg adversity to modernity doomed their success from the start. Still, for four years, the war carried on and the people suffered. On October 28th that changed. completely.

Johannes Sachslehner shows the events of that day in a 24 hours format. In the morning, there still was business as usual with unfortunate re-captured Czech deserters shot on the Italian front. Emperor Karl's message to the Allies, however, kicked off independent movements in Prague, Vienna, Zagreb (then Agram) and Budapest that could no longer be contained by the administration. These were fateful hours where the new existed in parallel to the old, and people had to choose sides. Fortunately, the collapse was relatively non-violent (due to the futility of carrying on). The Habsburgs already sent their crown jewels to Switzerland for safekeeping (some of them were broken apart and sold later, according to a Der Spiegel story of 1961 - some of the jewels used in some crowns proved to be of very low quality - an early example of the cheerleader effect).

At the Italian front, some units continued to fight heroically and tried to withdraw in order while others simply marched off. The ill-managed Habsburg collapse allowed the Italians to turn from losers into winners as they could recover more than they initially lost at little cost. The real killer at that moment, however, was not the frontline but the flu raging in the cities. In Vienna, more than a thousand died per week, their strength weakened by poor diet and lack of resources. Among the victims were Egon Schiele and his wife.

The sudden change also led to unresolved issues such as what to do with Austro-Germans in Bohemia and Moravia that would cause much violence and suffering later on. The joy of freedom and liberty of the Czechs, Croats and Hungarians unfortunately did not lead to an age of tolerance as the oppressed preferred to become inflexible nationalists themselves. 1917/18 truly marked the end of "the world of yesterday" and ushered in the new 20th century. Thomas Mann, however, seemed to have been oblivious to the coming collapse in November and wrote about a victorious Germany in his diary entry for 28th October 1918. What a day. ( )