In this new work on World War I and its devastating consequences, Manfried Rauchensteiner offers the most detailed and insightful military history of the fall of the Habsburg Empire to date. The history of how the First World War was unleashed, of the role played by Emperor Franz Joseph, of the way in which the different nationalities in the Habsburg Monarchy reacted, and of the disintegration of an empire that had lasted over 600 years has lost none of its drama even today. However, much of the story behind these events is only now becoming clear. This book, by one of Austria’s leading historians, is a Central European encyclopaedia of the First World War.