[VideoView]
Karl Mandler
We were just a multinational state
video length:
01:42
interviewer:
Ruth Deutschmann
photography:
Benjamin Epp
copyright location:
Kufstein
date of recording:
2008-08-21
English translation by:
Sylvia Manning - Baumgartner
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1918
transcription:
But we were a multi-ethnic state. We were not as easy as the Germans. The Germans did have their sovereign, but they were all Bavaria, Hesse, Württemberg, but above all they were German. But for us it was not so. We already had in our past these difficulties, especially with the Hungarians. Then, with the Czechs, the Italians, with the Poles. And so it went. Our national territories were not all German, but only this small German-Austria here, this homeland. But otherwise, were all foreign nations, which have already shown the resistance in the past, before the war. And when they had to realize that the war was lost, was yes - history has shown that - the Czechs the first to have gone away, which left the front. Then came the Hungarians, then came the Poles, and so on. They are - the Italian front is almost come to Innsbruck, because our troops have just left the fronts. This was the Austria-Hungarian army, not like in Germany. They had a closed, compact force as German soldiers, which we did not have.