Austria-Hungary exited the war on 3 November 1918, when it ordered its troops to cease fighting. The Armistice of Villa Giusti, signed with Italy that day, took effect on 4 November, and on 13 November the Armistice of Belgrade was signed with Italy's allies on the Balkan front. Italy began immediately to occupy territories ceded to it by the treaty of 1915, while simultaneously the South Slavs formed local governments in opposition to both Italian expansion and Austro-Hungarian authority. A National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs was set up in Zagreb on 5–6 October, and the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs was proclaimed there on 29 October and that same day the Sabor, the legitimate parliament of Croatia-Slavonia, declared independence from Austria-Hungary. On 1 December the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia) was formed in Belgrade by union of this new state with Serbia and Montenegro.
Arguments
Populations
The main argument presented by Yugoslavia was that the territories under consideration contained about seven million Slavs, almost the entire population.[1]
Of the Dalmatian islands, only Lošinj (Lussin) had an Italian majority.[2] When the hinterland of Fiume was included along with its suburbs the Yugoslav majority increased further. The Italian claim on Gorizia and Gradisca was generally recognised, as was its claim on the Slavic settlements around Friuli.[3]
The Italians argued that the natural geographic boundary of Italy included the Julian and Dinaric Alps, and that therefore the Austro-Hungarian littoral lay within geographic Italy.[2] The strategic importance of the geography of the eastern coast of the Adriatic has been generally accepted. The Chief of the Division of Boundary Geography with the American delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, Douglas Wilson Johnson, wrote at the time, "Any naval power on the [Adriatic] eastern coast must find itself possessing immense advantages over Italy."[5] Johnson went on to note that the offer of Pula (Pola), Vlorë (Valona) and a central Dalmatian island group to the Italians effectively settled the strategic problem and balanced the two Adriatic powers.[6]
Allied occupation
Joint occupation of Fiume
On 29 October 1918 the Austro-Hungarians evacuated Fiume, and the new Croatian mayor, Rikard Lenac, proclaimed the town's adherence to the National Council of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. On 30 October the Italian community set up a "national council" headed by Antonio Grossich and proclaimed Fiume's union with Italy.[7] The next day the local governor handed over power to the Italians, as did the governor of Trieste.[8] On 4 November an Italian naval detachment under Admiral Guglielmo Rainer aboard the battleship Emanuele Filiberto arrived in the harbour of Fiume. Rainer declared the local government dissolved and, on 14 November Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando, acting on the advice of Chief of Staff Armando Diaz, ordered Rainer to land a troop of marines.[7] The next day (15 November) Diaz requested that Allied troops take part in the occupation of Fiume. The commander of British forces on the Italian Front, the Earl of Cavan, was ordered to send a company "to show that the occupation is allied, and to keep order".[7] That same day 2,000 Serbian soldiers arrived on the outskirts of Fiume.
France and the United States also sent naval contingents to Fiume, and on 17 November some American, British and French naval officers met with Mayor Lenac and Ivan Lorković, a delegate from the Slovene–Croat–Serb state, in the abandoned governor's palace. It was agreed that the Serb troops should evacuate the area that afternoon and that the Italian marines should not be landed for another three days, pending orders from the Supreme Council of the Paris Peace Conference. Although Rainer agreed, he was countermanded by his superior, on the grounds that he had acted without instruction, and an Italian troops force eighty strong entered the city that afternoon.[9] They ordered Lenac's government out of the palace and removed all Serbian flags on public display.[7] On 18 November the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs officially protested to the allied commanders.[10] The arrival of an American battalion on 19 November prevented any outbreak of violence, but the Italians eventually posted 12,000 troops in the city—"an Italian military occupation in overwhelming force, for political reasons" wrote Admiral Edward Kiddle,[11] and Commodore Howard Kelly, commanding the British Adriatic Force, could remark on 22 November that "the Italian occupation has all the appearance of an annexation to the Italian Crown."[7]
Establishment of a naval commission
When Italy first began occupying land east of the Tagliamento, the former boundary between Italy and Austria-Hungary, it employed troops of the 332nd Infantry Regiment of the United States (which were under Italian command on the Italian Front), with the goal of appearing to be an international occupation force. Although this misuse of American troops led the United States War Department to order them withdrawn, President Woodrow Wilson countermanded the order to prevent a breakdown in negotiations over the Adriatic question in Paris. Thereafter, as a result, the international control for the Adriatic was a naval responsibility.[12]
On 16 November 1918 representatives of the Allied navies—American, British, French and Italian—met in Venice to establish the Naval Commission (or Committee) for the Adriatic. At several sessions held in Rome from 26 November, the commission decided the fate of the Austro-Hungarian fleet and of its coastline. The fleet was divided in control between the Americans, French and Italians pending a final political decision regarding its fate, while the coast was divided into three zones of control, an Italian in the north (mainly corresponding to the Austrian Littoral), an American in the middle (mainly Dalmatia) and a French in the south (mainly Albania).[12] This arrangement eventually received political ratification in Paris. Josephus Daniels, United States Secretary of the Navy, wrote to his Chief of Naval Operations, William S. Benson, also American naval advisor to the Paris Peace Commission, that "due to possible Adriatic developments and [American] desire to show sympathy with [the] Slavonic government being formed in the late Austro-Hungarian Empire, consider it desirable to send flag officer ... immediately into the Adriatic."[13] Benson later wrote to Admiral William H. G. Bullard, commanding American naval forces in their zone, that "the general principles laid down by the President", i.e. the Fourteen Points, which stressed national self-determination, should be furthered, implying active American support for Yugoslav nationhood.[12]
The Naval Commission began its work in Fiume in early December, but in January the Italian representative, Admiral Vittorio Mola, resigned in protest. At the demands of the American, British and French admirals, Italy appointed Rear Admiral Ugo Rombo to replace him on 1 February 1919. At a meeting in Venice on 8 February Rombo told Admiral Albert Parker Niblack that the Americans did not understand the Adriatic problem, leading to a breakdown in negotiations between the Italians and the rest. In the end the Commission's report was not publicised.[14]
When the Commission moved to Split, the admirals tasked the Yugoslavs with maintaining order, but on 24 February some Yugoslav (mostly Croat) citizens attacked some Italian officers meeting with local Italianophiles. Rombo demanded the Allies patrol the city, but Niblack and Benson vetoed it.[14]
Austro-Hungarian fleet allocation
On 8 October 1918, in response to the recent opening of the National Council in Zagreb, the Reichsrat, one of the two parliaments of Austria-Hungary, freed 348 of the 379 sailors still in custody after the mutiny of 1–3 February in Kotor (Cattaro). On 22–24 October officers conducted talks with sailors in their native languages on all ships explaining Emperor Charles I's plan to federalise Cisleithania, but it was too late to restore morale or loyalty to the crown. On 26 October the forbidden call to mutiny, Hurra-Rufe, was heard on the SMSErzherzog Friedrich in Kotor, and two days later on the battleships in Pula.[15] The sailors organised councils but did not openly rebel or riot. On 31 October 1918 the Austro-Hungarian Navy, with all its ships and other craft, supplies, stores and facilities (ports, arsenals, etc.) was handed over to the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs by Admiral Miklós Horthy, acting under orders received from the emperor the previous day.[16] All non-Yugoslav sailors were furloughed and all officers were given the option to continue in service to the new nation. The emperor's order contained a proviso that in the future all the "nations" of Austria-Hungary should have a right to claim compensation for their share of the value of the fleet.[16] The formal handover at Kotor took place on 1 November, the same day the Italians sank the battleship SMSViribus Unitis at Pula, whether yet aware it was a Yugoslav ship or not. Admiral William Sims, commander of the United States Navy in Europe, ordered Admiral Bullard to go to Pula aboard the USSBirmingham and escort the former Austro-Hungarian ships that had been taken over by Yugoslavia to Corfu under white flags.[13]
By the end of the day, 1 November, Chief of the Naval Staff Paolo Emilio Thaon di Revel had informed the government that "the entire Austrian fleet or at least a great part of it has pulled down the Austrian flag and raised the Yugoslav. The fleet or a good part of it is already in the hands of the Yugoslav National Committee."[17] This did not affect negotiations at Villa Giusti, and the armistice was signed on behalf of the navy by Prince Johann of Liechtenstein of the Austrian Navy League and Captain Georg Zwierkowski of the Danube Flotilla. The treaty promised the Italians a share of the Austro-Hungarian fleet (although this had in fact ceased to exist some days before):[17]
Shortly before the armistice came into effect at 3:00p.m. on 4 November, the Italian navy occupied Vis (Lissa). This was done "to exorcise the old demons of 1866 [i.e., the Austro-Prussian War] and restore the honour of the Italian navy while the war at least technically was still underway."[18] Before the end of the day Fiume, Trieste and Pula had been occupied, and on 5 November Šibenik (Sebenico) followed. The Yugoslavs abandoned all the vessels they could not man to the Italians, and on 7 November the SMSRadetzky sailed out of Pula for the unoccupied port of Bakar (Buccari). On 9 November the Italian flag was raised on all remaining vessels in Pula. That day, cruisers of the British, French and Italian navies sailed into the Bay of Kotor (Bocche di Cattaro) and the last unoccupied Austro-Hungarian port. The sailors there cut up their Austro-Hungarian ensigns—to prevent them from being taken by the Italians as trophies—and distributed them as souvenirs. That same day, at an inter-Allied conference on Corfu, the Italian diplomat Ugo Conz retorted to his British colleagues, "There can be no fleet where there is no state. There can be no Yugoslav fleet as long as such a state has not yet been founded or as long as peace has not been definitively concluded."[18]
In Dalmatia, the American occupation zone, the citizens had elected a provisional assembly and a governor, and both supported the nascent State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. Order was kept by the local militia, which was often unreliable, and by Serbian troops which had begun to garrison the area in small numbers. This arrangement was supported by the Americans, but "[b]y early 1919, disturbed local conditions forced the [Naval] Committee for the Adriatic to circulate four armed inter-allied patrols night and day throughout the area under the command of the American admiral."[12] After a few months of this the Admiral Bullard supplanted the inter-allied patrol with a patrol composed entirely of Americans to assist the local police in maintaining order for a few hours each day.[19]
Several times Italian troops crossed the frontier into the American zone of occupation, but in each case they were turned back, either by a warning or, in one case, by the arrival of American warships and landing of American forces. In several towns the Americans posted notice that they would protect the lives and property of Dalmatians against any Italian injustice. This latter sort of propaganda was the most effective means of keeping the peace, since the American admiral had to rely on Serbian troops for garrisoning the interior.[20] His own garrison was minuscule, and reinforcements were only landed in emergencies.[19] One Yugoslav mayor from the Italian zone sent a letter of thanks to the American admiral for protecting his people from the Italians.
The first effort to bring American naval forces in the Adriatic home took place in December 1919. In February 1920 the Italians requested four Austro-Hungarian ships allocated to Italy by the Allied Military Committee of Versailles and which were being guarded at Split by American forces. The Italian ambition to receive these vessels led to the decision to retain American ships in the Adriatic longer.[21] The American occupation ended only after the Italian forces had evacuated their zone and the International Committee for the Destruction of Enemy Warships had allocated all the formerly Austro-Hungarian vessels under its command to the Italian Navy.[19] The last American troops left aboard the USSReuben James on 29 September 1921, after the Treaty of Rapallo had been signed.
Negotiations
The negotiations attending the Adriatic question at the Paris Peace Conference may be divided into three periods based on the dominant Italian personality of the time: January–June 1919, the Baron Sonnino period; June–September 1919, the Tittoni period; and 12 September – 9 December 1919, the d'Annunzio period.[22]
Wilson Line
The Italian community in Istria (38%) was concentrated on its western coast. Croats formed the majority in the rest of the peninsula, with Slovenes in the north
From January until June 1919 negotiations were dominated by Baron Sidney Sonnino, the Italian Foreign Minister, who divided and conquered his allies, forcing Britain and France to acquiesce in the Treaty of London and endeavouring to negotiate directly with America from a position of strength. At the same time he whipped up the Italian people with nationalistic propaganda.[23] When the government of Orlando was replaced by that of Francesco Saverio Nitti on 23 June, Sonnino was replaced by Tommaso Tittoni. The nationalist fervour he had stoked, however, broke into open violence in Fiume, where, on 6 July 1919, an element of the Italian population massacred some of the occupying French soldiers.[23]
On 15 April President Wilson issued a memorandum proposing a line, the so-called "Wilson Line", dividing the Istrian peninsula between Italy and Yugoslavia. Trieste and Pula, with the railway connecting them, lay on the Italian side; Fiume and Ljubljana (Laibach), with the railway connecting them, on the Yugoslav. Učka (Monte Maggiore) was to be Italian, but the Wilson Line ran further west of Fiume than that of the Treaty of London. Italy would have none of the rights in northern Dalmatia granted it by that treaty, but it would receive the islands of Vis (Lissa) and Lošinj (Lussin). The Yugoslav fleet, inherited from Austria-Hungary, was to be reduced, and the area of the frontier demilitarised generally.[23] The Italians alleged that the Wilson line did not give sufficient protection to the Trieste–Pula railway.[24]
Tittoni altered the course of negotiations by abandoning the Treaty of London and strengthening the Franco-Italian alliance, but he did not accept President Wilson's proposed "line". The French diplomat André Tardieu worked as an intermediary between Tittoni and the Americans, and he first suggested the creation of a buffer state out of a strip of land around Fiume, the future Free State of Fiume. The main American objection at the time was that the buffer state denied its inhabitants the right of self-determination.[24]
Memoranda and compromise
On 12 September 1919, Gabriele d'Annunzio led a band of disaffected soldiers of the Granatieri di Sardegna in a march on Fiume—the so-called impresa di Fiume ("Fiume enterprise")—defying the international commission and the governments of Italy and Yugoslavia. Tittoni petitioned the international community, represented by French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau after the American and British heads of government had both gone home, and the Yugoslav government for time to allow Italy to rein in d'Annunzio. In October he proposed that Fiume itself and a coastal strip leading to it should be conceded to Italy, that besides Lošinj and Vis she should possess the islands of Cres (Cherso) and Lastovo (Lagosta) and that the city of Zadar (Zara) should be a free city under Italian protection.[25]
After the departure of the president, Frank Polk headed up the American Commission to Negotiate Peace in Paris. He was the driving force behind the memorandum of 9 December, signed by American, British and French delegates. This statement denied the Italians Fiume and most Yugoslav islands and even restricted their mandate over Albania. This memorandum was quickly abandoned by the British and French, whose prime ministers signed a compromise with their Italian counterpart on 14 January 1920 without American participation. Therein it was agreed to concede Fiume and a coastal strip to Italy and in exchange hive off the northern part of Albania and give it to Yugoslavia. To gain the latter's acceptance the signatories of the new compromise threatened to otherwise enforce the Treaty of London.[26]
This last compromise aroused the anger of President Wilson, who, in a statement issued 10 February, denounced it as "a positive denial of the principles for which America entered the war".[27] He threatened to withdraw the United States from the Treaty of Versailles and from the Franco-American agreement of the past June. On 26 February, Clemenceau and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George published a note offering to disavow the January compromise and suggesting that the memorandum of December be similarly sidelined. They expressed their wish to see Yugoslavia and Italy negotiate directly, and, contrary to Wilson's desire, stood by their intention to enforce the Treaty of London if all else failed.[27] It was suggested by some at the time that Lloyd George had personally frustrated the efforts of Wilson by a private agreement with Nitti whereby the latter would support Britain against France on the Eastern (i.e., Russian and Turkish) Question.
Aftermath
On 12 September 1919, D'Annunzio occupied the city of Rijeka (Fiume) and proclaimed the Italian Regency of Carnaro, but the approval of the Treaty of Rapallo on 12 November 1920 turned the territory into an independent state, the Free State of Fiume. Other parts of the Treaty of Rapallo were supposed to solve the dispute between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed Yugoslavia in 1929). It included Italian annexation of parts of Carniola, several Adriatic islands, and the city of Zadar (Zara).
↑ "The Peace Conference and the Adriatic Question", Edinburgh Review, 231:472 (1920), 214.
1 2 "The Peace Conference and the Adriatic Question", 215.
↑ "The Peace Conference and the Adriatic Question", 216.
↑ "The Peace Conference and the Adriatic Question", 218.
↑ Douglas Johnson, "Geographic Aspects of the Adriatic Problem", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 59:6 (1920), 512–16. For a biography of Johnson, see Walter H. Bucher, "Douglas Wilson Johnson, 1878–1944", National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Biographical Memoirs (1946), vol. XXIV, no. 5.
1 2 3 4 5 Hugh Seton-Watson and Christopher Seton-Watson, The Making of a New Europe: R. W. Seton-Watson and the Last Days of Austria-Hungary (London: Methuen, 1981), 325–26.
↑ Lawrence Sondhaus, The Naval Policy of Austria-Hungary, 1867–1918: Navalism, Industrial Development, and the Politics of Dualism (Purdue Research Foundation, 1994), 354.
↑ "The Peace Conference and the Adriatic Question", 223.
↑ Seton-Watson and Seton-Watson, A New Europe, 334 n. 82.
↑ Seton-Watson and Seton-Watson, A New Europe, 334 n. 83.
1 2 3 4 Ralph H. Gabriel, "American Experience with Military Government", American Political Science Review, 37:3 (1943), 427–28.
↑ Lawrence Sondhaus, "Austro-Hungarian Naval Mutinies of World War I", Rebellion, Repression, Reinvention: Mutiny in Comparative Perspective, ed. Jane Hathaway (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001), 204–05.
1 2 Sondhaus, The Naval Policy of Austria-Hungary, 351–54.
1 2 Sondhaus, The Naval Policy of Austria-Hungary, 357.
1 2 Sondhaus, The Naval Policy of Austria-Hungary, 358.
↑ Živojinović, "The United States", 1: "The US admirals carried out their authority through the local administration, while the Yugoslav troops stationed in the zone were under the Yugoslav Supreme Command; the Americans relied on these troops to preserve order."
SMS Zrínyi was a Radetzky-class semi-dreadnought battleship (Schlachtschiff) of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, named for the Zrinski, a Croatian-Hungarian noble family. Zrínyi and her sisters, Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand and Radetzky, were the last pre-dreadnoughts built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy.
The Treaty of Rapallo was an agreement between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in the aftermath of the First World War. It was intended to settle the Adriatic question, i.e. Italian claims over territories promised to the country, in return for its entry into the war, against Austria-Hungary; claims that were made on the basis of the 1915 Treaty of London. The wartime pact promised Italy large areas of the eastern Adriatic. The treaty, signed on 12 November 1920 in Rapallo, Italy, generally redeemed the promises of territorial gains in the former Austrian Littoral by awarding Italy territories generally corresponding to the peninsula of Istria and the former Princely County of Gorizia and Gradisca, with the addition of the Snežnik Plateau, in addition to what was promised by the London treaty. The articles regarding Dalmatia were largely ignored. There Italy received the city of Zadar and several islands. Other provisions of the treaty contained safeguards for the rights of Italian nationals remaining in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and provisions for commissions to demarcate the new border, and facilitate economic and educational cooperation. The treaty also established the Free State of Fiume, the city-state consisting of the former Austro-Hungarian Corpus Separatum that consisted of Rijeka and a strip of coast giving the new state a land border with Italy at Istria.
The State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs was a political entity that was constituted in October 1918, at the end of World War I, by Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (Prečani) residing in what were the southernmost parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Although internationally unrecognised, this was the first incarnation of a Yugoslav state founded on the Pan-Slavic ideology. Thirty-three days after it was proclaimed, the state joined the Kingdom of Serbia and the Kingdom of Montenegro to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
The Treaty of London or the Pact of London was a secret agreement concluded on 26 April 1915 by the United Kingdom, France, and Russia on the one part, and Italy on the other, in order to entice the latter to enter World War I on the side of the Triple Entente. The agreement involved promises of Italian territorial expansion against Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and in Africa where it was promised enlargement of its colonies. The Entente countries hoped to force the Central Powers – particularly Germany and Austria-Hungary – to divert some of their forces away from existing battlefields. The Entente also hoped that Romania and Bulgaria would be encouraged to join them after Italy did the same.
Janko Vuković, sometimes spelt Janko Vukovich or von Vukovich, also known as Janko Vuković de Podkapelski or Janko Vuković-Podkapelski was a Croatian naval officer who served in the Austro-Hungarian Navy and - amidst its collapse - for a brief period as commander of the fleet of the fledgling State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. Vuković saw action in World War I and was appointed commander of the fleet in October 1918 as the Austria-Hungary disintegrated and the entire navy was handed over to the fledgling State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. He died on board the SMS Viribus Unitis, sunk by Italian commandos.
The Austro-Hungarian Navy or Imperial and Royal War Navy was the naval force of Austria-Hungary. Ships of the Austro-Hungarian Navy were designated SMS, for Seiner Majestät Schiff. The k.u.k. Kriegsmarine came into being after the formation of Austria-Hungary in 1867, and ceased to exist in 1918 upon the Empire's defeat and subsequent collapse at the end of World War I.
The Julian March, also called Julian Venetia, is an area of southern Central Europe which is currently divided among Croatia, Italy, and Slovenia. The term was coined in 1863 by the Italian linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, a native of the area, to demonstrate that the Austrian Littoral, Veneto, Friuli, and Trentino shared a common Italian linguistic identity. Ascoli emphasized the Augustan partition of Roman Italy at the beginning of the Empire, when Venetia et Histria was Regio X.
The Free State of Fiume was an independent free state that existed between 1920 and 1924. Its territory of 28 km2 (11 sq mi) comprised the city of Fiume and rural areas to its north, with a corridor to its west connecting it to the Kingdom of Italy.
Yugoslavia was a state concept among the South Slavic intelligentsia and later popular masses from the 19th to early 20th centuries that culminated in its realization after the 1918 collapse of Austria-Hungary at the end of World War I and the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. However, the kingdom was better known colloquially as Yugoslavia ; in 1929 it was formally renamed the "Kingdom of Yugoslavia".
The U-1 class was a class of two submarines or U-boats built for and operated by the Austro-Hungarian Navy. The class comprised U-1 and U-2. The boats were built to an American design at the Pola Navy Yard after domestic design proposals failed to impress the Navy. Constructed between 1907 and 1909, the class was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Navy's efforts to competitively evaluate three foreign submarine designs.
SM U-2 or U-II was the second ship of the U-1 class of submarines or U-boats built for and operated by the Austro-Hungarian Navy. U-2 was designed by American naval architect Simon Lake of the Lake Torpedo Boat Company, and constructed at the navy yard in Pola. She was one of two Lake-designed submarines purchased as part of a competitive evaluation of foreign submarine designs after domestic proposals were rejected by the Navy.
The Royal Navy, commonly the Royal Yugoslav Navy, was the naval warfare service branch of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. It was brought into existence in 1921, and initially consisted of a few former Austro-Hungarian Navy vessels surrendered at the conclusion of World War I and transferred to the new nation state under the terms of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The only modern sea-going warships transferred to the new state were twelve steam-powered torpedo boats, although it did receive four capable river monitors for use on the Danube and other large rivers. Significant new acquisitions began in 1926 with a former German light cruiser, followed by the commissioning of two motor torpedo boats (MTBs) and a small submarine flotilla over the next few years. When the name of the state was changed to Yugoslavia in 1929, the name of its navy was changed to reflect this. In the late 1920s, several of the original vessels were discarded.
SMS Radetzky was the first of the three Radetzky-class pre-dreadnought battleships built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy. She was named for the 19th-century Austrian field marshal Joseph Radetzky von Radetz. Radetzky and her sisters, Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand and Zrínyi, were the last pre-dreadnoughts built by the Austro-Hungarian Navy—they were followed by the larger and significantly more powerful Tegetthoff-class dreadnoughts.
The history of the Croatian Navy can be traced from the Middle Ages until modern times. See List of admirals of Croatia
In the aftermath of the First World War, the Fiume Question, part of the larger Adriatic Question or Adriatic Problem, concerned the fate of the territory that was part of the Corpus Separatum of Fiume, the Royal Free City and one of the only two free ports of Austria-Hungary.
The Novara class was a class of three scout cruisers built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy. Named for the Battle of Novara, the class comprised SMS Saida, SMS Helgoland, and SMS Novara. Construction started on the ships shortly before World War I; Saida and Helgoland were both laid down in 1911, Novara followed in 1912. Two of the three warships were built in the Ganz-Danubius shipyard in Fiume; Saida was built in the Cantiere Navale Triestino shipyard in Monfalcone. The Novara-class ships hold the distinction for being the last cruisers constructed by the Austro-Hungarian Navy.
SMS Tegetthoff was the second of four Tegetthoff-class dreadnought battleships built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy. Tegetthoff was named for the 19th-century Austrian Admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff, most notable for defeating the Italian Regia Marina at the Battle of Lissa in 1866. The ship was armed with a main battery of twelve 30.5 cm (12.0 in) guns in four triple turrets. Constructed shortly before World War I, she was built at the Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino shipyard in Trieste, where she was laid down in September 1910 and launched in March 1912.
SMS Admiral Spaun was a scout cruiser built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy. Named for Admiral and Marinekommandant Hermann von Spaun, Admiral Spaun was constructed shortly before World War I. Laid down at the Pola Navy Yard in May 1908, the cruiser was launched in October 1909. Admiral Spaun was commissioned into the Navy just over a year later, in November 1910. The first ship of the Austro-Hungarian Navy to be constructed with steam turbines, her design later influenced the construction of the Novara-class cruisers.
The Montenegrin question was the issue of relationship of the Kingdom of Montenegro with the Kingdom of Serbia and subsequently the issue of its status within the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes after the World War I.
SMS Uzsok was one of four Ersatz Triglav-class destroyers built for the kaiserliche und königliche Kriegsmarine during the First World War. Completed in 1918, she participated an unsuccessful raid on the Otranto Barrage later that year. She was transferred to Italy in 1920 in accordance with the peace treaties ending the war and renamed Monfalcone. The Regia Marina kept her in service until 1939 and the ship was subsequently scrapped.
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Peace proposals: Wilson and Morgan lines
