Abstract
Observers of the Central European scene after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in 1918 were often disappointed by the vigorous national assertiveness of the Succession States, which seemed to expedite Hitler's aggressions and the Russian penetration of 1944–45. Retrospective assessments of the monarchy's historic role often cited economic unity, the centralized constitutions of both Austria and Hungary, the traditions of the bureaucracy, and the existence of strongly entrenched, pro-imperial classes as centripetal forces in a political complex which from Rudolf I's time often had yielded to particularism and administrative division.