In April 1809—less than four years after Austerlitz—Austria declared war on France and entered the field as the champion of a vanquished German Empire. In their analyses of the Habsburg bid to restore the old order in the Germanies, historians have stressed certain internal developments within the Austrian Empire that made war possible: a revitalized army, a strong feeling of German nationalism, an embittered émigré lobby, and a powerful war party. This article explores the importance of the factions within the imperial family in relation to these events and points up an irony in the Austrian decision. For while the emperor Francis viewed the war as a final effort to save the dynasty, Count Philipp Stadion, his chief minister and leader of the war party, capitalized on the divergent points of view within the family to attain his own ends. His principal concern was to restore the old political order, to reverse the terms of the Treaty of Pressburg (1805), and to reconstruct the Holy Roman Empire in Germany. By skillful manipulation of ideology and dynastic ambition, he won most of the imperial princes to his side. They, in turn, persuaded the emperor to commit himself to a foreign policy that jeopardized his monarchy for the sake of a war whose diplomatic goals interested him scarcely at all.

The transportation of the nineteenth century; the opening of fertile virgin soil, farmed by extensive methods, in North America, Argentina, and Russia; the expansion of animal husbandry in the Americas and Australia; the development of refrigeration and canning; a chronic worldwide shortage of currency; and such natural catastrophes as the destruction of French vineyards by phylloxera, epidemics of hoof-and-mouth disease, and years of drought followed by years of excessive rain, produced a severe crisis for European farmers in the final quarter of the nineteenth century. European farmers found themselves in a squeeze between the cheap prices of their overseas competitors and their own high production costs, which were caused by intensive or antiquated methods. Two alternative policies confronted European of the high-cost areas.

This study of the economic proposals of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD, Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) and the German Free Trade Unions (ADGB, Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund) during the years 1929–33 is not intended merely to revive a long-forgotten discussion of German economic policy.By exploring the complex interaction during the depression of economic theory, in the form of half-articulated assumptions as well as formal systems, and political ideology and behavior, it attempts to deepen our understanding of the fundamental political conflicts produced by modern economic crises. The Social Democratic Party and the Free Trade Unions had important political roles in the Weimar Republic. Their strong interest after 1929 in reviving the economy and in preventing the rise of a National Socialist regime makes them especially appropriate subjects to explore the relationship between economic theory and politics.