In this episode of the Review of Democracy Podcast, historians Tara Zahra and Pieter Judson discuss their book The Great War and the Transformation of Habsburg Central Europe (Oxford University Press, 2025), which presents an intriguing reinterpretation of the First World War and the collapse of the Habsburg Empire. Rather than treating the war as a mere endpoint or the Empire’s dissolution as inevitable, the conversation explores how wartime social and political transformations reshaped everyday life and reconfigured relations between state and society.
The episode examines fears of democratization and elite decision-making, the management of refugees and mass displacement, and the emergence of new welfare practices and administrative experiments, showing how these processes laid the foundations for the post-1918 order. By foregrounding shared experiences of scarcity, mobilization, and repression across the Monarchy, the discussion examines what the Empire’s often improvised wartime policies reveal about processes of disintegration as well as unexpected capacities for adaptation.
Tara Zahra is the Hanna Holborn Gray Professor of History and the Roman Family Director of the Neubauer Collegium at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on the transnational history of modern Europe, migration, the family, nationalism, globalization, and the history of dance. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2014 and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Pieter M. Judson has taught at the European University Institute in Florence from 2014-2024 and at Swarthmore College as Isaac Clothier Professor of History. Judson holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University (1987) and has authored several books on the history of Habsburg Central Europe. He has served as President of the Central European History Society of North America and as editor of the Austrian History Yearbook.
The interview was conducted by Alexandra Kardos. Lilit Hakobyan edited the audio file.
