The treaty declared that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was to be dissolved. According to article 177 Austria, along with the other Central Powers, accepted responsibility for starting the war. The new Republic of Austria, consisting of most of the German-speaking Danubian and Alpine provinces in former Cisleithania, recognized the independence of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Kingdom of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. The treaty included 'war reparations' of large sums of money, directed towards the Allies.
Territory
Cisleithanian Austria had to face significant territorial losses, amounting to over 60 percent of the prewar Austrian Empire's territory:
The southern half of the former Tyrolean crownland up to the Brenner Pass, including predominantly German-speaking South Tyrol and the present-day Trentino province, together with the Carinthian Canal Valley around Tarvisio fell to Italy, as well as the Austrian Littoral.
The main part of the former Kingdom of Dalmatia, the Duchy of Carniola and Lower Styria with the Carinthian Mieß Valley and Gemeinde Seeland was ceded to the Yugoslav Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, contrary to what was stipulated by the 1915 London Pact. Also Bosnia and Herzegovina was given to it. The affiliation of the Southern Carinthian territory with its Slovene-speaking share of population was to be decided in a Carinthian Plebiscite.
Austria-Hungary's only overseas possession, its concession in Tianjin, was turned over to China.
The predominantly German- and Croatian-speaking western parts of the Hungarian counties of Moson, Sopron and Vas were awarded to Austria. The Uprising in West Hungary led to a plebiscite which resulted in the transition of Sopron and its surrounding 8 villages back to Hungary. Subsequently, other villages were returned or exchanged between Austria and Hungary up to 1923. In the end, the territories finally gained from Hungary were organised as a state of Austria named Burgenland.
The Allies had explicitly committed themselves to the cause of the minority peoples of Austria-Hungary late in the war. Reflecting this, the Allies not only allowed the minority peoples to help create new states, recreate former states, or join their ethnic brethren in existing nation-states, but allowed the successor states to absorb significant blocks of German-speaking territory. In addition the negotiators on the Allied side, particularly Wilson, did not understand when speaking of self-determination that no convenient line could be drawn to separate intermingled nationalities, and that in further cases, irredentists would claim that some German or Hungarian-speaking territories had actually been theirs. This was as well rendered by the fact just only a few cases were plebiscites allowed regarding the disputed territories.
Politics and military
Unlike its former Hungarian partner, Austria had never been a nation in the true sense of the word. While the Austrian state had existed in one form or another for over 700 years, it had no unifying force other than loyalty to the Habsburgs. As the Austrian national identity did not exist and develop prior to 1945, people had German national consciousness. Article 88 of the treaty required Austria to refrain from directly or indirectly compromising its independence, which meant that Austria could not enter into political or economic union with the German Reich without the agreement of the council of the League of Nations. Accordingly, the new republic's initial self-chosen name of German-Austria had to be changed to Austria. Many Austrians would come to find this term harsh, due to Austria's later economic weakness, which was caused by loss of land. Because of all these reasons, Austria would later lead to support for the idea of Anschluss with Nazi Germany. Conscription was abolished and the Austrian Army was limited to a force of 30,000 volunteers. There were numerous provisions dealing with Danubian navigation, the transfer of railways, and other details involved in the breakup of a great empire into several small independent states. The vast reduction of population, territory and resources of the new Austria relative to the old empire wreaked havoc on the economy of the old nation, most notably in Vienna, an imperial capital now without an empire to support it. For a time, the country's very unity was called into question.
