1918/1919: Flu Pandemic

In October 1918, people in Austria slowly began to realise the dangers of the spreading influenza pandemic. In Europe, this dangerous illness, which ultimately killed between 25 and 50 million people worldwide between 1918 and 1920—i.e. around 100 years ago—started to spread mainly from Spain. It was called the ‘Spanish flu’ or the ‘Spanish illness’ because censorship in Spain, as a neutral country during the First World War, was less strict than in the warring nations—and it was from this country that reports of eight million Spaniards falling ill with the disease first started to come through. The warring states had kept the outbreak of this flu pandemic secret during the final phase of the war in order not to weaken the resolve of their own populations.

Yet the pandemic’s true origin—as the majority of experts are now convinced—was March 1918 in the USA. In early 1918 relatively few people were affected by the illness and there was certainly no talk of a flu wave. During this period, US soldiers were taken to Europe where—so runs current medical historical thinking—they “infected” the warring continent. After the Americans joined the war in early 1918, 180,000 soldiers were shipped to Europe in March and April alone—favourable conditions for the spreading a disease already rampant in the USA throughout Europe. In the end the illness developed into a pandemic, which followed a course of three waves: the initial, less severe wave in early 1918, the second extremely fatal wave in late summer and autumn 1918, and the third at the beginning of 1919. Aftershocks continued to come later until around 1922. 

According to contemporary estimates, at least half of German Austria’s more than six million inhabitants must have fallen ill with the Spanish Flu. According to official statistics, over 20,000 people died from the illness in the years 1918/19. If all fatal lung infections caused by the flu are also counted, the total comes to 40,000 dead.