Posted on 07/28/2018 8:43:01 PM PDT by Ravnagora
Photo of the Serbian and American flags flying at Serbian National Defense headquarters in Chicago by Aleksandra Rebic July 2018.
The Significance of JULY 28 in Serbian-American History / WWI begins and America formally honors Serbia as an Ally, paying tribute to her contributions and sacrifice.
Aleksandra's Note: Today, July 28, 2018, marks two important anniversaries. On this date in 1914 Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, thus beginning what would turn into the First World War. On this date in 1918, exactly one century ago, the Serbian flag flew at the White House in Washington, D.C. at the request of American President Woodrow Wilson, to honor the Serbian contributions and sacrifices in WWI and to stand in solidarity with Serbia as an Ally.
Sincerely,
Aleksandra Rebic
July 28, 2018
*****
Ping.
In 2014 the murderous Serbs celebrated the killing of the Archduke and his wife with a young man walking across the main square in Sarajevo firing two pistol shots at the precise century moment of the murders in 1914.
Thank you Serbs, for millions of deaths 1914-1918! We surviving Europeans are in your debt.
Doesn't make the murder of the Archduke an event worth celebrating or the Serbs any better, but laying millions of deaths on them when it was the large nations of Europe who swore those millions of lives and mountains of treasure to alliances Serbs were not party to is a bit much.
JMHo
But they rejected him for being, hmm, "too scrawny."
So he went and bombed the Archduke to show that he could *TOO* be a decent terrorist.
As Leslie Winkel from The Big Bang Theory (cwidt?) would put it,
"Dumbass."
LMAO!
Wow, you sound bitter toward the Serbs.
I guess you enjoyed the damnable slaughter of innocent Serbs by Bill Clinton and NATO. One of the most shameful moments in US history.
God Bless the Serbs and Serbia!
Regards
“...the murderous Serbs celebrated the killing of the Archduke and his wife … Thank you Serbs, for millions of deaths 1914-1918! …”
Completely misstates the strategic situation in 1914.
The conspirators misread the internal politics of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Empire, had already made plain his support for liberalizing control of the Empire’s Balkan districts. Franz Joseph, the ruling Austrian emperor at the time, was opposed to liberalization and publicly declared his relief that his nephew Franz Ferdinand would not succeed him. Had the conspirators been more patient, conditions for bordering countries like Serbia and for ethnic groups within the Empire would have improved: chances for autonomy were greater had Franz Ferdinand lived to ascend to the throne.
The government of Serbia was never proven to have been backing the assassination conspirators officially. The Austro-Hungarian Empire used the assassination as an excuse. In this, they were egged on by the German government, which took deliberate deceptive steps to mislead the other European powers as to what was going on.
When things began to look more serious, Germany’s Kaiser William got cold feet. But his senior military officers brainlessly insisted on executing their plan of long standing: attack the French first - despite the fact that Franco-German hostilities were in 1914 at the lowest level in many years.
Both the Germans and the Austrians reckoned the Imperial Russians would back down: after all, they’d done just that on some four or five occasions since William had become the Kaiser of Germany in 1888.
The Central powers had miscalculated.
They’d expected the Italians to comply with the Central treaty, but the Italians declared the war to be an invalid invocation of that document and stayed out, joining the Allied side a bit later. By a turn of ill luck, SMS Goeben, a battle cruiser of the Imperial German Navy, evaded the Royal Navy and made it into port at Constantinople, inducing the Ottoman Turks to enter the war in alliance with the Central powers, thus cutting off maritime traffic to Russian ports on the Black Sea.
Britain - a maritime power with a small army frequently ridiculed by the Germans - figured into none of the calculations of the Continental powers, not rating a single mention in strategy discussions of the German General Staff that summer. The British hoped to avoid entanglement, with the financial and commercial interests in London voicing the strongest objections during the leadup (contrary to goofball fantasies of pacifists and conspiracy nuts babbling about “merchants of death” after the war), but once the Germans ignored admonitions to avoid invading Belgium, British public opinion shifted; their government declared war against the Central powers to honor treaty obligations - which had been agreed to by France and Germany as well, years earlier.
To quote John T Correll, retired editor of Air Force magazine, nothing that happened during the war went as planned, or expected.
“...So he went and bombed the Archduke...” [grey_whiskers, post 5]
Gavrilo Princip did not bomb anyone.
He shot Franz Ferdinand and wife Sophie with an FN M1910 auto pistol, chambering in 7.65mm Browning (US 32 ACP). Two shots, two deaths. Auto pistols were so new and unknown at the time, that many newspaper illustrators of the day sketched in a revolver when drawing their depictions of the event.
Franz Ferdinand was wearing an early type of soft body armor, invented by an American clergyman from Chicago. But Princip shot him in the neck, which wasn’t protected.
One of the automobiles in Franz Ferdinand’s procession made a wrong turn, placing the party in Princip’s sights by mere chance - after he’d given up hope of getting near his target and was walking back to the conspirators’ hideout. He was stopping to buy a sandwich when the vehicles came into range.
A long list of bad luck and blunders, presaging the blunderful mess of the war which followed.
Thanks for the update & corrections!
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