Posted on 09/01/2024 9:07:12 AM PDT by hardspunned
The assassination of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip in late June 1914 had one of the strongest ripple effects in modern history, setting off a series of war declarations across Europe and plunging the world into one of its deadliest conflicts.
World War I, however, didn’t officially begin until a month after Ferdinand’s assassination, and though tensions were high, the fight wasn’t inevitable, according to Ronald Spector, professor of history and international affairs.
George Washington Today sat down with Dr. Spector to discuss the assassination, the path to war and the new Europe it created.
Q: What was the mood in Europe in the summer of 1914, right around the time of the assassination? A: At the time, things actually seemed to be getting better. The Moroccan Crisis had been settled, the French and Germans had concluded an agreement about the Rhine River, and at the time of the assassination the German Navy was hosting the British Navy at Kiel Week, which is a huge bash with yacht and boat races. Of course, there were certain structural causes present, including the rise of nationalism in the Balkans, the alliance systems and the long-term arms race in naval and land weapons. But these things were in the background. It didn’t seem, in the summer of 1914, that there was much worry about a global war. The French and British newspapers, even for several weeks after the assassination, referred to it as “the Balkan crisis.” They didn’t think this would be a worldwide conflict.
(Excerpt) Read more at gwtoday.gwu.edu ...
Well I didn’t cause it
Israel is just a means to an end. It won’t stop with getting rid of Israel. That’s like saying giving Hitler the Sudetenland would have stopped him.
Britain got sucked in because of their alliance with Belgium.
Screw the Belgians, look what they did in the Congo, they weren’t worth defending.
Theoretically every war is avoidable.
Of course it was!
The German generals knew Russia was quickly strengthening in 1914, and the thought was, “It’s now or never”, and when Czar Nicky decided to mobilize, despite the personal pleas from his cousin, The Kaiser, that gave the German generals the Casus Belli they needed.
Like The War Between The States and Vietnam, WW 1 was completely avoidable.
Woodrow Wilson was insane to manufacture a fight with Germany and Austria, which ultimately led to the punitive Treaty of Versailles, which begat Adolf Hitler. Millions died for nothing.
Socialists never see the long-term implications of their short-term provocations.
Clemenceau and Hitler should be eternally chained to each other in Hell.
If Trump loses it’s secession.
Even if Germany won, there was a real chance that it would have led to a socialist revolution in Germany.
Nope. The powers behind the curtains wanted the war. Most of those scum thought it would be over quickly and they’d make a lot of money and get a lot more power. It didn’t play out for many of them the way they thought.
Similar as what’s happening today. Anyone who thinks senile Biden and moron Harris are actually making real decisions is an idiot. Their puppet masters are. Hence WWIII will occur if Harris steals the election. If Trump gets in, he might be able to delay it. Only one who has a chance to do so. But the powers that be are also going to wreck America (they are well on the way), so we won’t be able to put it off overlong.
Sorry if that sounds all “conspiracy theory” like, but it’s based on a deep understanding of history. The same patterns occur throughout history from Greece to Rome to China. And even older.
History does not repeat, but it does rhyme. Only real difference now is nukes will come into play.
PS One of my favorite lines from a Zelanzy novel: “Then come to me in Bright Defile,” he said, “where Judgment Day is not a thing that can be delayed for overlong.”
I’m going to say that it was engineered and those doing the engineering did not want to avoid it. Millions of people and it doesn’t affect those doing the engineering.
The real genius of the US Constitution is that it established individual freedoms that allowed people from warring countries to live together in peace.
The Founders knew government tyranny and was a major source of creating national rivalries. They tried to limit government and tried to prevent the US government from entering long term alliances. They created a high threshold of national consensus before waging war.
Slowly, we are sliding back into the bad policies that have wracked Europe for millenniums.
Germany is totally responsible for WW I. Germany was spoiling for a war. France and Great Britain were correct to impose those Reparations on Germany. The west’s mistake was not enforcing the penalties of national Socialists repudiating the Treaty of Versailles. If France and Great Britain had machine-gunned the German troops occupying the Rhineland, there would’ve been no WW 2
From watching “They Shall Not Grow Old”, the sad thing is that for many of the soldiers, going to war at first was seen a welcome break from the dreary life of the average working class Brit. I didn’t see it fueled in particular by patiotism, but just as a ‘great adventure’, and a chance to go to France and meet French girls.
Human beings are hard-wired for homicide, and war appears to be a normal part of the human condition if you simply look at the historic/anthropological evidence. So ‘no’. If not in France and Belgium in the teens it would have just happened elsewhere under slightly different circumstances and with different ‘reasons’.
It was certainly avoidable up to the point of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. He was considered the one person in Europe that could have brought all the parties together to control the building hostilities.
Was he a perfect person? No, but, he did have the ear of enough of the leaders of Europe that he could have de-escalated the hostilities.
The French and the Germans hated each other (30 Years War, Napoleonic Wars, Franco-Prussian War, you get the picture). Bismarck’s whole foreign policy was built around staying close to the Russians and keeping France as friendless as possible. Wilhelm II kicked that to the curb — what does that old man know, anyway? — resulting in the Franco-Russian alliance and Germany being forced to cozy up to Austria-Hungary as her only real ally.
If France and Great Britain had machine-gunned the German troops occupying the Rhineland, there would’ve been no WW 2
At least it might have delayed it by a few years. But of course at the same time, Stalin was trying to get the Soviet Union ready to attack the West, only Hitler beat him to the punch in 1941, a few years before Stalin would have been ready.
Wasn’t it the French who tried to conquer Europe a few decades before?
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