[goldstategop]

If the Archduke had never been assassinated, we would be living in a very different world today, one in which Fascism and Nazism and Communism would be mere words in a dictionary instead of affecting hundreds of millions of lives. So yes, one human life is as important as a billion.

[rellimpank]

---the same might be true if Woodrow Wilson's mother had had a "choice"---

[Constitution Day]

Now there's even a band named after the late Archduke.

[First_Salute]

I tend to lean toward the notion that this incident merely affected a change in the beginning stages of the war; that there was going to be a World War I in those years anyway; that effectively, it had already started except for the major shooting.

[MPJackal]

"If the Archduke had never been assassinated, we would be living in a very different world today, one in which Fascism and Nazism and Communism would be mere words in a dictionary"

Possibly, but doubtful. That may have been the final straw but the writing was already on the wall. Obviously it is impossible to predict what would have been different, but I think the world was on course for the war, Franz just showed them the shortcut.

"The Balkan Peninsula or the "Powder Keg of Europe" because tensions there threatened to ignite a major war. Rivalry for control of the Balkans added to the tensions that erupted into World War 1."

"The assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand triggered World War 1. But the war had its origins in developments of the 1800's. The main causes of World War 1 were:

The rise in nationalism
Build-up of military might
System of military alliances"

[FormerLib]

If the Archduke had never been assassinated...

...then World War I might have been delayed for a while. It was the underlying tensions that were forming among the monarchies of Europe that insured it would happen one way or another.

[El Sordo]

Dunno if I buy into that.

Yes, it would be a very differen world. But the ideology encompassed by the different -isms had been gaining speed for a while. And sooner or later the "powder-keg" that was Europe would have started shooting about something. Perhaps the alternate possibility might have been a Europe where Fascism triumphs.

[Paleo Conservative]

If the Archduke had never been assassinated, we would be living in a very different world today, one in which Fascism and Nazism and Communism would be mere words in a dictionary instead of affecting hundreds of millions of lives. So yes, one human life is as important as a billion.

I doubt it. The national and imperial rivalries in Europe still existed regardless of whether the Archduke was murdered. It was just a matter of time before something sparked a war.

[Junior]

I've always held that June 28, 1914 was THE big turning point in history. Folks nowadays like to focus on WWII, with scant attention paid to the Great War -- but without the latter there would have been no WWII, no Soviet Union, no Adolph Hitler, no Cold War, no state of Israel, no partitioning of the Mideast, ad infinitum...

[Graybeard58]

If the Archduke had never been assassinated, we would be living in a very different world today

An interesting observation but I believe that if the Archduke hadn't been assassinated some other incident would have set of the powder keg in Europe.

[rootntootn]

Baloney. Germany wanted to go to war and used the assassination as a provocation.

[kms61]

I disagree. The European powers had been on a collision course since at least the 1890's, and had been close to war on several occasions. WWI was going to happen. If Gavrilo Princip hadn't triggered it, someone or something else would have.

[Tallguy]

If the Archduke had never been assassinated, we would be living in a very different world today, one in which Fascism and Nazism and Communism would be mere words in a dictionary instead of affecting hundreds of millions of lives.

WWI was going to happen sooner or later. The underlying causes were in place. The Archduke's assasination is what you would call the "proximate cause" of an otherwise inevitable conflict.

[r9etb]

If the Archduke had never been assassinated, we would be living in a very different world today, one in which Fascism and Nazism and Communism would be mere words in a dictionary instead of affecting hundreds of millions of lives. So yes, one human life is as important as a billion.

I don't know about that -- the roots of the war had been bubbling in the Balkans since at least 1912 (the two Balkan Wars), not to mention the effects of German militarization and expansionism, and the Russian/British/French reaction to it.

The assassination was certainly a pretext for war, but it would have happened anyway. The Germans, especially, were eager for war.

[Destro]

not true - more likely the WW! would have been fought later. WW1 was waiting to happen.