WWI and the Second Fall of Man

On June 28, 1914, a Bosnian-Serb student named Gavrilo Princip killed Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, the duchess. (…) That deadly summer unfolded 100 years ago, and the world truly was never the same. Civilization was soon engaged in a horrific conflict marred by mechanized warfare previously unimaginable: tanks, subs, battleships, air power, machine guns with names like “the Devil’s paint brush,” and legions of poison gas—the largest-scale use of chemical weapons in history.

Ugh, sorry for the late reply.

Although I don’t believe the empire could have survived in its contemporary form, it didn’t have to be annihilated. I see Wilson’s insistence on “democracy for the peoples’ of Central Europe” as an early form of Bush II’s “democracy in the middle East” project. Neither region was ready for it. Had some stronger confederated power block been allowed to survive, Hitler might not have had such an easy time of it. He might have been stopped, or at least hemmed in, before the disaster of Munich.

The destruction of Austro-Hungary was an overwrought reaction of the victors and smacked of shear vengeance. It was similar to the ruinous reparations visited on Germany. Neither policy was prudent, leaving both Germany and lands of the former empire prostrate, but not destroyed. They became more susceptible to the demogogue’s siren song after being ruined by reparations and splintered by Wilson’s “democratic imperative.”

Of course the Czechs and some other nationalities benefited from a short-lived freedom, but didn’t it get them swallowed up first by Hitler and then by Stalin? Anyway, just my honest opinion. Stopping Hitler was going to be a close run thing not matter what happened to the empire.

In that same city on this day, Bosnian Serbs are dedicating a statue to the assassin Gavrilo Prinzip! A reenactor of Prinzip fires a pistol into the air, TWICE, to commemorate the murders of the Archduke and his wife.

Good grief, that's sick! Can you imagine a bunch of communists going to Daley Plaza in Dallas and firing 4 shots in celebration of Kennedy's death?!

I’m mostly Slovenian and I day, how typical of the Serbs.

When I lived in Prague, my Czech landlady used to tell me about her Serb cousin. "They're like rabid dogs," she used to say. This was during the time of the siege of Sarajevo.

I believe the Allies preferred handing the former Ottoman lands to an ally (Serbia, creating Yugoslavia) rather than leave them in the hands of a German ally.

Democracy was never the goal in either the Balkans or the Middle East; some former Hapsburg lands ended up under a monarchy (King Peter of Serbia) or a military government (Poland). Arabs were transferred from colonial rule to monarchs or dictators as well.

Ho Chi Minh realized Versailles was a lie when he went hoping to secure independence for Indochina; he was ignored, and thirty five years later obtained independence at gunpoint.

Point granted on "Uncle Ho," and the outlying areas of the empire. My focus was, however, on Central Europe. That's where Hitler's first aggressions took place, right? Austro-Hungary had, for all it's faults, functioned as a power center in that region. When the empire disappeared, a power vacuum arose. Hitler exploited that vacuum.

The goal of establishing democracy in central Europe was totally serious for men like Masaryk, Benes, et al. The problem was, the geographically crucial area (Bohemia) was now included in the new state of Czechoslovakia. The creation of Czechoslovakia basically recreated a small-scale version of the old empire--with all it's ethnic strife, pettiness, and brittleness. The new Czechoslovakia had none of Austro-Hungary's counterbalancing strengths. Czechoslovakia was bound to break up, but its dissolution was more consequential given its central location.

The rickety Czechoslovakia was tailor made for dismemberment. Don't forget that the second largest minority group in the new country was German. That's right, there were more Germans in the new Czechoslovakia than there were Slovaks. Those Germans were also in the most industrially developed areas of what we now call the Czech Republic. The Sudeten Germans were never going to be happy as citizens in a Czech majority state. In addition, the Czechs were at times ungracious victors, and although hardly oppressors, they gave the unhappy Sudetens enough to complain about. Hitler and his propaganda machine used these slights to great effect.

But back to Wilson. Astonishingly, he was unaware of the ethnic composition of the proposed Czechoslovakia when he started pushing for democratization. When he found out, he is said to have cried, "But Masaryk never told me that!" He was completely oblivious to the facts on the ground when he started pushing to redraw the borders of Central Europe.

Again though, I grant your point about the fringe areas of the empire. No one really cared about them, much less areas like Indo-China.

I can believe Wilson was completely ignorant about the ethnic & religious strife in Eastern Europe; as Americans we had little interaction with that part of the world. While Hitler had his share of aggression, initially he did start by re-creating a “German” state (with Austria and the Sudetenland, neither of which were taken by force). After that, it was more violent grabs for territory.

Czechoslovakia had similar problems to Austria-Hungary, but at least on a smaller scale in terms of numbers of ethnic groups and religions (compared to Yugoslavia, for instance - which had more of both and even different alphabets). I thought the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia in the 1990s showed an absence of animosity not seen in places like Yugoslavia and the USSR (Armenia vs. Azerbaijan, for instance). Czechoslovakia today is two countries; the rest of Austria-Hungary is ten more.

Fascinating history; thanks for the insights.

Czechoslovakia today is two countries...

True story: I was living in Prague at the time of the break-up. An Englishman asked me with great consternation if I thought Wensceslas Square would be the scene of car bombings and snipings as in the former Yugoslavia. I had a good laugh and told him that neither Czechs nor Slovaks liked the union. The break-up would be more like a "Velvet Divorce" in which both sides said, Good riddance! And both Slovakia and the Czech Republic are doing pretty well these days on their own, thank goodness.

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