WWI was a snowballing of events, sparked by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Most likely there would not have been any major military confrontations if Ferdinand had not been assassinated. WWI also led to the collapse of the German Empire, and the failures of the Wiemar Republic allowed for the rise of Hitler and subsequently WWII.

In the east, WWI gave fuel to the unrest among the working class which allowed for the overthrow of the czar and the Bolshevik revolution. Which in turn inspired and supported communist revolutions throughout the world from China to Cambodia to Cuba.

So what would have happened if Princip was never born and never shot Ferdinand? Would the world have avoided 2 world wars? Or conversely, would a global war merely have been postponed several decades, at which time nuclear weapons would likely have been developed. And in that sense, perhaps the chain of events thwarted a global nuclear war and saved lives?

Nothing happens in a vacuum the situation was still there even if the catalyst is taken away


meh the Europeans would have came up with some other reason for war


I don't think it changed much of anything maybe delayed it a few years

 

Well said.

I think someone would have assassinated the Archduke no matter what.

But you do have a very good point.

Weren't there several shooters waiting along the parade route as part of an organized plot to kill the Archduke?

If the guy who actually pulled the trigger hadn't been there, someone else would have been.

There were some explosives thrown at him also before the shooting I think. But ok, maybe I shouldn't have put it all on Princip, but for the sake of argument, what if there were no assassination?

No - the Kaiser was ready to f*cking rock and roll for years.  WW1 was a done deal without Ferdinand's assassination.  Britain and France had had military conferences on how to counter a German attack.  They just weren't prepared for the Schlieffen plan that violated Belgian neutrality.  WW1 was bound to happen due to the German military's need to attain it's "proper" role in the world.

<–––– In the middle of Tuchman's "The Gun's of August" - pulitzer prize winning book on the outbreak of WW1

Wasn't it a .32?

Pretty much all wars are in some way tied to a previous war. The ending of one major war typically will lead to another somewhere down the line.

I have studied this topic extensively. Basically even our current situation in the middle east started when we went there during ww1. The conclusion I came too, and by conclusion I mean I could write 100+ pages for my PhD on the topic, that it was destiny for FF to die that day. The assisination attempt was exponentially tactifail on the order of apple dumpling gang meets dumb and dumber, but at the end of the day FF was still dead. That only happens if it is inevitable, thus everything that happened as a result was inevitable. But yes, FF getting whacked was the catalyst for everything from the space race to 9/11.

Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile

The Assassination really had little to do with it except to "kick it off". The major powers all had a shit load of weapons and what not and were extremely miltaristic. After 200,000 people died in the trenches they could have "called it off" by using back channels diplomatically. both sides refused to. The begining literally started by each power giving other powers telegram ultimatums and expecting a response by "so and so hour".
When none came they all just mobilized, which took a few weeks anyway, then they just started fighting. after all that shit do you really think it was because it was about Serbia?

One shot one kill. Unless you're Miller, then you gotta go for one shot, two kills.

That model pistol (FN M1910) was made in both .32 and .380, but .380's were bought by the members of the Black Hand.

Shit, the movie from my previous post is on Spike right now for the west coast.

It would have happened anyway.  It was only a matter of time.

FN M1910, serial number 19074, chambered in 9x17mm Browning Short (.380 ACP) was used to shoot Ferdinand



 

If you follow the logic patterns of the libtards.... then yes.

Then maybe it would be better to ask if the war would have been prevented if Ferdinand had a competent driver that day.

i strangely want one now, just because



 

No.

...





 

Europe had become so militarized that it was a tinderbox waiting to be ignited.

Now if you had asked whether or not Hitler being killed in the trenches during the First World War would have made any profound difference I'd have to say yes.

The gun used in the shooting no longer exists, it was lost sometime during World War Two but pictures of the gun do remain.
They were taken as evidence photos during the trials.

The pistol in question that was implicated in the death of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife was a Browning 1900 in .32 acp.

Interesting point/idea.

That bullet sure had a lot of names on it.

Wrong.

As stated earlier it was an FN Model 1910 in .380ACP.

 

I've been saying this to people for a long time, and I think your the first one that I have seen to bring it up, were still feeling the repercussions of it today.  The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand ignited World War 1, which directly led to World War 2, and the Russian Revolution.  The Russian Revolution then lead to the Soviet Union, and the rise of communism, which then lead to multiple communist revolutions around the war, and the Cold War, which lead to the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, as well as brush fires like Grenada, and Panama.  World War 2 caused the Soviet Occupation of Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia, and radicalized the Middle East, as well as ultimately creating Israel, and with it the 1947 Israeli war of independence for lack of a better word, the Six Day War, and the Yom Kippur War.  The radicalization of the Middle East also got us the Suez Canal Crisis, and the rise of global terrorism.  The rise of terrorism, together with the Soviet Invasion, and subsequent collapse of Afghanistan got us the taliban, and alquida, which got us the 9/11 attacks, which got us the current War On Terror.  So were still feeling the effects of that assassination.  That was the single most important event of the last 100 years, and I suspect of 1000 years to come after it.  I want Gabrillo Pricep's pistol BAD.

The original assassination plot was badly botched, however the Archdukes driver was wounded in the attack.  The Archduke insisted on visiting him in the hospital, but on the way back the new driver got lost, and just happened to pass a Cafe were Gabrillo Princep (One of the Failed Assassins) was having lunch, the rest is history.....

let me explain how blame assignment works, and why it cant work any other way.

lets say ed senior points a gun at my head and commands me to pee on your shoes....I'm responsible for peeing on your shoes. You can't blame ed for that, but you can blame him for making me do it, for creating the situation, but you can't charge him with shoe pissing.

The reason is, enabler logic goes right on up the chain past your ancestors and into gods lap..."the devil made me do it".

Enabler blame logic would state that hitler is responsible for 6 million jew deaths....but this same logic says no his parents are, no their parents are...no the jews parents are...ect....on and on until its gods fault for making humans.

blame lies with the perpetrator of the event in the event chain just prior to the event for which you seek to assign blame, without which the event for which you seek to assign blame would not have occured as it did.

I really don't believe that it was ready to explode like that.

I have pictures of one of my ancestors who was in the AustroHungarian Navy and was posted to the boxer rebellion delegation. They got along fine with the British, French, Americans, and Japanese that were in Beijing at that time from 1908 to 1911.

It is strange to me that 3 years later that they would end up killing each other.


here is a photo of the various countries in Beijing, from the Russians, French, Germans, British, Japanese....

When I look at this album filled with hundreds of photos......from my grand grand uncles time in the navy...he said in his diary that he felt that it was clear to him that everything is pretty cool now....there is no way there could be war...

In the long run, he was a relatively unimportant guy.  Were it not for his assassination, he would've been obscure.

And while I don't agree that his assassination was in the bag, I do think that the visit he was undertaking when he was shot was extremely foolish.

THIS is one of the reasons I love ARFCOM

Europe was gonna end up at war no matter what.  WWI was destined to happen just the same as terrorism in the USA was inevitable even if it hadn't have happened with the 9/11 attacks.

WWII was a result of the way that WWI ended.  It could have been avoided if Germany had not been raped by the Versailles Treaty.

I have one, and strangely, I like it better now.  Just because.

It becomes even stranger when you realize that most of the European royal families were related to each other; I think the Kaiser and King Edward of Britain were cousins.





 

the whole thing stinks of a scam to me.....I just don't believe it after reading it and reading it and researching it.

Anyone remember the Christmas Truce??? come on...I meet the enemy and I put a human face on it.

No fucken way am I gonna kill him unless he tries to kill me....absolute bullshit.

It was an FN1910, and it WAS lost for awhile, but it was later found hidden in a Jesuit Monastery in Vienna Austria, it is currently on display in in the Museum of Military History, in Vienna Austria alongside the car Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot in, and his blood stained uniform, the Bullet that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand is on display at Konopiště Castle near the town of Benešov in the Czech Republic.

They were very closely related (first cousins) but Edward was no longer king during WWI (he died in 1910)
Kaiser Wilhelm II's mother was The Princess Victoria, eldest child of Queen Victoria. Victoria's second child became King Edward VII, and Edward's eldest child George V was king during WWI.
Another first cousin of George V was Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
Edit to Add:
The British and German royal families were very closely related, both through Princess Victoria's marriage to Kaiser Frederick III and a generation before through Queen Victoria marriage to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
Because of the war and the negative feeling of the British people towards Germans King George changed the family name of the royal house to Windsor in 1917 and at the same time many members of the royal family gave up German titles and adopted more English names.
For example: Prince Louis of Battenburg (a german title) who was First Sea Lord and Admiral of the Fleet of the Royal Navy in WWI became Louis Mountbatten and was given the title Marquess of Milford Haven. Prince Louis' father was Ludwig IV Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine and his mother was Princess Alice (another of Queen Victoria's daughters) so he too was a cousin of George V, the kaiser, and the tsar.
Price Louis's children also gave up their German titles but more than made up for it later: his eldest son George succeeded him as Marquess, his daughter Louise became Queen of Sweden, his daughter Alice married into the Greek royal family (her son Philip married Princess (now Queen) Elizabeth of the UK), and his younger son Louis went on to have a distinguished career in the navy during WW2 and was formerly titled Admiral of the Fleet The Right Honourable Sir. Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, PC when he was murdered by the IRA in 1979.





Another of Queen Victoria's children, Prince Arthur Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, also married a German: Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia. The reason for all the intermarriage was both political and also because at that time you would lose your title and place in the line of succession if you married a commoner.



An example of this is Prince Arthur's daughter Princess Patricia of Connaught (Her Royal Highness Victoria Patricia Helena Elizabeth, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland), Prince Arthur was Governor-General of Canada during WWI and Princess Patricia became Colonel-in-Chief of the Canadian regiment that was named after her: Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. Princess Patricia went onto to marry a commoner (Admiral The Hon. Alexander Ramsay), he was a son of the Earl of Dalhousie but that wasn't good enough so Patricia lost her title and spent the rest of her life as Lady Patricia Ramsey.