Today is the anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. World War I began a month later.
I’ve thought a lot about this and the bloody first half of the twentieth century. It was those two world wars that made the atomic bomb seem necessary.
In a way, those two wars were the last major wars fought on the basis that wars had always been fought – over disputed territory, or insults to the ruling class. The wars that followed have been more limited and more civil wars of who is to rule a country.
From Twitter:
I know, not particularly cheerful. But I think we’ve learned some things from that bloody half-century. Now we need not to forget them.
Like that first tweet – we’re beginning to learn that sometimes the locals may need to be offended.
Open thread!
New Orleans Based Readers & Commenters: BOLO Regarding a Missing Autistic Man In New Orleans!!!!!!
alquitti
Years ago I went to the military museum in Vienna and saw his bloodstained uniform and the car. Wow x infinity.
PaulWartenberg
Blackadder: There was a slight flaw in the plan.
Baldrick: Which was?
Blackadder: It was bollocks.
debbie
I’m not sure we have. IANASoH, but WWI started because the Kaiser wasn’t given the attention he believed he deserved at George Whatever’s funeral. I don’t think either the Afghanistan or Iraq I and II wars, though less petty, were particularly justified either.
Annie
The more I’ve read about Franz Ferdinand and his assassination, the more convinced I am that World War I would not have happened if that specific person had not been killed in that city. Franz Ferdinand’s murder provided the pretext for Austria to swat down Serbia, or at least that’s what they thought they would do. If he’d been shot in Germany or France, I seriously doubt Austria would have started a war with either of those countries. Also Franz Ferdinand was very pro peace; IIRC he thought a war would put too much stress on the Dual Monarchy.
schrodingers_cat
The first world war was pivotal to India’s freedom struggle too. It made the leaders of the freedom struggle realize that the Brits would never give India the dominion status (that Canada and Australia had) they desired and complete independence was the only way forward
ETA: Indian National Congress, the main political party backed the British during WWI. When the war was over Indians got Jallianwala Bagh in return.
Annie
@debbie:
it was the funeral of Edward VII in 1910. Do you have a source for this causing World War I?
schrodingers_cat
@Annie: Something else would have provided the spark. The status quo of some countries in Europe lording it over the rest of the world was not sustainable
Mike in DC
I think, if the planet can go a full century without another world war, the next goal should be to go a full century without any war at all.
Cheryl Rofer
@schrodingers_cat: The combination of the First World War and the Russian Revolution made it possible for the Baltic States and others to break away from the Russian Empire. So it contributed to breaking up colonialism, in the Middle East as well.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: ??????? Edward VII died in 1910.
Adam L Silverman
One of the saddest parts of all of this is that one of the main reasons Franz Ferdinand was on this tour of cities, including Sarajevo, is that Sophie was not allowed to be referred to by her titles back in Vienna. Franz Ferdinand was a socially quirky and not conventionally attractive guy. Sophie was also not conventionally attractive for the time in which they lived. Yet they fit each other and, from all historical reports, he loved her dearly. And he was greatly offended that the various rules and strictures in place at the time of their marriage prevented her from being recognized by what he believed, as a result of their marriage, were the proper forms of respect. Including being referred to while in Vienna as the arch-duchess and the other equivalents to his titles. Outside the seat of empire, however, and she could, for some reason, be addressed in what he felt was the appropriate manner. So he liked to travel with her so that would happen.
And I now return you to Cheryl’s regularly scheduled comments.
Cermet
@Annie: That war was inevitable – the two greatest super powers where at odds: Germany was the mightiest land power and an industrial and scientific powerhouse that wanted colonies (Empire) at any cost. Britain was the military sea power that dominated the world as did its vast Empire that enslaved much of the world feeding endless monies to their upper classes. Due to inbreeding among their leaders and vast human greed these two powers thirsted for they would have collided and fought sooner or later.
Also, this was the most pointless war that was ever fought considering the outcome.
Elizabelle
Excellent topic, Cheryl. Thank you.
Reminds me that I need to read Barbara Tuchman’s The Proud Tower, which I have owned (maybe 2 copies!) for years, but never tucked into.
ETA: If any jackal can recommend another highly readable book about the runup to the First World War, much appreciated.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
The Great War rewrote the world and was in many ways more consequential than WWII. It erased the entirety of the wealth generated through three centuries of colonialism, wiped out three great royal houses and exposed the rampant stupidity that afflicted all the European monarchies.
In a fact relevant to today, it also shows the fragility and futility of thinking that bilateral or trilateral security arrangements can work better than robust multilateral organizations.
Cermet
@Cheryl Rofer: Not really – while the Ottoman Empire did fall, Britain and France came in and seized many of those areas.
schrodingers_cat
I see both the World Wars as one long war. They ran out of young men to fight so they stopped until the next generation was ready to fight.
Ken
I sporadically followed https://ww1live.wordpress.com/ as they live-blogged WWI (with occasional delays). It looks like they’ve been adding some month-by-month summary posts.
MattF
IMO, if there’s a lesson, it’s that imperial ambitions are ultimately damaging if not fatal to everyone involved. But we see continuing imperial ambitions– these with noisy threats from Russia and China– so it’s not clear to me that lesson has been learned. One might think the fates of the old Russia, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman, old China, Prussia, Nazi, British, French, Soviet, etc. would-be empires would make the point, but I guess not.
Cermet
@Mike in DC: Zero chance of that – AGW will eliminate many vastly populated countries causing the forced migrations of many tens of millions; starvation and death of untold millions will be occurring and the lead up to all of this will, of course, be wars throughout much of the world as arable land and most critically, water are fought for.
MattF
@Elizabelle: Maybe Christopher Clark would be a good read for you. There’s continuing controversy about the causes of WWI and Clark is an enthusiastic participant in the battles over what it all means.
Origuy
For a while I was watching the YouTube channel The Great War. They started in 2017 and were posting every week what had happened 100 years earlier. I fell out of the habit, but there was a lot of good content there.
Ten Bears
I suppose that depends on the “locals”, and how long they’ve been there.
Cermet
@MattF: Did we leave out the worst current Empire – the US of A? Not even sure we will hold together as a country – certainly the current danger of the fascism, that is trying to take hold, is a threat unlike any we have experienced since the civil war.
Dan B
@schrodingers_cat: I missed the garden chat.* One designer who is a good explained is John Brookes. He’s got many books. There should be several that would assist your design aspirations.
*My excuse is a six course dinner Saturday evening at friends of ours with wines for each course except the two desserts.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Origuy: Add the Western Front Society too a good source on You Tube. They were noting that even though we have archives and personal diaries of all of the decision makers in 1914, they still can’t figure out exactly how that war started.
Major Major Major Major
schrodingers_cat
@Dan B: Thanks Dan B. Can I get in touch with you if I have some questions. You can contact me on my bloggy email.
Fair Economist
@Annie: I agree that absent the assassination, we’d possibly never had had a WWI. Archduke Ferdinand was a reformist and reforms would have defused a lot of the friction between Austria-Hungary and the Western powers. His uncle, Emporer Franz Joseph, died only two years later, so Franz Ferdinand would likely have had the opportunity.
Elizabelle
@MattF: Sleepwalkers! Just learned of that book a whole five minutes ago. This rather good blog review of Proud Tower, by Stan Prager.
Prager suggests one factor might be the numerous leaders from pretty much one generation, taken out by anarchists.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Fun bit of trivia, in the ’60s in return for the UK allowing the US to have say over the use of the UK’s nukes the Kennedy administration guaranteed the UK access to Kuwait’s oil. Kuwait, incidentally, was carved out of the Ottoman Empire to give the UK an oil source.
schrodingers_cat
@Origuy: Actually they started when the war started and catalogued every day, 100 years later. I saw it all. And I learned a lot. They even visited many of the battlefields.
They also covered other theaters not just western Europe. Including but not limited to Churchill (another guy who failed upward)’s epic debacle of Gallipoli.
schrodingers_cat
@Elizabelle: Tuchman’s Guns of August is also pretty good and it gives the run up to the war.
Fair Economist
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Because of the power of the royal houses that fell, the Great War in the space of less than two years changed monarchy from the normal course of affairs to a passe system. Even in countries that still had monarchies, they monarch’s power often soon declined substantially, like Italy and Belgium.
Martin
Salem, OR just exceeded the all-time high temp for Las Vegas, NV.
NotMax
@Fair Economist
Europe was itching for a war (pretty much simmering since a newly consolidated Germany began flexing its muscles) and a post-Victoria pretext would have arisen elsewhere, mostly probably in Africa.
Another Scott
Good, good.
Cheers,
Scott.
Fair Economist
@Elizabelle:
It’s really interesting that a movement could have so many prominent successes but produce so little, and then fade out so quickly. Anarchism was quite the bogeyman pre-WWI and then just forgotten by WWII.
Annie
@Elizabelle:
The war that ended peace by Margaret Macmillan
The Sleepwalkers, by IIRC Christopher Clark
And a very old one:
The lamps went out in Europe, by Ludwig Reiners, translated from German so it gives that perspective.
Mike in NC
Highly recommend a documentary series on Amazon Prime called “The Impossible Peace”, about events worldwide during the period between WW1 and WW2.
MattF
@NotMax: German military were convinced that they had to attack Russia before long, given Russian industrial growth. War was going to happen, sooner or later, IMO
ETA: Not to mention France wanting to attack Germany and Serbia wanting to attack Austria-Hungary.
Annie
@schrodingers_cat:
Some kind of spark, sure. But unless it was in the Balkans, Russia might not get dragged into it. The Tsar has told someone, I forget who, just a few months before WW I, that Russia could not possibly go to war until 1915 at the earliest.
Dan B
@Cermet: It feels to me that the many elements in the south, and its exports to the Midwest and near west, still want to retry the Civil War. My mother, an ardent peace lover and devotee of history, still called it the War of Northern Aggression after decades in the North. Many “smart” people don’t learn for reasons that stem from their formative years and the sea of propaganda we swim in. Like the saying that the fish are the last to recognize the water.
I agree with your statements about AGW. Refugees might discover that agriculture in the north will suffer some collapses or the terror that comes from unexpected crises. What will happen as heat domes crisis cross North America? We saw what happened to odd things like toilet paper and masks a in the pandemic. People will inevitably find the wrong remedies in a panic.
Richard Guhl
Truthfully, we are still dealing with the aftermath of WW 1. Not only did it lead to Nazi Germany, but it also brought about the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the crackup of the Ottoman Empire. From those events have flowed Communist China and North Korea, the creation of Wahhabist Saudi Arabia, Israel and authoritarian regimes in Syria, Libya and Iraq with all the wars they have bred. In fact, we might go so far to say that the slow collapse of the multi ethnic, multi religious Ottoman Empire was itself the breeding ground for WW1.
Geminid
Otto von Bismarck emphasized the importance of a good relationship between Germany and Russia. The elder Kaiser understood this, but the son did not. Besides giving uncritical support to the Austro-Hungarian empire’s intersts, the young Kaiser proceeded to build up a fleet that the British saw as an existential threat.
The result was a devastating war in which all parties were losers. Then the vindictive peace of Versailles set the table for the Second World War. Rather than send American troops to break the the stalemate on the Western front, Woodrow Wilson would have done better to broker a treaty between the exhausted parties.
But war can look like easy solution when it is not. The challenge for modern nations may be to balance patience with determination.
Fair Economist
@NotMax:
Germany yes, France kinda, but the others were wary of a general war. Austria supported it because they were hoping for a quick squish of Serbia but with an Austrian Emperor striving to defuse tensions with Slavs Germany would have likely needed to fight alone and I don’t think they’d have been up for that.
Martin
@Another Scott: I think this is misunderstood. Pelosi gets to pick all 13, in consultation with McCarthy. I expect this will be a disqualifying consultation – is there anything that would disqualify Liz Cheney from serving as the senior member on the committee? Katko? Kinzinger? (Herrera Beutler won’t be on it so she can be a witness) Meijer? Valadao?
Ok, easy.
Robert Sneddon
I’ve seen it argued that railway timetables were the cause of the first battles of WW1. Basically Germany and France both had war mobilisation plans that depended on their railways to move men, supplies and weapons promptly to the borders before hostilities began. Once one side started rearranging their regular railway timetables to enable (but not begin) mobilisation traffic the other side had to respond so they did the same. The first side then had to actually start mobilising to prevent them being left behind in case the other side started before they did. The cascade continued until the shooting started.
JoyceH
Something that I’ve been thinking about. For half a century, we’ve been told that our experience in Vietnam has ‘warped’ our national use of the military and warfare. I think that’s incorrect. The warping was caused by WWII.
WWII engendered the belief that you can fight a war and come out the other end with your former enemies now your good friends and allies. You can see the harm that notion causes with our policy in Iraq – ‘hey, let’s invade and replace this dictator with a Jeffersonian democracy! Piece of cake!’
But the fact is that allying with your former enemies is NOT the norm. For thousands of years, wars ended when you pushed your neighbors out of your vineyards and just hoped you’d bloodied their noses enough that they wouldn’t try again for a few decades.
But at the end of WWII, the allied powers realized they’d just fought two enormous and devastating wars within 20 years of one another and that’s a state of affairs that can’t be allowed to continue. To prevent that, they PUT IN THE WORK! It wasn’t just the UN – the League of Nations sure hadn’t accomplished much. It was also the Marshall Plan and NATO. Put those former enemies in the same military alliance! The US committed to the plan for decades and billions and billions of dollars.
But it takes that kind of commitment! You can’t just ship some Heritage Foundation interns (who don’t even speak Arabic) over to Baghdad to create a stock exchange. Because turning former enemies into friends isn’t the norm, it isn’t easy, and you’ve got to be willing to be smart about it and commit the time and money to make it work.
(Steps down from soap box, leaving it free for the next speaker…)
Annie
@Cermet:
Considering the outcome, yes, but of course no one knew in August 1914 what that outcome would be. Germany thought they could knock France out immediately, for instance; Austria thought the same thing about Serbia.
Dan B
@schrodingers_cat: Watergirl and Anne Laurie have my email. I’ll look for your blog. There may be an on the road post about a landscape for a couple from New Delhi (and Bombay / Mumbai or Nanital – summer retreats).
Omnes Omnibus
We can’t forget Prussia’s behavior after the Franco-Prussian War as one of the things that stoked war fever in France.
Delk
Take Me Out
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
Not about the run-up but Tuchman’s “The Guns of August” is an excellent (and quick) read about the war’s beginnings, in which I found myself repeating, “But, you can still stop this!”
Elizabelle
@Major Major Major Major: Here’s a link to the whole article from 1914. Hope it comes through for those without a FTF NYTimes sub.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1914/06/29/100676446.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
I am thinking that perhaps the cable writer’s sources may have been, at least in part, Russian. Also, FWIW, the Times refers to “Servia” throughout.
Lead sentence, second paragraph:
Also, the assassin is described in a rather approving manner, twice.
Youthful enthusiast. Last sentence:
It were the revolver that did it. In the hands of a … student. Just a student. With dreams!
MattF
@Martin: Liz Cheney will be an issue, undoubtedly. Another question is whether McCarthy will try to name some Trumpist. We shall see.
ETA: Also, staffing matters.
schrodingers_cat
deleted
oatler.
As Johnny Fever said while reading a beer commercial, “Look for the smiling face of the Archduke Ferdinand on every label.”
‘
Omnes Omnibus
@Cermet: No one involved at the beginning of the war knew the outcome.
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: Yes! The Guns of August too. Which, um, I also own.
All these finds at library sales, that have so far gone unread … alas …
JoyceH
@Martin:
So does Pelosi have veto power over the GOP picks? I sure hope so! I’ve been having nightmares about the committee being cluttered up with Gomert and Gosar and Gaetz and Greene, bringing in all their fantasies and conspiracy theories to yak about.
Annie
@schrodingers_cat:
Winston Churchill thought so too — “a Thirty Years War with a lengthy truce in the middle.”
Elizabelle
@JoyceH: Excellent point. Wiser heads steering the ship in the 1940s. Perhaps their work made the outcome look too easy.
Martin
@MattF: I expect this will go:
Pelosi: I’m appointing Liz Cheney to be senior member. Do you have any reason to object to that?
McCarthy: Yes, well…
Pelosi: Well, whatever it is, let’s get that in front of the ethics committee for a formal investigation and hearing…
McCarthy: Uh, no, I guess it’s fine.
Elizabelle
@Annie: @Mike in NC:
Thank you both!
Robert Sneddon
@Geminid: The Treaty of Versailles was not particularly vindictive by European standards. The financial penalties of five billion gold marks settled on the aggressor, Germany were the same as the Prussians had imposed on France after their victory in the war in 1870-71. Oddly enough that exact amount was the same financial penalty the French under Napoleon had imposed on the defeated Prussians back in the early 1800s.
It didn’t really matter, by the early 1930s The Versailles treaty was a dead letter with US financiers eager to make loans to Nazi Germany to fund their treaty-breaking militarisation. The forbidden militarisation of the Rhineland was ignored by the Allies, the Sudatenland invasion later was similarly given a pass and WW2 was on.
The Dolchstosslegende was a bigger excuse for German grievances after WW1 than the Versailles Treaty since Germany itself did not suffer battles on its land during the war or occupation after so how could it have lost? Traitorous Jews and shadowy Bolsheviks, of course.
Geminid
@Robert Sneddon: Many people including European elites, thought the war would be decided in weeks. When the the British government called Lord Kitchener to serve as Minister of War, the Cabinet was shocked when he said they needed to raise a million troops to fight for several years. But Kitchener was right.
Similarly, many Americans, including Ulysses Grant, thought the Civil War would be a “ninety day affair.” Grant took a different view of the matter after the battle of Shiloh.
Martin
@JoyceH: Pretty sure she does. I mean, a normal process for oversight it to submit the names of the people conducting the oversight to the people receiving it, and the recipients can document any conflicts of interest which will be considered to exclude, but ‘this person is really thorough and we don’t want a thorough oversight’ doesn’t cut it. 10 GOPers voted to impeach Trump. Pelosi needs half of them.
Considering one is a witness, as is McCarthy, and half the GOP house members are suspected of collusion, this is about the only way to build a credible commission since the GOP voted down the independent one.
Dan B
@Geminid: OT but I missed your question about stair treads from Sunday AM. The stairs treads are sawn Columnar Basalt six inches thick, 20 inches deep and four to five feet in length. They’re from British Columbia and I believe they were stopped decades ago. I installed them and the paving after my partner dragged them into the back yard. My back says no more… Once the bottom tread is set the rest go into place easily, except for overcoming gravity.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889
by Frederic Morton
Is a fascinating study of less than a year in Vienna where many worlds collide, famous artists, composers, playwrites and psychiatrists hob-nob and the young reformer Crown Prince Rudolf, instead of taking the empire’s helm, commits suicide after shooting his young mistress and perhaps sets the stage for WWI. His death coincides with the birth of Adolph to Klara Hitler.
debbie
@Annie:
Sorry, it took a while to plough through my list at goodreads. I believe it was The War that Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 by Margaret McMillan. I don’t have a copy (got it from the library) and so can’t locate the exact passage. I did not specifically say it immediately caused WWI, but the author cited it as a slight which festered and resulted in his belligerence.
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: That sounds excellent. Thank you.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
Having an issue ATM trying to read both “Nixonland” and “Reaganland” and while I’d rather do it in sequence “Reaganland” is winning because I have it for Kindle and can make the the type any darn size I want while “Reaganland” is hardcover in damn small type. Is this what my parents were bitching about?
raven
My great grandfather was killed in the wheelhouse of a coal mine in DuQuoin, Illinois that day. The local paper’s headline was about him and there was a little notice in the corner about the assassination.
raven
@Geminid: You should see the “mess kits” they have at the Atlanta History Center. They we’re huge, ornate baskets full of dinnerware. They thought it was going to be a picnic.
Another Scott
ICYMI, Niko Bowie testimony on reforming the SCOTUS (25 page .pdf):
He brings receipts.
(via LOLGOP)
Cheers,
Scott.
Elizabelle
Got to love the German word for sleepwalker.
Die Schlafwandler
In French, it’s Somnambule. From which the medical term was taken, I guess …
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
See #70. George, Edward, never could keep them straight.
Elizabelle
@Another Scott: That looks so readable! Thank you.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@JoyceH: Yup.
debbie
@raven:
I remember a small article in the NYT reporting that Massoud (leader of the Northern Alliance) had been assassinated by an unknown person (two days before 9/11). I also remember a small, back-of-the-section NYT article about a government official receiving a letter from a bunch of missionaries in Rawanda which started out saying that by the time the recipient read the letter, they would all be dead. And not much later, they all were.
I know hindsight isn’t fair, but it’s damn eerie.
Ken
Historically inaccurate. Of the 13 original colonies, only 4 turned traitor in 1861.
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: I would also recommend, to add to the other excellent suggestions, a book about how WW I never actually ended, but, rather became a low intensity war as a result of how battlefield termination was achieved and the Treaty of Versailles was written to eventually reignite as an interstate war that we call World War II. This is Gerwarth’s The Vanquished:
https://www.amazon.com/Vanquished-Why-First-World-Failed/dp/0374282455
Elizabelle
@Adam L Silverman: Terrific recommendation. Had never heard of that book either. Thank you. I am saving this thread.
The past is never past.
Kelly
That’s 117 F. The Salem record before this crazy hot spell was 105. Usually these records are surpassed by a fraction of a degree. Tied the record Saturday, broke it Sunday, broke it further this afternoon.
Here in the Cascade foothills 20 miles east of Salem it’s 110.
Geminid
@Robert Sneddon: British military historian and theorist B.H. Liddel Hart points out that German General Ludendorff’s loss of nerve made for the unequal peace. Faced with unprecedented loss of ground from allied offensives in the fall of 1918, Ludendorf and his staff lost their nerve and called for the German government to “make peace, you fools.” Just a few days later, they realized that the front could be stabilized and that they could renew a tenacious defense that might have gained better terms. It was too late. The government had fallen.
As Liddell Hart describes it, the German Army was not stabbed in the back; the commanders “shot themselves in the foot.” The civil tumult of the next few years obscured the truth, and allowed a myth to grow.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
When you’re done with the lead up, read The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War by Peter Englund. It’s a narrative of the experiences of 20 people from all over the world, told through their letters and diaries.
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: I did a post about it here, I think, at one point.
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: Also, I’ve never read it, because the author’s social media presence is irksome, but my understanding is that John Schindler’s The Fall of the Double Eagle is very good.
https://www.amazon.com/Fall-Double-Eagle-Galicia-Austria-Hungary/dp/1612347657
Adam L Silverman
@Robert Sneddon: @Geminid: See my recommendation to Elizabelle regarding Gerwarth’s The Vanquished at comment #82.
trollhattan
@debbie:
Wasn’t that the fellow killed when an assassination team posed as a news video crew there to interview him? So much happened in such a short span my memory’s suspect.
Omnes Omnibus
Paris 1919 is great book about the aftermath. And a really cool John Cale song.
Elizabelle
@Debbie: We Wish to Inform you …. Philip Gourevitch’s astonishing book about the Rwanda genocide. Chills reading that book. One of the best written, and most harrowing, I have ever read.
That genocide is especially chilling because it actually seems it would not have been that hard to prevent it, at several junctures. The Hutu tested the waters, saw they would not be interrupted, and let the machetes fly.
The Guardian:
debbie
@trollhattan:
Could be. I remember Sebastian Junger and Peter Bergen were also interviewing him. Massoud was getting all kinds of attention for fighting the Taliban and appearing to be winning.
trollhattan
@Kelly:
Just checked NWS and PDX is 115.
SMF is a mere 90. Bundling up.
Elizabelle
@Adam L Silverman: I will look for that post, eventually. If you can find it more easily now, good thing to include in this thread.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
I remember, again reading the NYT, seeing a wide-angle front page photo of the river of bodies flowing out of Rawanda. At first glance, it appeared to be a log jam; looking more closely, my heart sank and my stomach turned.
raven
@debbie: Indeed
Chetan Murthy
@debbie: Massoud (Lion of the Panjshir, IIRC, was his honorific) was indeed assassinated a few days before 9/11. IIRC, it was an AQ assassination team, and they did indeed masquerade as a video journalist team. At the time, I remember the speculation was that AQ was laying the ground for 9/11 by eliminating local leadership — on the assumption that the US would retaliate, and weakening the US’ eventual allies was good strategy.
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: It was a sort of post.
https://balloon-juice.com/2018/11/11/on-the-11th-hour-of-the-11th-day-of-the-11th-month-of-1918-world-war-i-did-not-come-to-an-end/
schrodingers_cat
Instead of attacking European countries if Germany had just kept its ambitions and aggressions outside of Europe, the Western Powers would have been okay with it.
Brachiator
@Fair Economist:
Ran across a site that notes the deaths and declines of various monarchs (including the Ottoman Sultanate) after World War I. The site also claims that 24 British peers were killed, along with more than 100 sons of peers. I suppose that the old order took quite a hit.
Another Scott
@trollhattan: Yup. A bomb in the video camera.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Cermet
@Annie: As both countries recalled the Franco-Prussian war where the ‘rump’ German State of Prussia did exactly that a few decades previously.
Elizabelle
@Debbie: I saved some front pages that turned out to include really important stories out of Rwanda because they were about Kurt Cobain’s death.
The genocide began April 7, 1994. Kurt Cobain died April 5, but was not found until the 8th.
Kelly
@trollhattan:
Wind has shifted and cool air is blowing from the coast. Salem is already down to 111. Should be back to ordinary summer temps tomorrow. Hallelujah!
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: I doubt it. There weren’t many place where the Germans could expand that would not have intruded on the claims of the other colonial powers. It might have resulted in the war being fought more extensively in the colonies though.
Roger Moore
@Annie:
I don’t think WWI would have started had Franz Ferdinand been assassinated somewhere else, but that ignores a huge amount of history. He was assassinated where he was for specific reasons, so speculation about an alternative assassination is somewhat silly. There weren’t people in Berlin or Paris who wanted him dead in the same way the Serbians did.
At least as importantly, Europe in the early 20th Century was an armed camp. Every country on the continent had a large standing army and an even bigger reserve, and they all had detailed mobilization plans to get that army into the field ASAP in the event of a war. Many of the countries had a powerful militant faction that wanted a war to crush a perceived foreign danger or avenge a past wrong. And there were frequent provocations that threatened to give countries that wanted war an excuse to start one. Diplomacy had successfully prevented past incidents from starting a general war, but it was bound to fail eventually. One of them was eventually going to start the war, and the war was inevitably going to be just about as awful as it turned out to be.
Geminid
@raven: I read a book about Irish Confederate soldiers from New Orleans, including the “Louisiana Tigers.” The author described a more affluent New Orleans regiment whose French chef left Virginia for home after New Orleans was captured and proper ingredients could no longer be obtained. The chef kept a pet fox.
Cermet
@Kelly: Now image that temp lasting day and night for a solid week with humidity of over 90% and no AC. That you and a few hundred million people are enduring this type of weather every year for at least a week – ok, you can’t because 1) it would kill you 2) before it exceeded human endurance you’d leave the area 3) food shortages would be seriously impacting you as well and for years. This is most of India, the middle East (gulf States), South East Asia, Southern China and central Mississippi valley, and parts of Africa and South America (roughly 2-3 billion people.) All occurring after 2050; somewhat lower temps (100 or so) for three or more days every year by 2040.
This is the future of mankind thanks to current CO2 levels – we aren’t even talking future increases.
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: This really does cover it rather well.
columbusqueen
@Elizabelle: Robert Massie’s Dreadnought is a very good chronicle of the war’s leadup. He argues that Victoria’s death made the war inevitable. As long as she lived, Wilhelm restrained himself, but afterwards his emotional need to confront his mother’s family overwhelmed him.
Kelly
@Cermet: These thoughts have occured to me as the wildfires get worse every year.
Ruckus
@debbie:
Many wars throughout time have not been truly justified. And some that were, were only justified because some freaking lunatic decided that the world owed him most of the world he knew. The last twenty yrs we’ve been in the Middle East, blowing up shit and being blown up was about what? It certainly wasn’t retribution for 9/11 although there was likely more going on than we knew or have heard about. No, war is always good for the monied interests, and so we do war.
Roger Moore
@Robert Sneddon:
And the lack of destructive battles on German soil was part of the reason for the punitive nature of the Treaty of Versailles. Germany had obviously spent enormous blood and treasure during the war, but their industrial capacity was largely intact. Once the Allied blockade ended, they could have quickly rearmed in a way France simply couldn’t. France rightly feared that without a punitive treaty, Germany would be ready to start another war sooner than France could defend itself. The only way they could think of to stop that was to use the peace treaty to neuter Germany as much as possible.
An interesting alternative history is what would have happened if the allies hadn’t negotiated an armistice and instead had kept pushing. I think the German army would have collapsed sooner rather than later, and that would have profoundly changed how the peace went.
Elizabelle
@columbusqueen: Thank you. Robert Massie was very readable (for this general reader) too. Nicholas and Alexandra, etc. Goes on the list.
Elizabelle
@columbusqueen: A 1992 C-Span interview with Robert K. Massie about Dreadnought. Almost an hour. Will give this a good listen.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160925085455/http://www.booknotes.org/Watch/24896-1/Robert+Massie.aspx
Geminid
@Roger Moore: The Serbian government made concessions that should have satisfied the Austrians. But the Austrians wanted war, and their German ally was willing. The result was the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and over a million German soldiers killed or maimed. France, Russia, and Great Britain suffered as badly. This war had nominal winners, but actually every country was a loser.
Frank Wilhoit
@Annie: All of the European Powers wanted war — each for their own different reasons. They all expected it to be short, contained, and decisive, throwing up a couple of clear winners and a couple of clear losers, and thereby enabling a new scheme of alliances that would last a few decades — by which time, kind of like the “business cycle”, it would of course have to be done all over again. None expected anything remotely like what actually happened.
The British (not to “blame” them for anything) needed a general war most of all, to prevent them falling into civil war over Ireland; and it only came in the very nick of time.
Annie
@Elizabelle:
Here’s another one:
Dreadnought, by Robert Massie. It is great. It’s huge, try to get it as an e-book, but it’s like taking a tour of the halls of power in Europe from 1870 to 1914. At the end of it, I realized it was no one thing that caused World War I.
Frank Wilhoit
@Elizabelle: The Dreadnought program was not what made the difference. The crucial decision (1911) was to convert the British Fleet from coal to oil. This led directly to the partitioning of the Middle East, the creation of the British client regimes in Arabia, Iraq, and Palestine — and more than a century of blood. It was all down to two men: your good friend and mine Winston Churchill, and Jacky Fisher (that’s Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Arbuthnot Fisher to you), the most gobsmacking nutcase whom no one has ever heard of.
Elizabelle
@Frank Wilhoit: Ireland indeed. So much happened that decade. All decades, really, but … still playing out.
Interesting point about coal to oil. Will be watching for that point; it may be touched on in the other books, as well.
Annie
@Frank Wilhoit:
Not so sure about that. It had been a cornerstone of British policy for years, maybe centuries, that no one power should dominate the continent of Europe. That was the point of the treaty guaranteeing Belgian neutrality — so that no one powerful country could have a base right across from Britain. And that was why Britain went into the war, they did not want Germany breathing down their necks right across the Channel. It did also provide a good rallying cry for the public to get behind. There had also been “joint naval discussions” with France for several years about which navy would do what in the event of a war, but Edward Grey did NOT want to reveal that to Parliament, or the public.
Elizabelle
@Annie: E-book is a good idea.
Laughing because trollhattan mentioned upthread that he’s reading Reaganland on Kindle, and that seems to be a really good idea because — 914 pages! Stan Prager reviewed Reaganland too (have been skimming his blog), and it’s a positive review although he says his wrists tired out (albeit before his “interest flagged”).
NotMax
Trivia:
NotMax
@NotMax
And it turns out that since that article appeared the ship has been restored to its WW1 configuration by Serbia.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Kinda ironic how that worked out.
Uncle Cosmo
Um, not really, in fact not at all – in the end, once Wilhelm returned to Berlin from his vacation cruise along the Norwegian coast, he was trying hard to yank the Austrians back from starting a major European war. It was on the one hand the doddering Franz Josef (who was only too happy to have his pain-in-the-arse heir out of the way) and his Serb-hating warmongering General Conrad von Hötzendorff (who hoped by crushing the Serbs to earn enough military cred to marry his Italian inamorata), and on the other hand the Russians, who were champing at the bit for an excuse to seize the Turkish straits and gain access to the Mediterranean, who were the villains of the piece.
Let me point out that today is Vidovdan, St. Vitus’ Day, the anniversary of the holiest day in Serbian history, in 1389 when Prince Lazar was defeated by the Ottomans on Kosovo Polje (“the field of blackbirds”) and his nation subjugated for the next four centuries. Thus it was a particularly inauspicious and near-insulting date for the Hapsburg heir to conduct a state visit to Bosnia, which Austria-Hungary annexed in 1908 to the fury of the Serbs in particular and Slavs in general. IIRC Franz Ferdinand was warned about this but insisted on the date: It was his wedding anniversary, and his chance to bring his dearly loved wife (the former Sophie Chotek of the minor nobility) far from the court in Vienna who routinely snubbed her, to where she would be treated with the deference of the spouse of the Imperial heir that he felt she deserved.
FTR the Great War is the turning point of 20th-century history: World War II, while vastly more destructive of human life and works, was really just Great War 2.0 after a 21-year truce. Every engine of war used in the later conflict (except for radar and the A-bomb) was first developed in the Great War, and it was a fluke of the level of technology available in 1914 that led to the stalemate in the West (and a fluke of vast distances that led to the inconclusive war in the East). Had the “powder keg of Europe” not been touched off for a few more years, the whole geopolitical situation might have completely changed. As it was the Germans could not possibly have knocked out the Western Allies; those Allies came damn close to forcing the Straits and knocking Turkey out of the war while keeping Russia in and adequately armed (the whole thing may have turned on a pocket watch in the breast pocket of the Turks’ inspiring commander at Gelibolu, one Mustafa Kemal Pasha, later Atatürk, which took the bullet that might well have killed him); and if some time-traveler had the good sense to sink the ferry carrying Lenin and the boys from Germany in the Kaiser’s train across the Baltic to St. Petersburg, the world might have been spared Bolshevism and the horrors of Stalin.
I could go on…
In 1985 I was in Sarajevo and went to the corner where stood a museum remembering Gavrilo Prinzip. In the sidewalk outside were a pair of shoeprints that supposedly showed where he stood when he fired the shots that killed Franz Ferdinand and Sophie. I stood in those prints for a few seconds, and I swear I could feel the history of the whole world spinning and grinding like a gunmetal axletree…
Uncle Cosmo
@Adam L Silverman: Nice post, Adam. One might add that Sophie wasn’t considered of lofty enough nobility for the Habsburg heir, and when FF insisted on marrying her anyway, it was decreed a morganatic marriage – their children were irrevocably excluded from the succession. Just another slap in the face from the octogenarian Kaiser und Koenig and the Viennese court camarilla.