"Misfire – It was failures by statesmen, not an assassin’s" Topic

…bullets, that triggered the First World War

"SHOT THROUGH THE neck, choking on his own blood with his beloved wife dying beside him, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Habsburg Empire, managed a few words before losing consciousness: "It's nothing," he repeatedly said of his fatal wound. It was June 28, 1914, in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo.

One month later, what most Europeans also took for "nothing" became "something" when the Archduke's uncle, Emperor Franz Joseph, declared war on the Kingdom of Serbia for allegedly harbouring the criminal elements and tolerating the propaganda that prompted the assassination. The First World War—"the seminal catastrophe of the [20th] century," as American diplomat/historian George Kennan called it—had begun not with the bang of Gavrilo Princip's gun, but with the whimper of European statesmen unable to resolve the July [diplomatic] Crisis that ensued…"

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Armand

Remember that the 19th Century taught Europeans that war was quick and decisive… and some even thought that war was healthy for society, like Darwin's theory…

Some might argue (I for one), that WW1 was not a failure of statesmanship. It was successfully planned and brought about by certain statesmen based upon old and obsolete assumptions about the costs and consequences of war. Events showed these gentlemen to have been sadly ignorant of the dramatic changes in the nature of warfare brought about by the new Industrial Age and advanced modern technology.

… Which is (IMO) why the entire debacle so desperately needed, at the end, an official scapegoat; hence the "German War Guilt Clause" inserted into the Treaty of Versailles. Modern academic scholarship has, of course, moderated its views on the war guilt issue over the years, preferring to re-cast the outbreak of the war simply as a terribly unfortunate confluence of misunderstandings and personality conflicts.

Perhaps the saddest five years in human history, when all the downstream consequences are counted.

B

Thanks.

Armand

If Great Britian had stayed out, it would have been quick and decisive.

the work of Clauswitz set the scene strategically but the statemen's minds did not match the napoleonic strategy with the speed and destructive power of early 20th century armies.

so yes a nice little war would clear the air shift a few boundaries rectify previous insults gain a bit of farmland and all would be well again.