Posted on 03/06/2014 3:10:44 PM PST by nickcarraway
World War I began 100 years ago this summer. It's a centennial that goes beyond mere remembrance; the consequences of that conflict are making headlines to this day.
To underline that, All Things Considered wanted to turn history on its head and ask historians and listeners alike: What if World War I had never happened? (Submit your answer in the form below.)
If that sounds like an unlikely exercise, compare it to an even more unlikely event — the one that occurred on June 28, 1914, in the city of Sarajevo. It was the spark that ignited a global conflagration, a moment in history that was dramatic, tragic and — in some ways — almost comic.
Christopher Clark is a historian who's spent a lot of time reviewing the events of that day in Sarajevo and what led up to it. He's the author of The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went To War.
"It's one of those subjects that — no matter how many times you go through it — it never loses its magnetism," he says.
Clark tells All Things Considered host Robert Siegel that despite warnings of a Serbian plot to kill the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the archduke and his wife went on a visit to Bosnia-Herzegovina. They had minimum security and their motorcade route through the city had been published.
Partway through the trip, one of the cars was bombed and several people were injured. The tour was supposed to take a new route (but no one told the Czech-speaking drivers, who carried on as before). Clark says the miscommunication took the royal couple right in front of Gavrilo Princip, one of the assassins who was stationed on the original path. Princip had just stepped out of a general store where he'd purchased a sandwich.
"Suddenly the car is in front of him [Princip] and to his astonishment, the car stops because someone in the car is telling the driver, 'You idiot, you're not supposed to go down this road. Stop the car and back up,'" Clark says. "And just as the car comes to a halt ... he took these two shots."
The rest, as they say, is history.
You can hear the entire interview with Clark here on Monday, March 10. In the meantime, we invite you to play along in a counterfactual history of World War I we will be exploring March 10-14 — use the form below to imagine how one aspect of the last 100 years would be different if Ferdinand had lived in 1914.
NPR ASKS: What If World War I Had Never Happened?
All Things Considered wants you to help us imagine a counterfactual history of the last 100 years. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand propelled the world into a war that left millions dead, shattered empires and rearranged power throughout the world.
But what if the assassin in Sarajevo had missed? What if, like his small band of amateur co-conspirators, he didn't hit his target?
That's hardly unthinkable. Moments before the murder, Franz Ferdinand's car made a wrong turn. The vehicle was pushed backwards to turn around and came to a stop right in front of the gunman.
So, what if Franz Ferdinand had lived?
EXAMPLE: Without World War I, Russia remains prosperous and the Bolshevik Party's October Revolution fails. As a result, Vladimir Lenin moves to the United States where he becomes a professor of Russian history at Columbia University. Having maintained his left-wing connections, he comes in contact with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and helps write the pro-union musical, "Pins and Needles."
someone would have found a way to start a war somewhere.
I’d suggest nothing would have changed. Two British historians say that WWI was because the citizens of European monarchies were so disgusted by their rulers and their excesses they would have accepted any change but the monarchs would not go.
So the same forces that took over Russia were in play in the rest of Europe...
I agree. Geopolitics, the precarious balance of alliances, and other factors were pushing these countries towards war. If it hadn’t been Franz Ferninand, it would have been something else that set it off.
That would be so cool. I hear that zeppelins are a real gas.
You kinda wonder who those behind the scenes players were their back story, the various communications and intrigue going on, and their agendas. Being involved in politics myself, I've had small-scale game changers myself as a result of various manipulations, strategies and conversations with the right people at the right time, and know of bigger ones yet from just being in the room as well as stories from others more connected than I. Many times major changes can happen simply from applying the right pressure in the right place at the right time.
Considering how the Globalists were the ultimate winners of WWI by de facto or in reality wiping away all the old Euro monarchies in one shot (not to mention a great deal of erosion to the American Republic), it makes one think someone may have looked at the chessboard and seen the ultimate opportunity. It certainly cleared a path.
A deformed and withered left arm and a troubling childhood that left the Kaiser with serious mental health problems is more the reason for WW1 than the actions of Gavrilo Princip.
I love that alternate reality!
Paging Harry Turtledove!The master of alternate history.
That is very likely.
A lot of European tension was the result of German armament driving an arms race and a desperate hunt for allies.
And that, particularly the Naval part, was the Kaisers doing.
Like a crab deprived of one claw, the Kaiser saw his right arm grow tremendously strong & longer than it might have otherwise been. He easily brought down flying game by raising & firing his gun with one hand; he took sadistic delight in dealing bone crunching handshakes with his finger rings turned inward for greater painful effect.
And yet Queen Wilhelmina of Holland was such a close friend that the Kaiser spared the Netherlands from invasion in 1914-18; it was she who gave him a mansion in Doorn following his exile from Germany. Strange. Maybe royal blood runs thicker than water, certainly more so than that of the millions who perished in that horrible war.
There are some wonderful movies on youtube.com on the subject. On a quick look, I couldn’t find the one I thought did the most in-depth analysis. But here’s a starter kit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9IQkvXPDes&list=PLRPW3IFnQj1y0Iwbwpw0bLF-Sap7zHaWI
If WW 1 had never happened, Adolph Hitler’s rise to power would never have happened. He used Germany’s defeat and the crushing war reparations from the Treaty of Versaille as a political battering ram in his mad rise to power.
Thanks, I will check it out.
If WWI has not happened, the old Ottoman Empire would have survived longer and all those post-WW1, oddly drawn Middle Eastern nations would not exist, and possibly Israel would not exist.
The Middle East would be a different place with a different collection of nations.
About Communism, people here didn’t take as much to it since the issue of making a living wasn’t as impossible as it was in Russia and China.
In China the upper classes were incompetent about driving out the Colonial powers that were exploiting China and in Russia serfdom was holding the Russians hostage and there was no way for workers to clean up their conditions or end up making a real living out of the pittance they were paid.
So really, what on earth was there for the people other than Communism?
In the US, making a living wasn’t impossible at the time and lots of people were living middle class lifestyles through having a solid trade and most people wanted independence, not interference from government.
I heartily suggest Dan Carlin’s “Hardcore History” for a good podcast of the history of the event.
Heck - I heartily suggest any podcast from Carlin.
“If WW 1 had never happened, Adolph Hitler’s rise to power would never have happened. He used Germany’s defeat and the crushing war reparations from the Treaty of Versaille as a political battering ram in his mad rise to power.”
This style of argument is called “proximate causation.” If you take one event and change it then all events stemming from it are altered in whatever way you choose to imagine. But both wars were due to conditions at the time.
Say a tornado destroys a town. Somebody with a time machine goes back in time and drops a bomb into the tornado to break it up. Does that save the town? Not necessarily. Tornados (like wars) are due to a massive, widespread difference in air pressure (or social/economic conditions.) A Mississippi-sized river of air is flowing along and the tornado is just a swirl effect inside that air. (It’s the equalization actually happening.) Wars are the localized swirl effect caused by social and economic conditions.
The social and political forces of which World War one was a localized effect, were huge. Industrialization, bad working conditions, disease, old creaking social structures were all ripe for reforming (equalizing, if you will.) Had we somehow avoided a massive world war the old empires would have been ripped apart in equally widespread revolutions. The global powers would have intervened on different sides as they saw their interests being destroyed. So, they inevitably would have come into conflict. Just different from what it was. Recall also, that a big driver of the war was the interlocking treaties. Those alone would have eventually brought on a wider war in the no World-war-one scenario.
As for Hitler, if not him, then it would have been someone else. As for the treaty of Versailles, if not that, then something else. Would it all have been different? Yes. Less destructive? Maybe, maybe not. But the communism resulted from the liberals of the day naively trying to create utopia, as they are still trying today. (Utopia has no conflict, hence their desire to eliminate humans through birth control, abortion, global warming taxes and development restrictions.)
Long ago I had heard Paul Harvey's "Rest of the Story" regarding the route changes but didn't know about the sandwich.
I recommend reading "The Guns of August" for insight into how World War 1 started.
National Proletarian Radio and All Things Distorted ?
Absolutely. Germany had no logical need for colonies or for a Navy capable of threatening UK.
But Kaiser Bill wanted them, apparently for prestige and/or self esteem reasons, so Germany made an enemy of the British Empire and spent ungodly sums to acquire colonies it could not defend and a Fleet that was good, but not good enough to win.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.