[PUGACHEV]

There are many reasons why there could have been a war, no matter whether the assassination occurred or not, but the fact is that, absent the assassination, the specific chain of event that did lead to war would not have taken place. You can have tinder and oily rags everywhere and say in hindsight that a fire was inevitable, but there still has to be a spark, and that's a matter of pure chance. The cold war kept the world on edge of nuclear annihilation for fifty years, and many today say that fate is inevitable, but yet it hasn't happened.

[98ZJ USMC]

There are many reasons why there could have been a war, no matter whether the assassination occurred or not, but the fact is that, absent the assassination, the specific chain of event that did lead to war would not have taken place.

This is where I fall. Sure, war was going to happen on the European continent, eventually. It would not have been the worldwide conflagration it became. It did, because of the activation of alliances that followed the incident. In the case of a localized European War, I doubt we would have even entered into it. Without the assassination, I doubt that Russia would have entered into it.

Game changer there? No fertile petrie dish for Communism to take hold and very possibly no WWII.