Incident at Sarajevo

[johncullen]

Would Europe be any different if Gravilo Princip had
missed both targets in 1914 ? Today November 11, is
just another anniversary of the ending of The Great War.

[zhuk]

It is a most interesting subject-to make a model of situation "IF it had not happen then",
The one of the most terrible war with huge human losses could be escaped?
In east europe- we rarely remember the WW1 horrows, they were substituted in the memory of the nations by the horrows of the WW2.

The same question is bothering me according to the history of ukraine:
If Recz Pospolita had not lost two battles of Zhovty Vody and Korsun in 1648- would history of my country be different?
If Chmelnitski had not taken victory over Potocki-may be it would be more usefull for the nation?

[johncullen]

hello zhuk: thank you for your reply, firstly may i say that
princip got his chance to assassinate franz ferdinand and
his wife sophie because the car in which they were travelling in stopped at a junction on the way back from thw town hall in sarajevo, the driver was never told to take
a new route and when he was reversing the car, princip
shot both of them (frans and his wife) dead. This event had its climax in all of europe becoming involved in a senseless
war, having as its own climax 20 years later of another war.
both wars of course changed society out of all recognition
to what it had been before ww1 at any rate. i don't think that we would now have the E.U. or have had an Iron Curtain
or a Cold War, but there probably would have been plenty of monarchies in Europe. My grandfather was in the British Army
in France in 1915 and was killed there, making my grandmother a war widow, who died in 1969, so she was a long time without her husband, all due to princip, and some very stupid army officers in sarajevo who couldn't even tell
their own driver what the route was in advance.
i am not familiar with Chmelnitski, or Potocki, sorry.

[Foreigner]

There are instances in history where a coincidence played the decisive role....but in this example of WWI,I'm afraid to say that it was not the case.

Princip was nothing but one of the many assasins which belonged to the Serbian nationalist group 'Black Hand'.If the car-route had not been changed,then the others from the organisation would have killed the Austrian prince.
And also,even if all the assasination attempts had failed,Black Hand had prepared an armed uprising which would have provoked wrath of Austro-Hungarian empire(who was looking for whatever the excuse to declare war on Serbia).
So I must say(unfortunately) that WWI was the inevitable.

[albatros]

What if ... the Vienna Academy of fine Arts had accepted a moderately talented A.H. as a student in 1907?

[johncullen]

nice point about the academy, but a.h just was not good enough..FOR THEM !
Not so Foreigner, as princip's five other colleagues got
their chance to have a go when the elites were on the quay but flunked it, one saying later that he had no ammunition ! The black hand was a motley crew who only
succeeded because of the indeptitude and stupidity of others
If you were to read the long tale of their journey to sarajevo, a drunken hen would have done better, but
they did succeeded in their ghastly task by fluke and luck and millions suffered because of it, and a big loser in all of this was Austria-Hungary itself, from an empire of 50 million down to 8 milllion today. Anyway thank you for your informed comments.

[Foreigner]

If we are alking about 'ifs' in history,then how about....
'what if J.S. failed to gain powers after Lenin's death?'