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On this day 94 years ago Gavrilo Princip shot and killed Arch Duke Ferdinand of Austro-Hungary, setting into motion the events that would lead to the First World War, the rise of communism, the collapse of Europe and the deaths of millions.


I think there is not a man out there who has done more to change the world than Mr. Princip. At least not in the last thousand years.

Eh, Europe would have probably blown up anyway. Besides, Princip experienced a bout of dumb luck. He was eating a sandwich after the assassination attempt on the Archduke failed, when lo and behold there's the Archduke's car taking a wrong turn and coming straight toward him.

I'd say that there were plenty of people who shaped future events more than Princip in the last 1000 years of European history, and whose decisions actually could influence the shape of the world.

Mostly kings and other leaders, of course. Henry VIII probably made more of an impact than Princip, indirectly shaping much of the current culture and political climate with his conflict against the Pope. Plenty of generals shaped the world with their decisions, too - Napoleon comes to mind as a quick example.

I suspect that if a fortune teller approached Princip on June 21, 1914, and told him what would happen as a result of Franz Ferdinand's death, Princip would go ahead and kill the Archduke anyways.

There was bound to be another Balkans War, but it didn't have to extend into an European and then global war.

Without Franz Ferdinand getting shoot, I can't really see the Kaiser issuing that blank check to Austria Hungary that he didn't intend for them to actually cash in and the Austro Hungarians probably won't have the balls to go in and take on Serbia and Russia by extension for whatever other pissant reason that comes their way. And then none of that mobilization business between Germany, France and Russia.

I'm with Adrian and PeZook. A global war to re-draw the influence zones in the world would've happened still, no matter if Franz Ferdinand got killed or not. And Princip was just an executor - all the kings and leaders of the Empires in the early 1900s could impact history far more than he ever could, and it were ultimately their decisions that put the world into war, not some unwitting rogue assassin.

Stas Bush wrote:Princip was just an executor

Indeed, in fact he gets far too much credit. The people who planned and organized the assassination should be credited with sparking the war.

Of course, his buddies were just as incompetent as he was and they failed at all their assassination missions. As you pointed out, Princip just got lucky. This just made the war happen a bit sooner rather than a bit later.

Though that point makes me wonder. Would there have been any major changes in the future if the war had started because of some political spark a few months or a couple years later?

Regardless of Princip's impact (and honestly dumb luck like his should never translate into something so big) the assasination of Franz Ferdinand WAS the rock that started the avalanche. While the utbreak of a new war in Europe was in the making (and had been since the last major re-arrangement of power in 1870) the confrontation we know of as WWI did not have to occur as it did, when it did, and how it did. There are any number of tipping points at which things could have swung the other way (Moltke could have avoided attacking Nancy, Joffre could have stubbornly clung to the idea of a continuous defense rather than a long retreat followed by counterattack, the Russian offensive could have proceeded without the mutli-day gap between army wings that led to Tannenberg, etc) but what doesn't change is that in the world in which we live Ferdiand's death was the match which touched off the waiting flame.