Would a World War have started without Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand ?

brianthebard

Fratton Fred wrote: »

How was the "Empire" bigger? Britain actually got very little out of WWI compared to France, Denmark and Poland.

The colonies you are probably referring to are the ones taken off Germany and put under the control of the League of nations. these colonies were then administered by France, Belgium and Britain. Although these were "Defacto" colonies, they are not why any of the Allies went to war in the first place.


OK, the Germans's scuttled them. That was probably their fate anyway but the Germans beat them to it.

Reducing the size of the German fleet was one of Britains main aims from the treaty.

Increasing the size of the British Empire and reducing the size/threat of the German navy go hand in hand. Although I don't fully believe that Britain went to war solely to gain colonies, the one's they did take were very important strategically and many were German. Rhodes dream of a British Empire in Africa from Cape to Cairo was realised after the war. Palestine and other parts of the Middle East for a few years at least came under British rule as they tried to secure the Suez Canal, as well as oil fields.
Going to war with Germany certainly solidified the Empire in Africa in the short term at least.

Fratton Fred

brianthebard wrote: »

Increasing the size of the British Empire and reducing the size/threat of the German navy go hand in hand. Although I don't fully believe that Britain went to war solely to gain colonies, the one's they did take were very important strategically and many were German. Rhodes dream of a British Empire in Africa from Cape to Cairo was realised after the war. Palestine and other parts of the Middle East for a few years at least came under British rule as they tried to secure the Suez Canal, as well as oil fields.
Going to war with Germany certainly solidified the Empire in Africa in the short term at least.

The Turkish interests were probably of more importance than the German ones TBH. it is interesting that this year, BP celebrates 100 years in business. it started life as the Anglo-Persian oil company so they definately did ok out of WWI. As an aside, British Petroleum was actually a German company that used the BP Brand to sell petrol in the UK. The company was confiscated and given to Anglo Persian during the war who later renamed them selves BP.

snip-Mod.

brianthebard

Ok last chance, no more off topic posts or personal remarks or I'm going to have to start deleting posts.

I think this thread has some interesting discussions, so lets keep that going.
Mod.

McArmalite

The assisination of Archduke Ferdinand, and his wife who was heavily pregnant, which sparked the war off was once featured on a Discovery channel on the Days That Shook The World series. From what I remember it was probably one of the most botched attempts at assisination in history. The guy who carried it out, Gavrilo Princip, was one of several incompetent recruits trained for several weeks by a Serbian army officers at a disused army base. Some were to throw a grenade into the open topped car, while others were to do it with their Browning pistols imported from America which at the time were state of the art handgun. From what I remember their was about 8 invovled, including one as young as 17. Several of them had contracted Tuberculosis which was practically fatal to people back then, hence their willlingness to go down with the ship so as to speak.

It actually was the second attempt on the Archduke's life that day. The first one, I'll call him assisin A, was done by throwing a grenade at the open topped car. Unlike modern grenade's it was activated by banging it hard against something, a wall or whatever. Assassin A banged the grenade against a wall, threw it at the car and hitting the side of it and falling on the ground. Appearently the old grenade had a 10 second delay before exploding which the very nervous buffoon forgot about the delay ( and this with several weeks training at the disused army base ). Having been supplied by the army officers with a cyanide capsule he bit on the capsule. However appearently cyanide's chemical compound deteroriates after a while, and since it had been cyanide lying around for quite a while, it only succeded in making him mildly sick later on.

The grenade eventually exploded injuring several onlookers, and an angry mob went to chase him, he jumped across a wall into the river hoping to drown himself only to land in 1 foot of water. The police then captured him and took him off for some serious beating in custody where he later broke down and revealed the Serbian army officers invovlement. The Archduke and his wife were shot dead on thier way back, when the open topped car had taken the wrong route, gone up a cul de sac, stalled when the driver was putting it into reverse. A fiasco that started one of the bloodyest wars in history.

brianthebard

I believe the shot didn't even kill the Archduke, but some of the horse hair stuffing in the carseat got into the wound and infected it, which he eventually died from. Remember reading that somewhere but don't know where.

mikemac

brianthebard wrote: »

I believe the shot didn't even kill the Archduke, but some of the horse hair stuffing in the carseat got into the wound and infected it, which he eventually died from. Remember reading that somewhere but don't know where.

I heard something similar but it wasn't for the Archduke, it was Reinhard Heydrich, a top Nazi.

Morlar

mikemac wrote: »

I heard something similar but it wasn't for the Archduke, it was Reinhard Heydrich, a top Nazi.

You are right it was Heydrich who died that way & not the archduke. I think the details of the assasination are not really the question of the thread though. Yes it was carried out by amateurs and if the Archduke and his wife had taken more precautions they would have avoided the 2nd attempt but the details/logistics are not that important in the context of this thread.

McArmalite

But the main thing about the Archduke and his wife's assignation is that when it became clear of the Serbian officers involvement, the Serbian authorities refused to hand them over ( obviously because the officers could tell of the unofficial approval by the govt authorities of the assignation and open up a further can of worms). Now I'm not a friend of imperialist states, but what other choice was left to the Austrians if the Serbs refused to play ball and not hand over those responsible for the assignation of a leading head of state ?

Say, if the Russians had not indicated they were going to support Serbia regardless, surely the threat of the greater power of Austria / Hungary may have forced Serbia to hand all over those in the plot and the whole war could have been avoided ??