I was debating this with my friends last night. The assassination of Ferdinand was the tipping point that caused WW1. WW1 caused WW2, which caused the Cold War, which lead to Korea, Vietnam, and the Mujahedden, which later became various terror groups.
If Ferdinand hadn’t been murdered, would WW1 still have happened? How would it have gone differently?
Probably WWI would just have been delayed a few months. No other changes.
Really impossible to say. Even if “WW1 just gets delayed a couple of months”, that has huge ramifications down the road. Perhaps Hitler gets hit by a bus when, in our timeline, he’s in training.
Like PastTense, I can’t imagine that WWI would have been delayed by much. Europe was, as the saying goes, a powder keg.
Yeah, the way everyone’s alliances were set up, SOMETHING was going to trigger WWI eventually. At best, FF’s assassination was an excuse for AH to make impossible demands of Serbia and try for a land grab on that rationalization.
I don’t know about a couple of months. Franz Ferdinand was assassinated on June 28 and Austria-Hungary declared war on July 28. That was already getting late in the year of military campaigning. If the war had been delayed another two months, it probably would have been delayed until at least 1915.
What would the delay of a year have meant? Consider Ireland. The British Parliament had passed an Irish Home Rule Law on May 25. But when the was broke out, it was postponed for a year. When that year had passed and the war was still going on, it was postponed again for the duration of the war. Many Irish people saw this as a betrayal. But if the war hadn’t started in 1914, Home Rule probably would have been implemented on schedule and subsequent relationships between Great Britain and Ireland might have been a lot less hostile.
Or consider the Russian army. They were undergoing a major period of reform. If the war had been delayed a year, the Russian army would have been much stronger and better prepared.
The Ottoman Empire was going to collapse sooner or later. I could picture the war starting when the various colonial powers try to carve up the remains.
Little Nemo highlights an interesting ‘what-if’ here. There was serious concern that Irish Home Rule would have triggered a form of civil war in parts of the UK, possibly on the level of the Troubles of the 1970s at the very least, or perhaps full-scale guerilla warfare at the worst. Loyalist paramilitary weapons smuggled from Germany were found and seized shortly before the assassination, and there were some members of the Conservative and Unionist Party that were openly expressing support and sympathy for such people for defying the law and their King. WWI’s outbreak diverted attention, quashed dissent, and everyone rallied round the flag. Well, almost everyone - conscription was delayed in Ireland until quite late in the war, as the loyalty of many Catholic Irish could not be taken for granted.
So it’s possible that even a delay of a few months or even weeks would have seen a war break out in Europe while a weakened and divided Britain looks on, perhaps opting not to get involved because of internal squabbles. No doubt Germany would have actively stoked such divisions as helping their cause.
On the other hand, some in the German government saw war in 1914 as Germany’s best chance of winning. They were extremely fearful of the effectiveness of major reforms to the Russian armed forces, which were taking in new technology, training and organisation. In our timeline the Russians were poorly led and badly equipped.
It’s difficult to say. My money is on a war starting in, say, mid-1915 would likely have gone in Germany’s favour as Britain would have been in a worse position, but the war may have been much shorter for it, and therefore less devastating and transformative. France humbled again, Russia comes to terms and the monarchy endures, perhaps a new Napoleon returns to France, and Britain is dismissed as l’Albion Perfide once again.
Then a second World War in the 1930s with Napoleon IV blaming the French defeat on the British stab-in-the-back perhaps!
I don’t see why. Europe had been a power keg for quite a while, and war was repeatedly avoided (for instance, the Morrocan crisis between France and Germany in 1905). So, indeed a war was likely, but it could have taken place many years later, following a different crisis, and not involving the same alliances.
And it could very well be that no war would have happened. If the Cuba crisis missile had turned badly, for instance, people could now say : “anyway, without the Cuba crisis, the war would only have been delayed a few more months, the world was a power keg”.
I don’t think there are much reason to assume that history would have necessarily taken a similar path. The consequences, especially long-term of a change, are mainly impossible to predict.
Yep.
Austria-Hungary was teetering on the edge of colonial revolt and itching for an excuse to eliminate perceived threats (Serbia being #1). And the Serbia conspirators (egged on by their friends in high places) likely would’ve succeeded in an assassination plot sooner or later.
Now, if Count von Berchtold had suffered a fatal coronary event, that might’ve delayed matters for awhile…
The Atlanta Falcons wouldn’t have given up their 25 point lead in Super Bowl LI.
Any other projection is just pure guesswork.
And I can imagine that Lindsey Lohan would still have a career.
Back around 1980 the Association of Newspaper Editors had their big convention in Berkley. Just for fun they had a contest to determine the most startling headline imaginable. The winner was:
Archduke Ferdinand Found Alive
World War I all a mistake
I am very fond of the YouTube channel The Great War. Host Indy Neidell has been putting up an episode a week since 2014 on what happened in the war that week – about 200 by now – plus an equal number of specials covering subjects in greater detail, biographies of those involved, and answering questions by viewers.
He contends that Austro-Hungarian Field Marshall Hötzendorf had been angling for a war with the Serbs for some time. No fewer than thirty times in the preceding two years he had urged Emperor Franz Josef let slip the dogs of war. Each time, the (relatively) liberal heir presumptive Archduke Franz Ferdinand counseled otherwise and prevailed. With his removal (by Serbs, no less) the result was inevitable but even without Ferdie’s demise, the Höt man would have prevailed sooner or later. If you want to lay the war in the lap of any one person, Neidell says, it would be Hötzendorf.
I agree here. WWI would have come. Most of the major players thought they’d win easy, and the “troops would be home by Christmas”, or at most about a year like the Franco-Prussian war.
Sure, because of the “butterfly effect” things would be different- maybe no Hitler. But if the Allies won, France would again demand killer reparations, leading to a WWII sometime later.
AH had no idea of how weak it was.
Well, it would certainly mean substantial changes to the plot of the Wonder Woman movie.
I disagree. New England’s comeback victory followed inevitably from the Austrian defeat at the Battle of Königgrätz and was a foregone conclusion by 1914.
Most everyone thought there would be just another small regional conflict in the Balkans. That likely would have been the result had Russia not begun pre-mobilization against Austria-hungary.
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Yes, but that was pretty much inevitable. Russia had an open agreement with Serbia to defend it from Austria-Hungary. Austria-Hungary and Germany knew this. And everyone knew France had a treaty with Russia.
So the only open questions were Britain and Italy. Britain tilted towards France and Russia but hadn’t made an official commitment to them. Italy tilted towards Germany but wasn’t obligated to fight if Germany started a war.
Germany wanted a quick war with France and Russia, which they thought they could win. They were hoping Britain would stay neutral and Italy would join in on their side but they weren’t counting on either possibility.
Austria-Hungary just wanted a quick war with Serbia. Once Germany agreed to fight Russia, they figured Germany would handle Russia and they could focus on Serbia.
However, Kaiser William made a critical mistake and tried to build a fleet to challenge the British navy, so the Brits were not gonna remain neutral. Critical mistake, shows he had no understanding of the British.
Yes, that was an incredibly stupid policy. Britain had been historically inclined towards Germany and the naval race reversed that. France was smart and backed down on its own naval building to win over Britain.
And Germany got nothing significant out of its navy. It was able to build up a navy that was strong enough to antagonize the British but not strong enough to defeat the British. And the huge expense of building a navy diverting resources from the army, which was much more critical to Germany.
All that said, I’ve seen an interesting counter-argument made; that Britain’s traditional conflicts with France and Russia and friendliness with Germany and Austria made it more likely that Britain would align with France and Russia. This seems counter-intuitive but the idea is that Britain’s main interest was over its colonies and it had relatively few interests in Europe. Germany and Austria had minimal overseas interests and their interests were mainly in Europe. So Britain got along well with Germany and Austria because there were few areas where their interests competed. France and Russia had mixed interests. Their biggest interests were in Europe but each also had significant interests outside of Europe. And these interests caused clashes with Britain; France and Britain had conflicts in Africa and Russia and Britain had conflicts in Asia.
So when Britain decided it needed allies, why didn’t it seek an alliance with Germany and Austria rather than France and Russia? Because Britain, Germany, and Austria had nothing to negotiate over. France and Russia could both offer concessions in Africa and Asia in exchange for British support in Europe (and were willing to do so because they saw their European interests as being more important than their overseas interests). Germany and Austria couldn’t offer to resolve any significant conflicts with Britain because they didn’t have any. They couldn’t even offer to assist Britain in any overseas conflicts with France or Russia because they didn’t have any significant forces positioning overseas. Conversely, a British alliance with Germany and Austria would have increased hostility with France and Russia and increased overseas conflicts.