It’s 1914. You are a young Serb, poor, with very few prospects. One day, a cloaked figure approaches you with a proposition: Kill Archduke Francis Ferdinand and become famous. Your act will start a great war, declares the cloaked figure. The cloaked figure gives you a FN Model 1910 pistol and instructs you to go to Moritz Schiller’s cafe at 10:15 AM on June 28th, wait until you see the Archduke, riding in a Gräf & Stift Double Phaeton, and, when you see him, shoot him and kill him.
The cloaked figure dissapears. You are left with the pistol and your thoughts.
Ethics aside, would you do it? Do you believe that by causing the death of Archduke Francis Ferdinand you will cause a great war?
Don’t let the view from 2012 come into your answers to these questions. It’s 1914. You can’t let a CRACKED article influence you.
I hate to break it to him, but I don’t think Princip is very famous any more. Seriously, I bet most people now would be unsure who Franz Ferdinand was, let alone Gavrilo Princip.
In answer to the question, look at people who have done assassinated someone famous. I think they all wanted to do something that would make a big difference, but told themselves it would contribute to a really good cause, even if that was actually rather spurious. So you probably would be very primed to want to think assassinating Ferdinand would be important, but only actually do it if you had some reason – however spurious – to think some good would come of it, not just that it would start a war.
That’s the view from 2012. John Hinckley, Jr., Mark David Chapman, ect.
In 1914, you would have to believe that the assasination of some Archduke would cause a worldwide war, the death of untold millions, the changing of the map of the world, the course of history. Gavrilo Princip. Archduke Francis Ferdinand. Pawns.
Except they did not know that. Mere chess pieces on the grand chess board. Only the Grandmaster, the “cloaked figure”, the time traveler, knows all the chess moves. Remember, you don’t know that the cloaked figure is a time traveler.
So how can you comprehend that this can cause that?
First, he is a cloaked figure spouting crackpot ideas and giving me a gun. I think he’s nuts. I’d probably kick him in the balls (he’s wearing a cloak f’chrissakes) and run away.
Secondly, even if he were really, really believable by continuously telling me exactly what would happen next (“in 3 seconds that guy will spill his beer”) I would be *less *inclined to do the shooting if he told me it would start a war. He’d better lie and say it would prevent a war. And even then I’d probably rather just grow my hair, paint a sign and sit outside Franz’s house singing Give Peace a Chance. I know we have a different attitude to wars now, but I can’t see myself thinking this is somehow a good idea.
As a general rule, I’d reject most suggestions that I commit murder. Odds of rejection increase significantly when the suggestion comes from a cloaked stranger promising said murder would start a war. That’s just not how I roll.
This would be rather more interesting in the reverse. You’re Gavrilo Princip, you are prepared to assassinate Ferdinand in the furtherance of your cause. A cloaked figure approaches you and explains the horrible consequences of this act, as laid out in the scholarly article from Cracked.
Why would it change his mind, though? “Don’t do it, Gavrilovich, it’ll bring about the dissolution of the Hapsburg Empire! Do you want to see an independent Bosnia?”
Granted that guy was probably an insane zealot, for me it would totally change my mind.
Say I’ve got a clear shot at some horrible person, say, the president of Syria. Someone comes to me and says, “If you shoot him, Syria will become free–after a war in which tens of millions of people will die.” I wouldn’t take the shot.
If he isn’t a time traveler and proves it by predicting what happens in 10 minutes from now, he’s a lunatic. Why should anybody listen to a lunatic? Esp. one in a cloak. More likely to be a secret policeman who’s going to arrest me if I’m dumb enough to take a pistol that’s probably been tampered with and show up at a specific time at a specific place.
If the time traveler doesn’t want to reveal himself, he would need to dress as gypsy fortune teller and gain my trust over months of true predictions. But I’m not superstitious. Would a Serbian nationalist back then be superstitious enough to believe fortune tellers?
Moreover, the comparision is completly wrong. Chess pieces are moved by a player, the chessmaster. There was no chess master in WWI - just a bunch of people in power believing they could pull Plan X off and solve all their problems, while ignoring that all the other countries also had their own plans. So all plans and egos and misconceptions collided into a mess. Nothing to do with chess.
Because it wasn’t the real cause, it was the spark into a keg full of powder. If it hadn’t been that spark, it would have been another one. I can’t un-think my knowledge of today, but I know that newspapers at that time were full of previous troubles that had almost erupted into WWI but were averted at the last minute. The surprise wasn’t that a war started, it was how bloody and long and desastrous it was. All the plans were for quick victory, little losses and nothing else.
That would be an interesting point for an Alt History story: to let WWI start either earlier, from one of the earlier problems, or later, because a tiny little thing during the Franz Ferdinand story goes different, so the assassination doesn’t cause WWI, something else does.
I’ll go with Plan B which is accept the gun, ensure that it is loaded with a round chambered, and empty it into The Cloaked Figure’s face. Ha! Now I have killed the puppetmaster and we mere puppets must make our own destinies.
I agree; that’s what I thought when I read the OP as well.
On the one hand, your (Princip’s) goal is to provoke and annoy Austria-Hungary, and you will succeed beyond your wildest dreams. You will drive them to an insane act which will destroy their empire.
On the other hand, the short-run consequence will be that your ethnic homeland (Serbia) will be laid waste by Austria-Hungary allied to Germany, and devastated by war, famine, and disease.
On the first hand, after the misery is over, your homeland will be stronger than ever, with Bosnia joined to it it as well as Croatia, Slovenia, and Macedonia.
On the other hand, it will still be a pygmy among giants, and will soon find out there are worse oppressors than the Habsburgs–namely, the Nazis and the Soviet Union.
On the first hand, when those empires fall as well, Serbia and Bosnia will both be independent and free at last from foreign domination. But, they’ll be small and poor and your countrymen (Bosnians) will hate each other so much that Bosnia will be run by a jerry-rigged UN-installed pseudo-government.
Personally, I wouldn’t pull the trigger. But that’s easy for me to say. I never had to live under the Habsburgs or any sort of foreign occupation.
With the death of Gaddafi at the hands of Libyan rebels, this is not an idle thought. Do you think that there will be a similar situation with Assad? Where he is surrounded by Syrian rebels?
You can’t?
Chess has nothing to do with it? Quite the contrary. Gadaffi. Assad. Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Osama bin Laden. Gavrillo Princip. Archduke Francis Ferdinand. All chess pieces on the chess board. And, all the chess piecies – the political figures – know that, unless they are naive.
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, sure, he was “ran out of town”. Look at Gaddafi, for another example. When he was dragged out of that hole in the wall, confused, cold, disoriented, hungry - Do you think that he fear death? Perhaps. I don’t pretend to know what a dictator (or any person for that matter) would think about when surrounded by people shouting out for one’s death, sharpening their knives or polishing their guns. I do know, though, that such a dictator as Gaddafi, realized, perhaps at the very end, that he is a chess piece.
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Exiled.
Gaddafi. Killed.
Both were chess pieces. Just like Ferdinand and Princip.
No, because the person I am today has grown up with the knowledge of World Wars and how horrible they were, along with the social and philosophical upheaval and changes caused by them. I never believed that a monarchy was a good idea because I didn’t grow up in one. I learned that Plato’s idea of a philosopher-dicator lay at the root of the belief that one good guy in charge would get better results than a squabbling democracy, but that idealist dictators are the worst. (True, part of that lesson was shown during the French revolution - but nationalism was new in the 20th century).
Can you honestly imagine what a person who has grown up in a completly different society would think? Non-Parlamental monarchy was normal; no voting rights for women (and no university) was normal; different layers of society with little intermingling between was normal; war was a field of honor for young men to prove their courage and do heroics, not an indifferent slaughterfield; nationalism - one of the driving forces - was just starting, instead of being discredited; …
I said that chess implies one player, a chess-master, who moves the pieces. Who is the chessmaster for WWI? The leaders and generals of each country played Risk with their armies, yes - but who moved the leaders around?
Chess also has defined moves. War and diplomacy in real life doesn’t; you can expect certain outcomes in strategic planning (which was all done wrong pre-WWI, leading to overconfidence at the generals, leading to belligerence because a War could be won in their belief).
This isn’t like a comic book where the Big Bad is the puppetmaster predicting everybody’s reaction and planning for it. This is two dozen people (leaders and generals) guessing how the others would react, guessing wrong, and things getting out of control.
Check out “Einstein’s Gun” by Pierre Gévart (originally in French but it’s in this bookin English, which is an excellent anthology of alt-history stories).
I am no longer a member and have no intention of regaining membership for the SDMB. I intend for this to be my last post ever here.
It’s been 100 years since Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand. That question has not been answered. I do not expect for that question to be answered in the next 100 years. At least, not by the condescending idiots here.
I will regain membership the day that question is answered by a member of the SDMB. Perhaps a lurker.