
Seven Hanged: The Book That Started World War One - Turukawa
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/FZndnQHF6qX2Mq8KJ2n012/seven-hanged-the-book-that-started-world-war-one
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DominikR
"Everybody knows how the World War One started. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of
Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife Sophie were
assassinated in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 by Gavrilo Princip, one of several
young fanatics involved in the plot."

And what the article doesn't mention: The country of these assassins was
invaded (without provocation) by Austria just before the assassination. No one
would have tried to assassinate Austrian government officials in Bosnia if
Austria didn't occupy Bosnia at that time.

~~~
threesixandnine
The article also doesn't mention that WW1 practically started way earlier and
would probably happen even without annexation of Bosnia and assassination of
Archduke which was just casus belli.

Nice write up here : [http://historylists.org/events/10-events-that-led-to-
world-w...](http://historylists.org/events/10-events-that-led-to-world-
war-i.html)

What worries me is that today it all looks very similar. Heck, even in Bosnia
there is a guy from Austria with absolute power. Then we have crisis in Africa
and some countries trying to assert themselves as powers.

~~~
Svip
There is one significant difference between then and now: The world powers
wanted a war back then. Emperor Wilhelm II's push for a 'small war' between
Austria and Serbia was just the sign of how things were. But Austria's
hesitation to act, allowed France and Russia to 'mobilise' their positions.

Imagine if Austria had attacked Serbia straight away? Then perhaps it would
not have escalated to a great war.

Today, the powers that be are not interested in a war. Remember, the powers
that were were rather equal in terms of military strength. Today, they team up
to beat on weaker powers.

~~~
davorb
> The world powers wanted a war back then.

That is arguable. Austria certainly wanted war with Serbia, but a world war?
Absolutely not. Germany certainly didn't _want_ a war, but in the event that
war was coming, they were more or less forced to mobilize.

In fact, if you read the writings of the day, there were a lot of people
saying that globalization (they didn't call it that) made a world war was
impossible, because it was in no one's economic interest. Basically, all of
the arguments that people use today to explain why war between the United
States and China is impossible -- people used back back then.

> A 1910 best-selling book, The Great Illusion, used economic arguments to
> demonstrate that territorial conquest had become unprofitable, and therefore
> global capitalism had removed the risk of major wars.

[http://blogs.reuters.com/anatole-
kaletsky/2014/06/27/world-w...](http://blogs.reuters.com/anatole-
kaletsky/2014/06/27/world-war-one-first-war-was-impossible-then-inevitable/)

~~~
Pyxl101
A very interesting point. I wonder what was the flaw in the reasoning. It
certainly seems unlikely that a major war would occur between the US and
China. I believe this today: that it would just be _so incredibly bad for
business_ that it's an unlikely practical outcome.

Has the nature of international relations changed, or have we just gotten
lucky? Certainly I think the international (and many-national) perspective on
human rights and the rights of persons has evolved since then. A draft of
soldiers would be perceived quite extremely in the modern day, and would face
staunch and inexorable political pressure except in the face of something like
total war. Furthermore, globalization has increased substantially since then.
A total war with a breakdown of international trade could quickly result in
famine in many areas of the world.

It seems more likely that modern warfare will occur through complex and subtle
means like economic and financial sabotage (like the measures that have been
used against Iran). Arguably this is going on between the US and China in some
ways today, with the weakening of China's stock market, the recent US bans on
Chinese products, and requirements imposed on foreign companies by China.
However, to all the degree that they're add odds with each other, I
fundamentally get the impression that US and China are too rational and self-
interested to reach armed conflict with each other.

It's also interesting to consider how culture may have shifted over time. 60
years ago, the population might have had one particular perception about going
to war with "the japs" (and Asian ethnic slurs). In the modern day, demonizing
Asia feels somehow dated, and it's popular to demonize the Arab world instead.
I don't know if this is underlying truth or just media spin, but even though
there are significant ideological differences in some way (e.g., freedom of
speech), it doesn't _seem_ like USA or other conventionally western countries
are somehow "at odds with" Asia, even though from a financial perspective
that's far more the case than most parts of the world that area in the media a
lot more. I suppose it relates to people chanting "death to the USA" and
exploding bombs and things like that. Perhaps also it relates to the fact that
there's been far less imperialism from the USA directed toward China and
similar territories than toward other areas of the world. Who knows.

Wikipedia has something interesting to say about this: "The partnership
between China and the United States, where each nation regards each other as a
potential adversary as well as a strategic partner, has been described by
world leaders and academicians as the world's most important bilateral
relationship of the century. As of 2014, the United States has the world's
largest economy and China the second largest. [...] China remains the largest
foreign creditor of the United States,[4] holding about 10% ($1.8 trillion) of
the U.S. national debt."

"China–United States relations have generally been stable with some periods of
open conflict, most notably during the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
Currently, China and the United States have mutual political, economic, and
security interests, including, but not limited to, the prevention of terrorism
and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, although there are unresolved
concerns relating to the role of democracy in government in China and human
rights in both respective countries" \- so, the things that we have a stake in
are unlikely to lead us to war. The USA is not going to go to war with China
over its civil rights issues.

"The two countries remain in dispute over territorial issues in the South
China Sea. At the annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue in 2014, both
countries confirmed that they wanted to improve their relationship. U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry stated that the United States did not seek to
contain China,[5] while Chinese President Xi Jinping stated that a
confrontation between the two countries would be a disaster." \- also unlikely
to lead to war. It helps that both countries are essentially atheist states.

The most likely way that USA and China get drawn into war is through some kind
of proxy situation with allies that they get drawn into. However, they are so
much more powerful than their allied nations that I suspect each party
enforces detente. All of this said, it seems plausible that there are tensions
brewing on the horizon, with China having 1.3 billion people and USA 320
million. Human capital is an extremely valuable resource. Perhaps we are just
fortunate to be in a calm period of history during recent times.

~~~
Spooky23
The difference is nuclear weapons. The us civil war/world war 1 model of total
war is grinding down your enemy's economy into dust by killing soldiers in the
field.

The post 1945 version of this is fighting by proxy, and scoping the fight with
the escalation to nuclear annhiliation. Japan would have fought to a
stalemate... Atomic weapons changed the rules of the game.

~~~
AlgorithmicTime
Human capital is valuable, but clearly not everything about it is encapsulated
in pure population numbers. The Soviet Union was far more populous than the
US, for example.

It might also do to compare spheres rather than the US and China individually.

~~~
Spooky23
Sorry I made the point too quickly. Humans are literally cannon fodder for
nations in this type of war. Value is close to zero.

The thing that matters most is producing enough stuff to keep society held
together and continue to supply weapons and other material to support the war
effort. When nations approach the breaking point pre-nuclear weapons (ie.
Soviet Union in 1942/3), they give you a hat, dump you off the back of a truck
and suggest that you scavenge a gun. That isn't an option with industrial
states post 1945.

------
RUG3Y
I'm sure I'm not the first one here to comment that generations of continuous
European conflict, decades of brinkmanship, and many other diverse political
factors caused WWI. The book can't be nearly as important as they claim if the
assassination of Franz Ferdinand is not the sole cause of the war. If he
hadn't been assassinated, it is very likely that the same war would have been
ignited for some other arbitrary reason.

------
justaaron
It's a decent read. I read it as a child, and cried and felt creeped out at
the descriptions of the metal boxes and the train ride(s) etc...

I question the article-authors premise (copycat killing) and the conventional
wisdom that this particular event triggered it all... in anything the article-
authors premise shows even more so how the conventional wisdom is silly and
easily tipped...

one doesn't have singular causes for WWI (which more or less leads to WW2 by
continuation, due to unresolved issues, war reparations debts forced by an
unrealistic treaty of versailles leading to the failure of the weimar republic
etc)

so, yeah, the person calling for Gavrilo Princips hanging below= kinda
silly... let's keep some perspective folks.

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kombucha2
reminds me a lot of what people said about the Turner Diaries and the Oklahoma
City bombings. Though I guess the connection is a lot stronger in the former.

------
mirimir
So it was LARP that started WWI?

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B1FF_PSUVM
A tale baited well past the breaking point, but the best illustrations I've
seen on a short piece.

Tl,dr: an obscure tale of hanged nihilists (who had planned murder) was read
by a hanged nihilist who managed a successful murder - but "ironically, the
man who did the shooting, Gavrilo Princip, could not be executed because, at
nineteen, he was under age for this punishment."

(In other news, the propounders of "sic semper tyrannis" disclaimed any
responsability, explaining that they mean to murder only tyrants on an
officialy approved list, who really deserve it and whose death will have no
harmful consequences.)

~~~
cubano
Princip ended up being killing in prison soon after, tho.

------
wtbob
> Even today, more than a century on, this story will not fail to move new
> readers, giving many of them strong pause for thought, especially in those
> parts of the ‘civilised’ world where the barbarous and blundering practice
> of slaughtering our fellow-citizens is still carried out.

Or, y'know, the just and appropriate practise of executing those who deserve
it, because it would be unjust not to. E.g. Gavrilo Princip, the young man
indirectly responsible for more deaths than any other human being in history
(17 million in WWI; 9 million in the Russian Revolution; 5 million in the
Holodomor; 80 million in WWII; 30 million in the Chinese Revolution; plus
many, many more) deserved to hang more than perhaps any other man in history,
and yet … he didn't.

~~~
akie
Are you attributing all these wars to this one single guy? I know these wars
are related, but putting all the blame just on him seems a bit... unfair.

~~~
wtbob
Oh, sure, he doesn't deserve _all_ of the blame. But the brutal murders he
perpetrated were the instigating event for almost all of 20th century history.
Without WWI there'd have been no WWII, no Communist revolutions, no Cold War,
no Korea, no Vietnam, no Holocaust — it's unknowable what an alternate history
of the 20th century would look like, because the Great War completely and
utterly shattered Western civilisation.

Yeah, he was a tool of others. But he was the one who pulled the trigger: the
spark that ignited in the primer of his pistol cartridge is still burning.

~~~
threesixandnine
You do realize that historians agree that WW1 would happen even if there was
no assassination of Archduke? It was just casus belli and not the reason for
WW1.

The sparks happened before with two Moroccan crises, German naval buildup,
etc. It's much more complex than your simple view.

