5 ms·
While it smacks in the face of the joke I made elsewhere, altering the events of that day probably wouldn't have had that much effect on the over-arching tides
by tga_d 13y ago
While it smacks in the face of the joke I made elsewhere, altering the events of that day probably wouldn't have had that much effect on the over-arching tides of history. Pretty much everyone agrees that Europe was a proverbial powder keg at the time, and that all sides (at least in and around Europe) were itching for an excuse to go to war. This is a relatively popular subject to study in history, in fact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I
While there is some argument to be made that the specific timing of the event made subsequent happenings occur in the manner they did, I think most people would say that what happened was going to happen anyway. Or at least, this is what I recall from high school history class and my own limited research into the subject.
Still though, it's fun to speculate - a sufficient delay in the causes of revolution in Russia could have correspondingly delayed the backlash against communism, Germany could very well have been the first country to undergo such a revolution, the style of communism then being more akin to classical Marxism than Lenin's, perhaps lessening Germany's role as an industrial powerhouse and colonial ruler, mitigating the competitive tensions in Europe on that front but increasing them on an economic one, or who knows what. Really it's all just counterfactual conjecture, but like I said, it's fun.
- jsnell 13y agoI don't think pretty much everyone agrees. I went on a WWI reading binge earlier this year, and of the 4 books on the war written in this millennium, none described a general European war as unavoidable. There had been major crises in the previous few years that didn't lead to one. And while the trend had been for increased polarization, there was good reason to believe that the tide was turning. France was a month away from getting a pacifist government that was looking to patch things up with Germany (and would've had one by the time of crisis, except for by a freak occurence in the form of the Caillaux affair). Russia was losing their shot on Constantinople at the end of that summer, when the Turkish Dreadnaughts would've been delivered. In Austria-Hungary Franz Ferdinand was the main driver for peace, and the main warmonger (Conrad )was about to be sacked. England was likely to detach itself from Russia when the next round of treaty negotiations over Persia came up. Germans were convinced that a war against Russia would be unwinnable in a couple of years. So there's some reason to believe that the time window for a general European war was fairly short, and it was only by bad luck that something sufficiently serious happened in that window.
- userulluipeste 13y agoAs far as I know, some players of the (both) World War(s) were involved because they got only later in the game for colonies. Actually that's exactly what formed the Axis Power in the WW2 - countries constituted only later as Germany and Italy, or Japan which only later got itself out of a stagnant isolationist stance. No single event could have prevented the war(s).
- walshemj 13y agoBumping off Wilhelm I well before he became Kaiser might have diverted Germany on to a less confrontational path - would have reduced the prominence of antisemitism as well.