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PittTheElder posted:The point is that you don't need to know much about Gavrilo Princip, he's perfectly fine as a footnote. "He was a Yugoslav nationalist with support from Serbia, then he shot FF" is pretty much all you need unless you want to get into a big discussion on Balkan politics and Young Bosnia. Any one of his coconspirators could have done the deed and we're back in the same situation. I feel you are missing the point, which is the bolded section and the part you seem to ignore, I grant this is just my take on the issue. I wouldn't claim to argue someone else's view on something that happened 100 years ago, just my take on his point. The idea I got from the post that sparked this is that it shows that a single person CAN change history. Yes, someone else could have done it, but someone else could have done what Napoleon did if properly skilled. Or any infinite number of people doing an infinite number of things before other people. The point is is that Gavrilo Princip shaped foreign policy internationally for at least 30+ years, and arguably the last century, because he was the one who pulled it off. Someone once tossed a bomb at FDR (in Miami, 1933 I want to say? It's a divergence point for a couple alt history WW2 books) and a bomb tosser killed a US president, what, 30-40 years prior (unless being tired is loving with my thought process)? Gavrilo is basically a character in an alt history story, except he succeeded. What are the loving odds a political figure survives one outright attempt on his life, another conspirator is captured, and him AND his wife are still shot in the street, all in one day? It's the Yahtzee of international relations, and the fuse had 3 people want to light it, two who tried, and one who succeeded. If there are a million alternate realities, I think there are 3 or so that get Ferdinand out of Sarajevo, and they probably revolve around either a)spontaneous combustion of all assailants or b) a universe where the Archduke was made of steel because reasons.
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Dec 14, 2014 17:35
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HarlanHell posted:It really is a shame that the Tzar and his family were killed the way that they were. I know that politically speaking it would have been risky to deport them, and leave them alive, but the whole family seemed like such genital honest people. Out of all of the aristocracy at the time Nicholas II seemed like the most humanitarian minded. In all the reading I've done he, and his family just seem like clueless naive victims who were trying their best to please everyone. If only the Tzar knew what the Cossacks were doing!
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Dec 14, 2014 21:00
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The Tsar was a son of a bitch, but his wife and kids didn't deserve to die.
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Dec 14, 2014 21:25
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cucka posted:I feel you are missing the point, which is the bolded section and the part you seem to ignore, I grant this is just my take on the issue. I wouldn't claim to argue someone else's view on something that happened 100 years ago, just my take on his point. I think the footnote problem is that outside of the assassination, Princip really was nothing special, and whether he actually pulled it off or not or even if the archduke was killed or not, the war would still happen and still be the shitpile for no reason that it was. All he did was cause the war to start a few months earlier. I mean his life isn't even as much a look into as Oswald as the latter's is shaped due to his being a crazy fucker. Princip was pretty much normal by average standards who believed in a certain political system.
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Dec 14, 2014 21:49
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SocketWrench posted:I think the footnote problem is that outside of the assassination, Princip really was nothing special, and whether he actually pulled it off or not or even if the archduke was killed or not, the war would still happen and still be the shitpile for no reason that it was. All he did was cause the war to start a few months earlier. I mean his life isn't even as much a look into as Oswald as the latter's is shaped due to his being a crazy fucker. Princip was pretty much normal by average standards who believed in a certain political system. Plus if he had messed up that last time, there were stll 2 or 3 other dudes waiting to to attempt the attack as well. Not to mention the few before him. His group is interesting, he isn't particularly.
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Dec 14, 2014 22:42
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Kavak posted:The Tsar was a son of a bitch, but his wife and kids didn't deserve to die. I'll grant the kids but the wife was pretty much the power behind the throne with how weak willed Nicky was in addition to mismanaging the country when he was at the front.
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Dec 14, 2014 23:52
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Raskolnikov38 posted:I'll grant the kids but the wife was pretty much the power behind the throne with how weak willed Nicky was in addition to mismanaging the country when he was at the front. Eh, I figured that was the case. Still, I wish people wouldn't lump in his daughters and son with them.
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Dec 14, 2014 23:56
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Kavak posted:The Tsar was a son of a bitch, but his wife and kids didn't deserve to die. Given that Alexandra encouraged a lot of his worse traits, she isn't exactly innocent. Not to mention she pretty much ruled during his time on the front. e:fb
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Dec 15, 2014 00:08
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yeah that's what the fledging communist country needed, "rightful heirs" to the throne around to escape to Europe and convince them to go for an invasion to restore the "rightful government in exile." Deserve has nothing to do with it.
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Dec 15, 2014 00:11
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Babby Formed posted:yeah that's what the fledging communist country needed, "rightful heirs" to the throne around to escape to Europe and convince them to go for an invasion to restore the "rightful government in exile." You're aware the White Army already existed without them right? Or perhaps more appropos, the Kaiser never returned to rule?
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Dec 15, 2014 00:13
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They sure did, and if they had a real heir to rally around I think they could have gotten a lot further.
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Dec 15, 2014 00:15
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Babby Formed posted:They sure did, and if they had a real heir to rally around I think they could have gotten a lot further. Figureheads don't win wars. Nothing proved this better than Russia's role in WWI. The White Armies already took plenty of boosts from any random nobleling they could get a hand on. She couldn't have accomplished much.
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Dec 15, 2014 00:20
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The murder of the royal family is one of those things I just can't get worked up about. Of course it was a crime. The Reds did many worse things, though, including straight up terror tactics and brutalising their enemies. So did the Whites. Civil wars are super hosed up, and individual atrocities can't really be the yardstick used to evaluate them. This weird fixation on the royal family, where there can at least be an argument that it made some symbolic sense at the time, only serves to distract from the basic truth: All-out civil warfare is maybe the worst kind of conflict.
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Dec 15, 2014 01:12
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Babby Formed posted:They sure did, and if they had a real heir to rally around I think they could have gotten a lot further. Are you doubting the legitimacy of Grand Duke Cyril Romanov?!?!
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Dec 15, 2014 01:59
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Honestly, regicide is just one of the risks you face when you decide you want to rule as an absolute monarch.
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Dec 15, 2014 02:23
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Panzeh posted:Honestly, regicide is just one of the risks you face when you decide you want to rule as an absolute monarch. Regicide is also the risk you face when you decide you don't want to rule as an absolute monarch.
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Dec 15, 2014 02:42
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Plenty of monarchies have revolved into constitutional regimes without regicide. It just took the stable frame of relative liberal democracy, something the Tsar purposefully destroyed in Russia. Anyway. I don't see any other government making a different decision, the royal family's power came from their lineage and even if the Whites existed without having a royal, allowing the opposition a figure to rally around based on its lineage is never a good idea. Granted, the Bolsheviks also did other horrible things, so did the Whites, so did the Tsar.
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Dec 15, 2014 10:26
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My Imaginary GF posted:Regicide is also the risk you face when you decide you don't want to rule as an absolute monarch. Robespierre was not wrong.
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Dec 15, 2014 11:17
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Ardennes posted:Plenty of monarchies have revolved into constitutional regimes without regicide. It just took the stable frame of relative liberal democracy, something the Tsar purposefully destroyed in Russia. You know we can condemn all of those, right? Without justifying the murder of children just because they popped out of the wrong womb?
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Dec 16, 2014 02:47
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murdering the children of absolute monarchs is extremely ftw actually.
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Dec 16, 2014 04:18
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AdjectiveNoun posted:You know we can condemn all of those, right? Without justifying the murder of children just because they popped out of the wrong womb? You can, but people rarely do. Hell it is hardly brought up, more fun to hand wring for the royal family, for whatever reason.
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Dec 16, 2014 05:12
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SocketWrench posted:I think the footnote problem is that outside of the assassination, Princip really was nothing special, and whether he actually pulled it off or not or even if the archduke was killed or not, the war would still happen and still be the shitpile for no reason that it was. All he did was cause the war to start a few months earlier. I mean his life isn't even as much a look into as Oswald as the latter's is shaped due to his being a crazy fucker. Princip was pretty much normal by average standards who believed in a certain political system. Actually the war wouldn't have started "a few month" later most likely, within a period of a few years maybe, but shifting the start date of the war would vastly vastly change the course of the war. I mean, just imagine war being declared in December instead of summer and how snow falling in Belgium would screw with the Schlieffen plan
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Dec 16, 2014 05:25
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Typo posted:Actually the war wouldn't have started "a few month" later most likely, within a period of a few years maybe, but shifting the start date of the war would vastly vastly change the course of the war. The battlecruiser ratios!!! 
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Dec 16, 2014 05:35
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AdjectiveNoun posted:You know we can condemn all of those, right? Without justifying the murder of children just because they popped out of the wrong womb? Yeah but no one is ideological neutral.
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Dec 16, 2014 05:39
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Puyi did nothing wrong!
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Dec 16, 2014 05:50
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Puyi did his time and then faithfully served the gardening needs of the people's republic of China, truly a model for all monarchs.
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Dec 16, 2014 07:26
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Typo posted:Actually the war wouldn't have started "a few month" later most likely, within a period of a few years maybe, but shifting the start date of the war would vastly vastly change the course of the war. I'm sure they'd hold off declarations till an attack could be made. It's not like Germany's gonna say "poo poo guys, it's the middle of winter and we really want a war despite poo poo that's gonna gently caress things for us, let's do it now anyways!" Basically the Germans had the button and they chose when to press it. I would think they're a bit smarter than to press it when poo poo doesn't favor them
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Dec 16, 2014 11:17
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V. Illych L. posted:The murder of the royal family is one of those things I just can't get worked up about. Of course it was a crime. The Reds did many worse things, though, including straight up terror tactics and brutalising their enemies. So did the Whites. Civil wars are super hosed up, and individual atrocities can't really be the yardstick used to evaluate them. This weird fixation on the royal family, where there can at least be an argument that it made some symbolic sense at the time, only serves to distract from the basic truth: All-out civil warfare is maybe the worst kind of conflict. Basically I was trying to make this point. Putting a special emphasis on the murder of the royal family accepts the argument that royals are somehow sacred and transgressing the sanctity of the monarchy by killing them was the worst crime of the Civil War.
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Dec 16, 2014 11:42
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SocketWrench posted:I'm sure they'd hold off declarations till an attack could be made. It's not like Germany's gonna say "poo poo guys, it's the middle of winter and we really want a war despite poo poo that's gonna gently caress things for us, let's do it now anyways!" Basically the Germans had the button and they chose when to press it. I would think they're a bit smarter than to press it when poo poo doesn't favor them No the Germans couldn't choose when to press it. The minute Russia started mobilizing, Germany had to head west immediately to smash France if they were to have any chance of avoiding a grinding two-front war they couldn't possibly win (it turned out this happened anyway, of course, but still). If Russia started mobilizing in December, the Germans couldn't wait until spring because sending the whole army West with the Russians right there would have been insanely dangerous and there was no way they were going to have like the three Tannenbergs they would have needed then, and at the time they didn't know just how badly they outclassed the Russians anyway.
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Dec 16, 2014 14:29
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SocketWrench posted:I'm sure they'd hold off declarations till an attack could be made. It's not like Germany's gonna say "poo poo guys, it's the middle of winter and we really want a war despite poo poo that's gonna gently caress things for us, let's do it now anyways!" Basically the Germans had the button and they chose when to press it. I would think they're a bit smarter than to press it when poo poo doesn't favor them Then you run into the issue where, if war seemed imminent for longer, the placement of French military assets and the degree of Russian mobilization is going to differ wildly from that of actual history if the Germans don't respond with a mobilization. Basically changing the start date is inevitably going to screw around with the balance of power and in at least the first phase of the war.
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Dec 16, 2014 14:40
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Changing anything about history in general would have enormous and unpredictable consequences, without princip maybe the war doesn't happen. Or happens but it's a regional conflict. Or it's an even worse war. It's why historical analysis has such terrible predictive power- it's not robust at all to small changes in the assumptions/initial conditions.
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Dec 17, 2014 01:20
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tsa posted:Changing anything about history in general would have enormous and unpredictable consequences, without princip maybe the war doesn't happen. Or happens but it's a regional conflict. Or it's an even worse war. Well, not necessarily. We know that, with the systems in place at the time, war occured from the actions of Princip. What can that do to inform the present? Random events have consequences, and the systems reacted in known ways. When one thinks about similar systems and their economic impacts, one can understand the likely course of events to develop from a present crisis. A specific example: the two Ottoman battleships under construction in England when war broke out. Compare with the two Russian Mistrals whose fate is unknown; crisis occurs, and former armament and economic plans have to be changed.
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Dec 17, 2014 03:50
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Other people have made some good geopolitical points, but I just want to say that the Junkers really wanted to push that button and Kaiser Bill really, really, really, really-really wanted to push that button. I'm pretty sure they would have pushed the hell out of that button even if the casus belli happened in mid-winter. It was the same on the French side of the equation. We just celebrate the notable anti-war figures in France more because the French won. It feeds into the whole narrative of inescapable German aggression.
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Dec 17, 2014 04:45
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Was a mobilization in mid-winter even possible for Russia? They already had to deal with their country's vast size and relatively poor infrastructure and organization. Surely, trying to pull that off in the middle of a Russian winter would have been a Herculean task.
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Dec 17, 2014 05:00
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Shbobdb posted:Other people have made some good geopolitical points, but I just want to say that the Junkers really wanted to push that button and Kaiser Bill really, really, really, really-really wanted to push that button. I'm pretty sure they would have pushed the hell out of that button even if the casus belli happened in mid-winter. It was the same on the French side of the equation. We just celebrate the notable anti-war figures in France more because the French won. It feeds into the whole narrative of inescapable German aggression. Well, it depends what they 'pushed the button' on. Say, another terrorist attack by Serbia aimed at provoking another Balkans War? An attack by Serbians aimed at preventing constitutional monarchy in Austro-Hungarian with representative democracy? The German view was that the Austrians were fully justified in their demands to the Serbians. How could they not be? You just had Serbian state intelligence assassinate the symbol of Austro-Hungarian nationhood. It really was a terrorist attack akin to Bin Laden's attack on America. As a nation-state, Austria could only respond with a unilateral demand to Serbia. The Serbs balked because they knew they were loving guilty, and had no intent to turn over thr Black Hand network or allow a full and independent investigation. If they allowed such, it would likely have severed Russia's obligations to support Serbia in her ambitions for Balkan power. If a similar attack had occured in November? Well, what will the battleship ratios have been in November? What would be the German presence in the Adriatic? Would the Italians have been more likely to honor the Tripple Alliance, or less? Would the timetables allow an invasion of Belgium, or would the entire focus have been upon defence on the western front and winter offensive on the eastern? What would Churchill's position have been like at the admiralty? Could France have transported its African levies as quickly to the front? Could Belgium? Would the grain supply allow such? What were grain reserves in August and September, anyways, and how much did mobilization impact the winter harvest? There's a lot more systems at play than merely railroad timetables and "Junkers really wanted to press the button." David Corbett posted:Was a mobilization in mid-winter even possible for Russia? They already had to deal with their country's vast size and relatively poor infrastructure and organization. Surely, trying to pull that off in the middle of a Russian winter would have been a Herculean task. The answer is, "Probably not." You'd have to examine meteological records for 1914/1915 in order to figure out the impact of weather on terrain and logistics capacity. I don't have access to those records off-hand, and would enjoy perusing them for fun. My Imaginary GF fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Dec 17, 2014 |
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Dec 17, 2014 05:05
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David Corbett posted:Was a mobilization in mid-winter even possible for Russia? They already had to deal with their country's vast size and relatively poor infrastructure and organization. Surely, trying to pull that off in the middle of a Russian winter would have been a Herculean task. There was plenty of fighting on the Eastern front through the winters, so they probably would have had at it as best they could. If the war had started in December, though, they probably would have held off on any heavy engagements and planned to get going in earnest in the spring.
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Dec 17, 2014 05:12
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rkajdi posted:I understand Princips was a crazy nationalist, but even people who do things for the wrong reasons can do the right thing for the wrong reasons. I've never been a believer in the whole "liberal internal reformer" line in autocratic governments. It smacks too much of the enlightened philosopher king line, and I also doubt any reformer would actually give themselves anything other than a soft landing. And you're deluding yourself if you don't think any autocrat or dictator isn't complicit in a pile of deaths to keep himself in power. If the Chomsky line about presidents is true (and it is) it's much more evident with dictators-- violence against large amounts of citizens to keep yourself in power is an ever-present fact. No dude, Franz Ferdinand wanted to turn Austria into a liberal federal republic with full rights for all ethnic and language groups, and Young Bosnia murdered him because they were afraid he would succeed and they wouldn't be able to use the ethnic strife to enlarge the kingdom of Serbia. Wikipedia posted:Franz Ferdinand was an advocate of increased federalism and widely believed to favor trialism, under which Austria-Hungary would be reorganized by combining the Slavic lands within the Austro-Hungarian empire into a third crown. A Slavic kingdom could have been a bulwark against Serb irredentism and Franz Ferdinand was therefore perceived as a threat by those same irredentists. Princip later stated to the court that preventing Franz Ferdinand's planned reforms was one of his motivations. You're cheerleading a nationalist monarchist in killing off a much more liberal ruler in order to defeat liberal reforms. It makes about as much sense as supporting Guy Fawkes in wanting to kill the king of England because "kings are bad yo" without even bothering to find out that Fawkes' goal was just to put a different, Catholic (shittier) monarch on the throne. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Dec 17, 2014 |
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Dec 17, 2014 05:25
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VitalSigns posted:No dude, Franz Ferdinand wanted to turn Austria into a liberal federal republic with full rights for all ethnic and language groups, and Young Bosnia murdered him because they were afraid he would succeed and they wouldn't be able to use the ethnic strife to enlarge the kingdom of Serbia. One of the assumptions that I hate is that Austro-Hungarian collapse was inevitable. It wasn't, and Ferdinand presented a true pathway for a peaceful and developed Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 20th century. Hell, doing some research on expatriate communication of conditions in Transcarpathia under Austro-Hungarian administration versus the experience under Russian administration has left me with the impression that, no matter how bad things looked for Austro-Hungaria for us looking back, at the time, all the alternatives were far worse.
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Dec 17, 2014 05:32
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My Imaginary GF posted:One of the assumptions that I hate is that Austro-Hungarian collapse was inevitable. It wasn't, and Ferdinand presented a true pathway for a peaceful and developed Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 20th century. Hell, doing some research on expatriate communication of conditions in Transcarpathia under Austro-Hungarian administration versus the experience under Russian administration has left me with the impression that, no matter how bad things looked for Austro-Hungaria for us looking back, at the time, all the alternatives were far worse. "Better than the late Russian Empire" isn't exactly the highest bar to get over, dude.
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Dec 17, 2014 05:34
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I'm not so sure people really understand the climate of Russia regarding winter. Russia is quite famously muddy in the warmer months of the year - they even have a word for it: Rasputitsa. For nearly all of the spring thaw all unpaved roads are essentially 10-feet deep mud pits. It quite famously hindered the Nazi advance east in the 2nd World War, because men would have to slog through mud up to their thighs and horses would sink into the earth and drown.  The ground doesn't really harden until the second quarter of summer, and even then the roads are still too soft to move military equipment on. Winter is a good thing for Russian mobilization, since the ground freezes. They can move cannons around with impunity, they can march regiments to and fro without fear of ruining the roads for further troop movements. Sure, it gets cold and windy, but that's what winter uniforms are for. The Russian winter is not this insurmountable obstacle that ground Russian plans to a halt whenever it happened. The summer rains were much, much more of a detrimental factor to Imperial Russian war readiness. Malleum fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Dec 17, 2014 |
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