"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."<p>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.
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.
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...<p>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...<p>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)<p>so, yeah, the person calling for Gavrilo Princips hanging below= kinda silly... let's keep some perspective folks.
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.
A tale baited well past the breaking point, but the best illustrations I've seen on a short piece.<p>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."<p>(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.)
> 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.<p>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.