No assassination in Sarajevo, speculation on a world without the Great War.

[catsmate]

In the 100 years ago today thread Craig B and I went a bit off topic onto speculations about the likely consequences of a world without the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on the 28th of June 1914.

Assuming the plotters had failed, for whatever reason¹ what do people think would have happened?

1. Would there have soon been another casus belli with the war starting later but pretty much as historically?
2. Would the Russian Empire have collapsed, drastically upsetting the balance of the European alliances, before a major war started?
3. Even a relatively short delay could have changed the political situation in Britain, where Irish Home Rule had passed into law but been suspended in September of 1914. If it had enacted it would have been a considerable distraction (UVF, IVF, Curragh Mutiny) with the potential for internecine warfare distracting attention from Europe.
4. Would the failure of the assassination plot have allowed Pašić (Serbian Prime Minister) to rein in the Black Hand? Especially 'Apis' (Dragutin Dimitrijević, head of Serbian Military Intelligence) who was functionally the group's leader. This might have calmed matters in the Balkans for a few years.
5. Historically Emperor Franz Josef died in November 1916, and even without the stresses of the war he'd probably not have lived much beyond this (he was 86). What would have happened if the war hadn't yet happened before he died? While Franz Ferdinand was undoubtedly a conservative and dynastist he was somewhat more liberal and moderate than Franz Josef².
6. A Russia facing greater internal turmoil might be less willing to support Serbia in any later confrontation; this was the principal difference between the 1914 and 1908-9 Balkan crises.
7. However the forces of nationalism were on the rise, could the empires have managed them, adapting to new realities, without dragging everyone into war?
8. Would Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottomans have transitioned to constitutional democracy? Would the monarchies have survived, more of less intact, in their autocratic glories? Or would they have fallen to violent revolutions?

Thoughts?


¹ Betrayal and capture by the Austro-Hungarian authorities, problems at the border crossing, capture before they acted in Sarajevo, tighter security for the visitors et cetera
¹ It'd be pretty difficult to be more conservative than FJ.

 

[Tolls]

I hold that Russia would have weathered the internal turmoil over the following decade. It wouldn't have been pretty, but a complete violent overthrow I don't think was on the cards.

It does depend exactly which direction the powers-that-be jumped, though. Another 1905, but not a 1917.

Austria-Hungary was the one most likely to collapse in that following decade, IMO. A rickety empire that made the Ottomans look positively stable.

 

[DuvalHMFIC]

Would Lenin have even found his way back to Russia? Didn't the Germans send him there to stir the pot?

 

[Tolls]

Would Lenin have even found his way back to Russia? Didn't the Germans send him there to stir the pot?

catsmate pointed out to me (in the other thread I think) that Russia wasn't having a terribly happy time with the rapid industrial development, and the failure to realise the initial constitutional gains made by the 1905 revolution. Russia was essentially compressing a centuries worth of industrial and social upheaval into a decade or two.

There is also a point of view that holds that WW1 delayed an inevitable revolution, with the initial euphoria a war tends to bring holding things off.

 

[TimCallahan]

As this site notes, there were a whole slew of crises in the years leading up to 1914, any one of which could have triggered WW I. Europe was a boil waiting to be lanced.

That said, one wonders, had Franz Ferdinand lived, would he have been able to transform the Austro-Hungarian Empire into a more participatory commonwealth.

 

[dudalb]

I doubt the archduke could have pulled it off. If for no other reason then Hungary was violently opposed to any concessions to the Slav groups within Austria Hungary,the Czechs in particular.
I feel that if the Assisanation had failed,a general European war would have happened anyway;some other crisis would have set it off.

 

[angrysoba]

Russia was essentially compressing a centuries worth of industrial and social upheaval into a decade or two.

Maybe so, but the country that beat them in 1905, namely Japan, managed to pull it off.

There is also a point of view that holds that WW1 delayed an inevitable revolution, with the initial euphoria a war tends to bring holding things off.

I wonder if that is true, though, as Germany was in so many ways completely different from Russia and yet also went through a revolution at the end of World War One, and revolutions and uprisings occurred in a number of other countries too. My own view is that the war was completely necessary for the Russian Revolution to happen.

 

[Border Reiver]

I wonder if that is true, though, as Germany was in so many ways completely different from Russia and yet also went through a revolution at the end of World War One, and revolutions and uprisings occurred in a number of other countries too. My own view is that the war was completely necessary for the Russian Revolution to happen.

The German Revolution was caused by the stresses and strains placed on German society by the war and the move to a near military dictatorship during the war - the German Revolution would not have occurred without the war either.

 

[catsmate]

Maybe so, but the country that beat them in 1905, namely Japan, managed to pull it off.

Japan wasn't a mess of ethnic groups with an incompetent autocratic government.

The German Revolution was caused by the stresses and strains placed on German society by the war and the move to a near military dictatorship during the war - the German Revolution would not have occurred without the war either.

Indeed. Without a war I can see Germany changing, becoming a more parliamentary system, gradually.


Another point I'd like to throw out; without WW1 would Wilson have won a second term as US president in 1916? And what effect would this have had on US involvement in a later wa?

 

[catsmate]

I hold that Russia would have weathered the internal turmoil over the following decade. It wouldn't have been pretty, but a complete violent overthrow I don't think was on the cards.

It might not have been a full scale revolution, but Nicholas II was an obstacle to any significant change. In the years before WW1. He'd have to go, and that wasn't going to be voluntary.

In fact in 1914 Russia was eager for war, far more so than, say, Germany;
the Russian Imperial Council had been in favour of a declaration of war on the Ottomans early in 1914 over the appointment of Liman von Sanders.

Apparently they hadn't learned from their last try at a "short, victorious war", what Lynd described as that "most ancient and dangerous of human illusions".

It does depend exactly which direction the powers-that-be jumped, though. Another 1905, but not a 1917.

Well in 1913-4 there was a distinct trend towards autocracy and repression again so some sort of outbreak was likely; even another 1905 style revolution could deter Russia from involvement in a later WW1, or hamper it's actions sufficiently to allow the German 'France First' plan to actually work.

Austria-Hungary was the one most likely to collapse in that following decade, IMO. A rickety empire that made the Ottomans look positively stable.

Yeah, A-H was a mess; ethnic, religious and political tensions with plenty of outside interference.

Would Lenin have even found his way back to Russia? Didn't the Germans send him there to stir the pot?

Well the Austrians were also supporting him. Ironically by mid-1914 Lenin was being sidelined by the other socialist/SD elements. The Second International's special conference on Russian unity (held in Brussels in July 1914) had condemned his actions (in absentia) and, if it had one ahead, the International Socialist Congress was going to denounce him and the Bolsheviks. However the war preempted this, it was to have been held in Vienna in late August.
So possibly a united, Bolshevik free, socialist block in Russia? A populist revolution and a social democrat government?

As this site notes, there were a whole slew of crises in the years leading up to 1914, any one of which could have triggered WW I. Europe was a boil waiting to be lanced.

True, but Europe survived all those crises, and more. Personally I believe that the 1914 trigger happened at the worst time; ten years earlier and the alliance bocks weren't as coherent, ten years later and there might have been sufficient political changes to make a general war impossible.

To continue your metaphor, the boil could have been drained without splattering bystanders and giving the patient a near-terminal infection.

In fact I believe that WW1 in 1914 could have been averted by speedier, multi-national negotiations. This is one of the reasons I believe Prince Alfred of Montenouvo carries significant blame for the war.

That said, one wonders, had Franz Ferdinand lived, would he have been able to transform the Austro-Hungarian Empire into a more participatory commonwealth.

Not alone. And I don't think he'd got the political skills to balance the factions well enough for major change; however the general atmosphere of stasis that prevailed under Franz Josef might have lessened enough to allow some changes. And once change begins it's difficult to stop.

 

[angrysoba]

The German Revolution was caused by the stresses and strains placed on German society by the war and the move to a near military dictatorship during the war - the German Revolution would not have occurred without the war either.

Exactly, and I make the point because it demonstrates how huge an impact the war was on even a very stable country like Germany. And the 1905 uprising was only caused because of another devastating military blow, so that is why I think that WWI was a necessary ingredient for the revolution, or at the very least, a necessary ingredient for the particularly radical revolution leading to the Bolsheviks in charge.

 

[Tolls]

True, but Europe survived all those crises, and more. Personally I believe that the 1914 trigger happened at the worst time; ten years earlier and the alliance bocks weren't as coherent, ten years later and there might have been sufficient political changes to make a general war impossible.

But if you look at what a tiny tiny thing actually sparked the whole war off, do you really think Europe would have held it together for long enough for the various changes needed to lower the general tension? Especially since some of those changes would have involved the weakening of one faction or another.

 

[catsmate]

But if you look at what a tiny tiny thing actually sparked the whole war off, do you really think Europe would have held it together for long enough for the various changes needed to lower the general tension? Especially since some of those changes would have involved the weakening of one faction or another.

But the assassination alone wasn't enough, it's the classic 'swiss cheese' model of disasters. It took a number of screw ups to allow the assassination to succeed and more to fail to stop the slide towards war, all in an atmosphere conducive to a cascading spread towards a general war.

 

[dudalb]

Japan wasn't a mess of ethnic groups with an incompetent autocratic government.


Indeed. Without a war I can see Germany changing, becoming a more parliamentary system, gradually.


Another point I'd like to throw out; without WW1 would Wilson have won a second term as US president in 1916? And what effect would this have had on US involvement in a later wa?

WW1 seems not have been a major issue in the 1916 election,"He Kept Us Out Of War" was used by the Dems as a slogan but the heavy emphasis was on Wilson's domestic record. As it was, it was a close election.

 

[catsmate]

WW1 seems not have been a major issue in the 1916 election,"He Kept Us Out Of War" was used by the Dems as a slogan but the heavy emphasis was on Wilson's domestic record. As it was, it was a close election.

That's the thing that interests me, a tiny shift could have cost Wilson the election historically.

 

[epepke]

Maybe so, but the country that beat them in 1905, namely Japan, managed to pull it off.

There's a fiction that all peoples are identical. I think people are scared of being called racists, but there really are cultures and cultural differences, and they're extremely long-lived, much more so than countries. In an important sense, a country is a form of expression of a culture, and this can change, when the culture doesn't. I personally enjoy perspicacity and even accuracy more than I enjoy being inoffensive, which is another cultural characteristic.

Since the US Constitution, France has had, what? A monarchy, a couple of empires, a military dictatorship, and something like half a dozen republics, but they're still very French. They're still abstractly intellectual, have a pretty healthy attitude toward sex, highly artistic, and rather unconcerned about personal hygiene and food safety. Americans have had some huge changes in economics, but we're still the sort of people who don't mind starting really severe depressions. We're also very sloppy and stupid, which can be an advantage, because willing to be stupid increases the overall probability of sometimes getting it amazingly right.

Japanese culture is fantastic at taking something and improving it ultimately. Before the hand-wringing of the 1980s, in the 1950s, Japanese were the first people to figure out how to make transistors reliably. The transistor was figured out in the US, but we didn't figure out how to make them. We'd make them and then we'd have to test each one to figure out what kind of a transistor it was. Japanese figured out how to make them all the time. The fact that they got a lot of ideas about how to do this from Americans isn't a contradiction.

Long before that, Japanese watched Portuguese seamen eating fried fish on Fridays, the temporal days. They thought that was a good idea and came up with tempura. If that isn't the best possible way to fry fish (or anything else, for that matter), then it will do until hyper-intelligent aliens land.

Russians are really good at suffering. Russians can survive anything and then even kill you a lot, as Napoleon and Hitler found out. Fixation on Orthodox Christianity or nothing probably comes from the fact that hell seems rather an improvement over Russia. They're also quite inventive. What Pavel Chekov said on Star Trek—"it was a Russian inwention"—was accurate in a lot of ways. A lot of things were invented first in Russia, including the telegraph and sewing machine, as I found out when doing research for a paper on inventions when I was a schoolboy. But they're for crap when it comes to making them or bringing them to market, so hardly anybody knows. A relative of a friend of mine visited the USSR in the early 1980s. She wanted some tampons or sanitary napkins or something, and the State nurse just laughed. Frank Zappa wanted to do industrial outreach to the Eastern Bloc countries figuring that they must have figured out how to do amazing things with bailing wire and snot, but the US Government stopped that.

WRT WWI, nobody seems to agree on why it happened. My view is that the powder kegs had already been laid, and the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand just put a match to them. The Old European Way didn't really start to go away until after WWII The Sequel. This Time with More Dead Jews! and it still is pretty strong, though not strong enough to dominate.

As for Sarajevo and the surrounding areas, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Balkans, former Yugoslavia, well. As Rucka Rucka Ali said about Greece, what the Rule 10 violation is their problem? I've known some people from that area as close personal acquaintances and colleagues, and I've never encountered anyone so much like a p-zombie outside of Atlanta, which is also nuts.

Here's a good 1914 song by Irving Berlin as performed by Tiny Tim which gets it pretty much right.



A more contemporary version:

 

[angrysoba]

There's a fiction that all peoples are identical. I think people are scared of being called racists, but there really are cultures and cultural differences, and they're extremely long-lived, much more so than countries. In an important sense, a country is a form of expression of a culture, and this can change, when the culture doesn't. I personally enjoy perspicacity and even accuracy more than I enjoy being inoffensive, which is another cultural characteristic.

Since the US Constitution, France has had, what? A monarchy, a couple of empires, a military dictatorship, and something like half a dozen republics, but they're still very French. They're still abstractly intellectual, have a pretty healthy attitude toward sex, highly artistic, and rather unconcerned about personal hygiene and food safety. Americans have had some huge changes in economics, but we're still the sort of people who don't mind starting really severe depressions. We're also very sloppy and stupid, which can be an advantage, because willing to be stupid increases the overall probability of sometimes getting it amazingly right.

Japanese culture is fantastic at taking something and improving it ultimately. Before the hand-wringing of the 1980s, in the 1950s, Japanese were the first people to figure out how to make transistors reliably. The transistor was figured out in the US, but we didn't figure out how to make them. We'd make them and then we'd have to test each one to figure out what kind of a transistor it was. Japanese figured out how to make them all the time. The fact that they got a lot of ideas about how to do this from Americans isn't a contradiction.

Long before that, Japanese watched Portuguese seamen eating fried fish on Fridays, the temporal days. They thought that was a good idea and came up with tempura. If that isn't the best possible way to fry fish (or anything else, for that matter), then it will do until hyper-intelligent aliens land.

Russians are really good at suffering. Russians can survive anything and then even kill you a lot, as Napoleon and Hitler found out. Fixation on Orthodox Christianity or nothing probably comes from the fact that hell seems rather an improvement over Russia. They're also quite inventive. What Pavel Chekov said on Star Trek—"it was a Russian inwention"—was accurate in a lot of ways. A lot of things were invented first in Russia, including the telegraph and sewing machine, as I found out when doing research for a paper on inventions when I was a schoolboy. But they're for crap when it comes to making them or bringing them to market, so hardly anybody knows. A relative of a friend of mine visited the USSR in the early 1980s. She wanted some tampons or sanitary napkins or something, and the State nurse just laughed. Frank Zappa wanted to do industrial outreach to the Eastern Bloc countries figuring that they must have figured out how to do amazing things with bailing wire and snot, but the US Government stopped that.

I'm certainly not disputing that cultural differences are real and affect societies, and I have most certainly not made any claim that all peoples are identical. Flashman at the Charge has an amusing passage about the Russian character which I found myself chuckling in recognition at. One of my history teachers, who was about as lefty as any other history teachers in England, used to delight in explaining history with a nod to national characeristics (Italians can't be proper fascists, not like the Germans, because their national characteristics don't appreciate order and efficiency; they're a nation of bottom-pinchers, not goose-steppers! etc...). The main hazards with explaining history by stereotype is that sometimes these easy generalizations turn out to be mistaken, as Russia was about Japan in 1905. As long as the analysis of national character is largely correct, then it can certainly be useful. Assuming that everyone wants the same thing, is usually a mistake, importing economic and political systems to other countries whose cultures don't have the same values, is also usually a mistake.

But it nonetheless remains true that societies have managed to transform themselves in a short space of time (decades), by one means or another. I pointed out that Japan is one such case but perhaps I should have pointed to Russia itself which industrialized on a pretty epic scale at a huge human cost in a matter of decades as well. I also think that this particular transformation of society would never have got off the ground had it not been for World War One.

 

[Tolls]

But the assassination alone wasn't enough, it's the classic 'swiss cheese' model of disasters. It took a number of screw ups to allow the assassination to succeed and more to fail to stop the slide towards war, all in an atmosphere conducive to a cascading spread towards a general war.

Not so sure I sit on that side of the fence for the period from assassination to war. It's always had a "slow motion train wreck" feel to it...an inevitability. The little things and small mistakes that get trotted out never strike me as enough to disguise the drive for a quick war that some key players seemed to be pushing for.

I've never thought "sleep walking into war" was a very good description. They knew where they were heading...OK, the scenery may not have been quite what they expected when they got there, but that doesn't change the intention.

 

[Corsair 115]

I am nowhere near informed enough on this subject to offer much of an opinion. But I would offer this one little bit: I would expect the arms race that had been occurring at sea between German and Britain (and to a lesser extent other nations) in terms of numerous ever-more-powerful dreadnoughts would have continued. And certainly all the national treasure poured into those would have had some economic effects.

Maybe the result is the Washington Naval Treaty in a prewar 1917 or so instead of a post-war 1922? And without a major European conflict the advancement of military aircraft and aircraft carriers is significantly delayed?

 

[catsmate]

Not so sure I sit on that side of the fence for the period from assassination to war. It's always had a "slow motion train wreck" feel to it...an inevitability. The little things and small mistakes that get trotted out never strike me as enough to disguise the drive for a quick war that some key players seemed to be pushing for.

I've never thought "sleep walking into war" was a very good description. They knew where they were heading...OK, the scenery may not have been quite what they expected when they got there, but that doesn't change the intention.

My take is that, as with previous crises, there were several obstacles on the road to war but this time they were avoided. Unfortunately.
For example Kaiser Wilhelm II wanted a meeting of the various national leaders, and had hoped to use Franz Ferdinand's funeral as an informal peace conference, but this didn't happen.
Likewise the slowness of communication and decision making in Austria-Hungary (mainly down to the glacial bureaucracy and court formality) left both Germany and Britain hanging in the weeks following the assassination.

I am nowhere near informed enough on this subject to offer much of an opinion. But I would offer this one little bit: I would expect the arms race that had been occurring at sea between German and Britain (and to a lesser extent other nations) in terms of numerous ever-more-powerful dreadnoughts would have continued. And certainly all the national treasure poured into those would have had some economic effects.

Maybe the result is the Washington Naval Treaty in a prewar 1917 or so instead of a post-war 1922? And without a major European conflict the advancement of military aircraft and aircraft carriers is significantly delayed?

Well there were numerous discussions between Britain and Germany on a naval agreement, and even on a non-aggression and mutual support pact in the period 1894-1914; however it was always complicated by other factors, disagreements on spheres of influence (e.g. Persia and the German Berlin to Baghdad railway), colonies and other alliance partners.

Probably the two most interesting were the British offer of December 1901 (status quo ante on the shores of the Mediterranean, status quo in Morocco, and navigation rights in the Persian Gulf, plus some discussions on Portuguese colonies) and the proposed naval treaty of 1913, mainly authored by Churchill, which would have limited the German High Seas Fleet to 5/8 of the Royal Navy in tonnage and numbers of battleships, armoured and protected cruisers. The latter came close to being agreed but finally floundered on the German desire for a "benevolent neutrality in case of war" clause.
I could see both countries revisiting the issue in 1915-7, especially if there were further strains in Anglo-French relations.

As for military/naval aviation (and indeed general aviation) yes, without the war this would be retarded significantly and for decades.

The availability of ex-military aircraft (and pilots) in the twenties caused a huge expansion of interest in aviation, which led to technological improvements. Without this I suspect that in (say) 1940 carrier aviation would be limited to scouting and protection from land based aircraft and the battleship era would continue, at least without a major naval war.