In other words, Princip was standing in precisely the right place to assassinate the archduke. Schiller’s delicatessen stood on the original route planned for Franz Ferdinand’s motorcade indeed, the chauffeur’s fatal uncertainty was caused by the local governor, Oskar Potiorek, shouting at him from the passenger seat that he had should have stayed on Appel Quay. After the failed attempt earlier in the day, Princip stood in that exact position on purpose. The idea that Princip happened to be in the right place at the right time is total bunkum. No mention of this was ever recorded in history, and it turns out it was erroneously sourced from a fictional burlesque published in Brazil in 2001 and mistakenly included in a historical documentary, where it spread as fact from there. It's a cute story but it's totally fictional. So if he really bought something else that took longer to prepare, WW1 might’ve never happened. It’s an account that, while respectful of the significance of Franz Ferdinand’s death, hooks pupils’ attention by stressing a tiny, awe-inspiring detail: that if Princip had not stopped to eat a sandwich where he did, he would never have been in the right place to spot his target. More specifically, though, we’re talking the version of events that’s being taught in many schools today. We’re talking the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, of course-the murder that set the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire on a collision course with Serbia, and Europe down the slippery slope that led to the outbreak of the First World War a month after Princip pulled the trigger on June 28, 1914. Yet it might never have happened–we’re now told– had Gavrilo Princip not got hungry for a sandwich. It was the great flash point of the 20th century, an act that set off a chain reaction of calamity: two World Wars, 80 million deaths, the Russian Revolution, the rise of Hitler, the atomic bomb. Use the tag for posts where you're asking how something could have happened different rather than what if it happened differently. Use the tag to signify double blind what-ifs. Use the tag to indicate points of divergence based on different landscapes. and no personal politics, conspiracism, snark, etc. It also means no image macros, no bots, no joke-only posts, etc. No low-effort posts, which means answers should be more than single-sentence replies. Don't insult people, don't correct spelling or grammar, and don't feed trolls - report them instead. Questions should be set in the past, so no current events (6 years is a nice limit), and they should not require magic or time-travel to occur. If there's a way to read the question that allows an interesting answer, go for it. "Yes, And!" Please read questions charitably. Posting and Commenting Rules (more details are here):
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |