Dromond
Pleasantly abstruse.
100 years ago today, World War One began with the Austro-Hungarian Empire's declaration of war on Serbia. The heir to the Dual Monarchy, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, had been assassinated one month earlier by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip, and was followed by diplomatic speed chess attempting to avert war. Obviously, the diplomats failed. July 28, 1914, the world changed forever. Four years and one month later, the Western powers were battered, bled, and exhausted, having spent staggering amounts of lives and money for reasons no one could quite figure out. The vengeful Entente powers imposed impossible terms on the defeated German Empire. The other Central Powers fared badly too. Austria-Hungary collapsed and was divided up into a patchwork of mini-states that are still festering a century later. The Ottoman Empire was stripped of all territories outside the ethnic Turkish core (in other words, the middle freaking east), which were divided up by the victors, leading to meaningless lines drawn in the desert that are still festering a century later.
Gavrilo Princip's name is infamous. He is called a terrorist today, but he wasn't. Not in the sense we think of the term. Princip was a nationalist and very much a product of his time. It was never his intent to spark a war, let alone one of global magnitude. Regardless of his intent, he IS directly responsible for World War One, and indirectly responsible for World War Two. Gavrilo Princip lit the powder-keg that brought down the old world order. Adolf Hitler crawled from the wreckage of the German and Austrian empires to set the world on course to a second and even worse world war.
Gavrilo Princip's name is infamous. He is called a terrorist today, but he wasn't. Not in the sense we think of the term. Princip was a nationalist and very much a product of his time. It was never his intent to spark a war, let alone one of global magnitude. Regardless of his intent, he IS directly responsible for World War One, and indirectly responsible for World War Two. Gavrilo Princip lit the powder-keg that brought down the old world order. Adolf Hitler crawled from the wreckage of the German and Austrian empires to set the world on course to a second and even worse world war.
