Name_________________________________________ GLOBAL HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY

Date_____________ World War I 2

AIM: Was WWI inevitable?

DO NOW:

• Describe, in your own words, what’s happening in the cartoon.

 Who do these people
represent?

What does Balkan

troubles mean?

What is the point of view of the cartoonist?

 THE SPARK THAT CAUSED WORLD WAR I

What if this event never happened?

One Wrong Turn and a Hundred Million People Die
1914

On the morning of 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie,
Duchess of Hohenberg, were shot dead in Sarajevo by 19-year-old assassin Gavrilo Princip.
This launched a series of events that led to World War I, in which more than 16 million people
died. This war led to economic calamity and helped bring about the Great Depression, a period
that was especially bad in Germany, a nation which had the additional burden of paying war
reparations to the winning powers.

The financial hardship, coupled with the “humiliation of Versailles” (the treaty that Germany
signed to end the war), led to the rise in German nationalism that helped a former lieutenant
named Adolf Hitler come to power. Once again, war raged in Europe and around the world, this
time with the death of 60 million people. This second world war ushered in the age of nuclear
weapons and its end led directly to the Cold War, which consumed inconceivable amounts of
money and almost pushed the world to the brink of nuclear devastation.

How did this happen?

Princip had planned to assassinate Franz Ferdinand that day in 1914, but the plan went bad.
Princip gave up and went to Morizt Schiller’s café to have a sandwich. Then something totally
unexpected happened. Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s driver, Leopold Loyka, made a wrong turn.
He turned onto Franz Josef Street. He was not supposed to have turned there. He drove right in
front of a surprised Gavrilo Princip. One can almost picture him, sandwich in hand, slack-jawed
in surprise. Loyka realized his mistake and slammed on the brakes. This caused the engine to
stall and the gears to lock up. The Archduke, his wife, and Loyka were sitting ducks. Princip
seized the opportunity and fired into the open car at a range of five feet. His bullet hit the
Archduke in the neck. The archduke’s wife, Sophie, instinctively covered Franz’s body with her
own. Princip’s next bullet killed both Franz and Sophie.

War, poverty, misery, and nearly100 million people dead came from what essentially was a
single bad piece of data. A single wrong turn. A Garmin would have kept this from happening.

Maybe World War I would have happened anyway. Maybe it was inevitable at that point that
there would be some spark setting off the powder keg of Europe. But maybe not. Maybe a bad
piece of information did cause 100 million people to die.

Bad information does indeed have a price incalculably high and largely invisible to us. Soon it
will be a thing of the past.

© Byron Reese 2016

Was WWI inevitable?

TASK: Come up with a list of arguments for both sides.

Yes, it was inevitable. No, it was not inevitable.

WWI was bound to happen. WWI would not have happened if the
Archduke wasn't assassinated.