The elegant Bosnian city of Sarajevo saw the assassination of the Archduke and his wife on 28 June 1914, which was the kickoff to World War I. The immediate worry from the public was not global conflict, but whether the Archduchess’s corpse was grand enough to be buried with her husband in the Kapuzinergruft, the Imperial Crypt. Senior Bosnian military leaders saw things more precisely and took the opportunity to humiliate the Serbs, who rejected a Bosnian ultimatum and declared war. Things got grim instantly. In his magnificent 2008 book, The House of Wittgenstein - A Family at War, Alexander Waugh provided this stunning account of what happened next. It is pertinent to our own time, as I demonstrate below.
“The rest - an extraordinary scrimmage of nations roused to action in the name of honor - is as they say, history. On July 31st, Germany declared war on the Russians, who were mobilizing troops in Serbia’s defense; France, in honor of their agreement with Russia, moved against Germany; Germany, to protect itself against the French, invaded Belgium, whereupon the British (who had not the slightest interest in the Serbian quarrel) declared war on Germany in defense of Belgium’s neutrality. On August 5th, Austro-Hungary declared war on Russia; on August 6th, Serbia on Germany and the day after that Montenegro declared itself against the Austro-Hungarians and the Germans. On August 10th, France declared war on Austro-Hungary and on August 12th, Great Britain did the same. By August 13th Japan, thousands of miles away, had pitched in against Germany with the immediate effect that Austro-Hungary, in honorable defense of its ally, declared war on Japan. On August 28th, two short months after the Sarajevo shootings, Austro-Hungary declared war on Belgium.”
I mention this because a few weeks ago we came horribly close to a similar situation when Iran and Israel traded live rounds at each other from the sky. I don’t pretend to know why they stepped back for now, but they have.
For now.
...and WWIII started the day the criminal DJT was conceived.
Holy cow! You can't tell the players without a score card! War was so much simpler in 1941--they bombed us, we'll bomb them back! If things get any hotter in the Middle East, a place where about 12% of Americans can't name what country borders what and would fail a geography test asking them to fill in the countries' names on a blank map, life could get way more complicated than confusing Iraq with Iran.