"Serbia Nationalists comminted the perfect murder"

A murder yes, but not so perfect...

http://www.historyhouse.com/in_history/ferdinand/

Nedelko Cabrinovic, managed to get his nerve up and lob a bomb at the Archduke's car. Sadly, he had no aim and hit a neighboring car, injuring several in the crowd quite badly but not harming the Archduke at all. Nedelko quickly swallowed a cyanide capsule and jumped in a nearby canal. Had Nedelko done a few calculations beforehand, it would have saved a great deal of embarrassment. The poison had long since expired and the river was only ankle deep. An angry crowd pulled the vomiting Cabrinovic from his chosen gutter. Hearing the bomb, the last three conspirators all assumed that their target had been killed and wandered off to a local pub to get drunk in celebration.

Furious, Franz Ferdinand confronted the mayor of Sarajevo at City Hall saying, "Mr. Mayor, one comes here for a visit and is received by bombs! It is outrageous!" The mayor looked around frantically and burst into his prepared speech: "Your Royal and Imperial Highness!...Our hearts are full of happiness..." Smile and nod, Mr. Mayor, smile and nod. Later in the afternoon, the Archduke decided to go visit the victims of the morning's bomb in the hospital. His confused driver, however, took a wrong turn and drove right past Schiller's -- the pub in which the other conspirators were busy drinking away.

Gavrilo Princip, a young revolutionary once turned down by the Serbian Army for being too "small and weak" raised his pistol, shot twice and killed the Archduke and his wife.

Had Gavrilo not stayed and dawdled at the pub talking to a friend, the Archduke could very well have completed his stay in Sarajevo without further event

I think Captain Dave got it completely right.

A lot of people here are regurgitating the basic stuff they teach you in middle school. Sure there's the alliance networks and stuff, but to really understand the situation you have to understand why those alliances and where created and world events that raised tensions beforehand.

There's been a passing reference to the Moroccan Crises I think, but no one mentioned the Balkan Wars or the Bosnian Crisis or any of the other sundry events that made the leaders of Europe just as paranoid and suspicious as a bunch of guys playing Diplomacy.

So what caused the First World War? I think I'll say everything between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and 1914.

And from there you could even argue that Napoleon caused World War Two! Perhaps a touch far-fetched, but I'm sure something with greater knowledge and superior powers of persuasion than myself could argue that case...

Perfect murder as in the perfect excuse to attack dangerous Serbia.

all wars are started by the british.
all blame work goes to germany.
all wars on earth since WW1. either of the battle party, or both of them r funded by the USA.
eg. vietnam, afghan resistance(taliban) during USSR invasion.
indopak war, (gave weapons to pak always)
etc,etc,etc

i forgot korean war XD

That's such an absurdly naive statement.

How was the Korean War started by the British?

It was started by NORTH KOREA!

However, this is about the causes of World War I, so we should stay with that.

Was it Germany's fault for giving Austria a 'blank cheque' of support for any action?
Was it Russia's falt for not having the plans to fight Austria alone an dthus had to mobalise agaisnt Germany too?
Was it Britain's fault for not making it plain that they woudl fight if Germany attacked France?
Was it Serbia's fault for not giving in to Austria's demand (they agreed to 9 out of ten points on the ultimatum)?
Was it France's fault for having a stupid alliance with Russia, after all they did need it to feel secure really?
Or was it Germany's fault for being stupid enough to involved breaching the neutarlity of a country, who's guarenntee of independence was the one solid British commitment you could count on in europe, in their mobilisation plans? Ie while getting ready to fight...

korean war was game of USA to make base in south korea. in order to tackle china, same like is pakistan to tackle india. and US got 15 bases in indian ocean. i may dare to say that world terrorist country is america. not those barbaric fanatics of islam of middle east, all they doing is protecting thier land of oil for thier intrest,
once oil gone, USA will target other resource rich countries by making same kind of excuses.

I blame WW1 on Serbia. I am a German and I blame WW1 on Serbia, and WW2 on France. I will explain.

A Serbian terrorist fired the first shot. Austria-Hungary gave Serbia a fair punishment against the terrorist, that Austrian-Hungarian officials would be on the jury stand in his trial. They disagreed. War erupted.

France imposed harsh treaties against Germany (even though France had record numbers of casualties in this war and Great Britain and America were the real victors). When they became unbearable, they got a powerful leader and destroyed France. All of this lead back to it being France's fault.

@Friendly Sword: God you stupid!!! ... You forgot the Legion of Doom... Lol :)

the effect which stopped another world war did apply in europe before world war 2. The major powers agreed to pretty much anything to stop a second war.

Britian didn't support the czechs against germany, even when the soviet union offered their support.

it was only poland which went too far, after giving in to the rest of germany's demands...

Of course Germany didn't think they would lose the war. (and for a long time it looked like they were unstoppable) so they weren't really afraid of it.

There was no third world war because both the US and USSR had more nukes than they could find places to use them, and both knew it.

World war 1 was just another standard european war which happened to turn out a little differently.

Oh, KingTigerTank. You're so entertainingly crazy.

Knights Dawn, since this is a World War I thread I'm not gonna address your World War II points. Lord knows there;s plenty of people who want to talk about that so start another thread about it.

As to you saying Serbia started the Great War, please look a little deeper. Of course a Serbian nationalist killed the Archduke, but the Austrian demands were intolerable to Serbian sovereignty.

After the July Ultimatum the dominoes of the alliance structure really started to fall, and the structure of that alliance was the creation of Kaiser Wilhelm II's erratic foreign policy.

Russia and Germany were both autocratic monarchies and were allied till the Kaiser let Bismarck's Reinsurance Treaty expire. Wilhelm built up a navy as a direct threat to Great Britain. He pissed off France and scared Britain more in the Moroccan Crises. The list goes on.

Germany didn't "start" the First Wold War, but through its Kaiser who controlled its government it was largely responsible for creating the situation in Europe that made a war of such destructive potential possible.

Invictus, thank you for putting it better than I could have!

@Knights Dawn - just because you're German doesn't mean that you shouldn't be able to accept that the Germans of the time (note: NOT you!) were responsible. As I stated previously, since the 1960s, German historians generally agree in seeing that Germany was to blame for WWI. I won't start with WWII.

There are 3 "isms" and a idea to why the Great War was started, I can point the finger at Serbia for most of em.

1. Nationalism- A Serbian Nationalist was the terrorist
2. Militarism- Austria and Germany were expanding there military and Serbia knew that.
3. Imperialism- Austria wanted more land and Serbia stood in their way
4. Secret Treaties...ism- Serbia was allied with Russia, who was allied with France, who was allied with England, who was allied with America...

To be honest... >.>
I did it *-*

invictus
ur entertainingly dumb

i agree with king tiger tank. i guess he is also from south asia.

and our way of seeing USA's hand in every war is right.
as of WW1 i think blame must go on the serbian assassinator.
europe was in verge of volcanic eruption, and the serbian broke the yield point.
each country has its own hand in starting WW1.
austria and germans expanding thier military, and 100s of secret pacts, and after the archduke was killed, within weeks i guess new alliances were formed. and hence triggered ww1.
and due to ww1, ww2 took place.

Gee, what are the chances arya_invasion and KingTigerTank are the same person...

I love the regression of cause and effect to Napoleon. You guys are only getting proximate causes here. Clearly WWI was started by a series of long events ultimately stemming from seemingly arbitrary initial conditions at the moment of our universe's conception, the Big Bang.

arya_invasion, if your judgment that the US was behind some grand, multi-generational conspiracy achieved through wars is based on the same level of analysis that your views on the cause of the First World War is, then it should be obvious that you, sir, are the one wrong here.

Enough with the whiny post-colonial cant.

How about another perspective which is not solely blaming Germany? o.o?

Here is one^^ Allied forces who had already control the sources and power in Europe wanted to keep the status quo.

Yet other group needs to enpower themselves, yet all sources of power was in the hands of allies. So they had no choice but to demand a revision in the status quo by directly challanging the other group that does not want a revision and wants to keep German-side with less power.

IN such great wars you cannot blame a side or a part of a side to cause the war. In WW1 it was England, France, Russia, Germany ... all was the reason; to change or not to change the status quo in Europe.

Therefore it was the system who started the war *o*
=D

Chuck Norris started WWI

em no, clearly as stated above it was Nebuchadnezzar not chuck norris.

Maybe they are one in the same?

IT was kaiser wilhelms II fault. he undid what bismarck did and instead of allying with russia and having a russian austrian german alliance created just a german austrian alliance. he was stupid in attacking france as well and him attacking france first led to england declaring war and with england comes america eventually.