{"id":2480,"date":"2014-06-28T00:01:15","date_gmt":"2014-06-27T22:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/?p=2480"},"modified":"2014-06-27T15:42:14","modified_gmt":"2014-06-27T13:42:14","slug":"the-war-that-didnt-end-all-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/?p=2480","title":{"rendered":"The war that didn’t end all wars"},"content":{"rendered":"

100 years ago, it seems that everyone all over Europe was itchy as all hell, and all that was needed was a tiny spark.<\/p>\n

Enter stage left, a troop of idiots<\/del> students* who figure that killing the Archduke Ferdinand would be a just dandy way of getting the sweetties they’ve been stamping their foot about all along. This crazy is well matched on the Archduke’s side, who after being narrowly missed by a bomb in the morning sticks around town instead of getting the hell out**.<\/p>\n

And even then all would have been well for Franz Ferdinand had they not got lost to the tune of accidentally finding Gavrilo<\/a> where he sat nursing a cup of coffee, a grudge and a gun<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not that anyone much cared<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Europe was spoiling for a fight, and the finger poking and name-calling and posturing escalated. Germany had a long-polished plan<\/a> to invade France which, by all accounts, it didn’t really want to use at the time, but then France went and tweaked Germany’s tail and then the trouble started.<\/p>\n

Or at least, that’s how we mostly see things. Because history is written by the winners<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the result was major bloodshed<\/a>. Would they really have done it had they known what the price would be<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo: Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n

100 years later, and there’s still no end to itchy idiots<\/a>, military posturing<\/a> or war<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Remember.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* Repeating myself, of course.<\/p>\n

** In the finest tradition of some authors whose work I like<\/a>, I will mention that the whole story is exquisitely explained on Wikipedia<\/a>, for the low low price of free.

100 years ago, it seems that everyone all over Europe was itchy as all hell, and all that was needed was a tiny spark. Enter stage left, a troop of idiots students* who figure that killing the Archduke Ferdinand would be a just dandy way of getting the sweetties they’ve been stamping their foot about all along. This crazy is well matched on the Archduke’s side, who after being narrowly missed by a bomb in the morning sticks around town instead of getting the hell out**. And even then all would have been well for Franz Ferdinand had they not...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2480"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2488,"href":"https:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2480\/revisions\/2488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}