We’ve been sitting here in the newsroom, arguing about the First World War.
Gads, I love irony. Stupid arguments is exactly what got that whole thing going.
But when did it really start? And how significant is it that it started 100 years ago this week?
Officially, the First World War got underway on July 28, 1914, when Austria-Hungary opened fire on the Kingdom of Serbia.
Ostensibly, the attack on Serbia was in retaliation for the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo.
That shot was fired a month earlier, on June 28, 1914, spurring an ultimatum from Austria-Hungary, in collusion with Germany, which was crafted in such a way as to force war.
The goal was to crush Serbia out of hand, as a display of force. It really didn’t have anything to do with the death of the archduke or his wife (who most people forget was also killed). They wanted to show the rest of Europe that they were still the boss.
Immediately, however, a complex tangle of alliances and treaties came into play, and it really became a “world war” by mid-August.
Most of the alliances had been arranged to counter petty differences that had grown or lingered over a span of centuries of feeding mindless nationalism.
But what most had previously considered meaningless pieces of paper became focal points for egoistic opportunism – just like the egoistic opportunism that launched Austria-Hungary past the death of its heir to the throne and into a “we’ll show them” war.
There’s a school of thought that the war really began at the 1900 Paris World Fair, when all the superpowers smiled with all their teeth showing at each other, as each tried to outshine the other with exhibits whose underlying themes demonstrated their military might. Some of those displays got friends and foes rethinking their relationships – and retooling their military forces.
Some historians prefer to take it further back still … and who’s to say that every war didn’t start on the day the first guy wanted something another guy had?
I don’t want to belittle the fact that nine million people – mostly soldiers – were killed during the ensuing four years. That’s not a little thing at all.
Nevertheless, it was a stupid war.
It was a war fuelled by the egos of royals who viewed ordinary people with little more consideration than Southern American slave owners showed for their plantation stock.
The First World War was a fool’s game played with little regard for the lives of the real people who actually held the guns and stood in front of the bullets.
Battle tactics were inadequate to the rising technology, but worse than that, for the most part the generals and commanders didn’t care. Arrogance reigned supreme in the war rooms and the throne rooms.
It was not deemed honourable to run, duck, or dodge enemy fire – even if that fire was spewing from machine guns that were capable of creating a wall of flesh-eating lead – and so any soldier with the good sense to break stride might be summarily shot by his own officers.
In the end, it all backfired. Austria-Hungary virtually disappeared, the world changed … and didn’t change at all. Nobody won.
Now take a long, hard look today, 100 years later, at the events unfolding in the Ukraine, so near where that shot was fired to rain down all the excuses that arrogant leaders could muster to show how important they were – and how stupid they could be.
Lest we forget. Indeed.
Bob Groeneveld is the editor of the Langley Advance, a sister paper of The Record.
