One Man, One Pistol, 200 Million Dead

Gavrilo Princip (1895-1918)

Historical Facts:
It was exactly ninety years ago today (see Daily Dose below) that a Serbian nationalist named Gavrilo Princip fired a pistol into the automobile of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, killing him and his wife. That one terrorist act started one of the deadliest wars in mankind's history, killing over 8.5 million soldiers and over 13 million civilians before it was over (Encyclopedia Britannica). In addition, Gavrilo Princip's action triggered events that have resonated down the years and are still affecting us today. How could one man with a small Browning pistol totally screw up the entire 20th century and lead to events that already threaten the 21st century? We are still feeling the ripple effects of this little man's act nearly a hundred years later. This is a rather long essay and I sincerely hope it enlightens each and every one of you in some small way.

In defense of Gavrilo, it wasn't entirely his fault. For the last three decades of the 19th century, the empires of Europe had been building up their armed forces and forging alliances with each other. The political landscape of Europe at the start of the 20th century was headed for disaster anyway, it seemed to many. Every country was spending large amounts of money building new machines of war and the political squabbling was approaching critical mass. All Gavrilo did was light the fuse.

That fuse burned down within a month of the shooting. On July 28, 1914 Europe went to war and millions of young men died in the trenches in France. In those trenches was a young Austrian, serving as a corporal in the German army. His name was Adolph Hitler and the bitterness and anger he brought back from the war manifested itself twenty years later in an even deadlier world war and a holocaust that murdered six million of Europe's Jews. All total, World War II caused the deaths of 50 million soldiers and civilians (Keegan - "The Second World War"), or 2% of the entire world's population at the time.

But the horror Gavrilo started didn't stop there by any means. In 1917, the Russian Empire under Czar Nicholas underwent a revolution caused by the unpopularity of the war and the high death rate among Russian soldiers fighting Germany. Lenin's Communist Revolution forced Russia to withdraw from World War I but the deaths didn't stop there. From 1917 to 1924, over 9.4 million Russians died in the Revolution (Rummel - "Lethal Politics : Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917"). And then, to make matters worse for the Russians, Josef Stalin came to power and during his reign of terror (1924-1953) 51.7 million Russians were "purged" and another 3.3 million died of famine (Rummel - "Death By Government"). After Stalin's death, the Cold War continued with the US for forty years and untold millions died worldwide as the US and the USSR fought or supported small wars around the world in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua, Cuba and many more. No one has yet come up with an accurate estimate of the death toll of the Cold War.

But the deaths and casualties that Gavrilo started with his little pistol, that I described above, pale in comparison to the real damage he caused. You see, one of Germany's allies in World War I was the Ottoman Empire which had ruled the Middle East from 1350. All of present day Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt - the entire region was part of the Ottoman Empire. And we all know what happens to the losers in a major war, don't we? Britain and France came out victorious in World War I and were determined to make their former enemies pay for it. They imposed harsh terms on Germany that eventually led to the resentment and anger that brought Hitler to power. Their biggest sin however was to divide up the Ottoman Empire among themselves. The Turks, who had ruled the Ottoman Empire for 600 years were allowed to keep what is modern day Turkey but the rest was divvied up between Britain and France as "protectorates". It is no coincidence that at about this time the automobile was becoming popular and future mechanized warfare also was going to need plenty of oil.

The Turks had ruled with a bloody hand over the region for centuries. When their hard-line Byzantine rule was replaced by the Brits and French, everything went to hell quickly. The Brits and French just didn't understand the tribal loyalties and feudalistic society they were trying to manage. When they threw the Turks out and moved in they failed to notice that the societies in the region were still living in the Middle Ages. That has not changed at all in the last eighty years. Except that now, they have wealth from oil and weapons of mass destruction.

The French got Syria and Iraq while the Brits got Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the area they named "Palestine" (present-day Israel and Jordan). The Brits created a "mandate" out of the region that is now Israel and Jordan. It was originally called "Palestine" or "Eretz Israel" and the entire area was intended to be the Jewish homeland, according to the Balfour Declaration. After increased Arab resistance, in 1921 the lands to the East of the Jordan river were named "Transjordan" and Jews were excluded from settlement there. This area eventually became modern-day "Jordan". Both areas were part of the same "mandate" but administered separately.

The Brits and French installed kings over their various "protectorates". These "kings" were previously nothing more than tribal leaders with friends in the British or French Army. Go read about T.E. Lawrence if you want to know more about this period. The trouble with the Arab peoples of the region started almost as soon as World War I was over and continues to this day. The only ones of these "kingdoms" that survive today are Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The rest of the countries fought the Brits and French mercilessly and eventually drove them out after World War II. Revolution after revolution followed in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, etc. Dictators and army coups became the norm and the fighting and killing haven't stopped yet. Whether you know it or not, life in these countries was horrible from the start. Royal families were murdered, beheaded and their bodies mutilated and dragged through the streets (Iraq - July 14, 1958). The recent atrocities in Iraq are nothing new to these people. The introduction of Israel into the region in 1948 was only another excuse to kill and murder.

And the killing goes on and on and on ........

All because Gavrilo Princip took out his pistol while standing in Francis Joseph Street in Sarajevo and fired two shots into the Archduke's car, killing the Archduke and his wife. Archduke Franz Ferdinand's last words were "Es ist nichts, Es ist nichts..." (It is nothing, It is nothing...). He was wrong in more ways than one.

As Otto von Bismark said in 1897, "If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans". Bismark is the one man directly responsible for the unification and rise to world power of Germany in the 20th century. He was also psychic, it seems.

As for Gavrilo Princip, he was jailed and treated kindly by the Austro-Hungarian government until his death in prison of tuberculosis in 1918. The little Serbian terrorist had no idea what he had caused. Sometimes though, all it takes is one little asinine act to cause a chain reaction that reverberates down through history for centuries.

Opinion:
This is what Bill Clinton never understood, in spite of his great "knowledge". He was a smart man, indeed, but the historical implications of what was brewing in the Middle East in the 1990's totally escaped him. That is why I despise him, not because of Monica or all the womanizing and lies. No, those acts just betrayed his character. His greatest failure was that he totally ignored the building storm coming from the terrorists, even after the first World Trade Center bombing or the USS Cole disaster and repeated warnings from other countries. He just didn't understand that sometimes all it takes is a little nudge from a little man in some backwater country to alter history forever. Presidents and kings may come and go, but angry young men with big ideas and little guns will always be with us. We have to stop them before they fire that one fatal shot. On January 20, 2001 when George W. Bush was sworn in as President it was already too late. On September 11, 2001, it was way too late - another angry little man from a backwater country altered history again. Clinton had plenty of intel information on Osama bin Laden in addition to several acts of provocation by the terrorists, yet did almost nothing in his eight years in office to avert the disaster which we find ourselves in now. Mr. Clinton, that is your legacy. You ignored the past and slept through the present. And you've left us to straighten out our future.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
-- George Santayana (1863-1952)

Further Reading:

Websites:
Rudolph J. Rummel's Excellent Website
Politprop Library - "Out Of Control" by Zbigniew Brzezinski
"Deaths By Mass Unpleasantness" - Estimated Totals For The Entire 20th Century
"Assassination In Sarajevo"
"Gavrilo Princip Biography"

Books:
Brzezinski, Zbigniew - Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century (1993)
Pipes, Richard - "A Concise History of the Russian Revolution" (1995)
Keegan, John - "The Second World War" (1989)
Reitlinger, Gerald - "The Final Solution" (1953)
Singleton, Fred - "Twentieth-Century Yugoslavia" (1976)

Editor's Note: I have researched this subject as well as I could late at night on a Sunday. Any inaccuracies which may be in the above should be brought to my attention immediately. I will gladly make corrections. Except for the "Opinion" paragraph - that is strictly my subjective feelings on the period discussed.

Posted by Allan at June 28, 2004 03:36 AM | TrackBack