I'm annoyed with myself now...

[tobee]

....because I meant to start a thread here on Friday about the 110th anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie.

I just find the events of that day extraordinary. And also extraordinary that no one probably could really have imagined what would have followed in the next few years. And the events of the next 37 days. And the excitement of young men thinking that to join up would be such an adventure.

I’ve visited the museum in Vienna which displays the car he was in and the clothes he was wearing when he was shot. I appreciate that the background is more complex than this moment alone, but this one event and its consequences completely shaped the modern world. In WW1 and WW2 alone, millions of men wouldn’t have died, and that’s ignoring the wider impact of those conflicts.

I know the man who shot him ended up regretting what he did, but he really had no idea what he did!

Yes! Sometimes I think the more I read and hear about it the harder it's to get my head around it! I've kind of got a bit of an obsession with it, the world before that day, the 37 days after (with large parts of Europe not having much of a clue) the declarations after the failed attempts, or failure to engage with attempts, at diplomacy, the joining up and the mobilisations. Then the war of movement and the status of the cavalry before the settling down to trench warfare.

I can barely mention it to my family anymore because they all roll their eyes at me 😬😀

I suppose a lot of it comes down to thinking what a thing to do in response, to decide to settle the problem by mass killing and conflagration.

Also the visit to the museum; very much want to do that!