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Comment by threesixandnine | Hacker News Reader

What a fail. The very first paragraph is factually wrong. Didn't read the rest.

Due to already receiving negative feedback on my comment let me explain.

The assasination didn't happen in Serbia but Bosnia that was at the time occupied by Austro-Hungarian Empire. It's a huge fail by somebody who tries to explain to us what 'really happened'.

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True, you are correct. Though it could be attributed to the author as a smaller mistake, as Franz was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist. I am more confused to how the US's reconstruction had anything to do with setting the stage for World War 1.

> For just as 1866 guaranteed a militarily and culturally strong Germany which would wear down Britain, France, and Italy to a near breaking point in World War I, it also guaranteed a truly united United States, with a society that held the majority view that democracy and equality were worth fighting for – and which would intervene to defeat Germany just in the nick of time.

Nothing in the piece supports this statement, and I find this pretty hard to agree with. The first part of the article is a rehash of known facts and history. The last few paragraphs are, from what I can tell, irrelevant to the overall theme as well as thinly-veiled glorification of the United States Civil Rights Act.

> Though it could be attributed to the author as a smaller mistake, as Franz was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist.

Not to nitpick but he was a Yugoslav nationalist. Though he was an ethnic Serb from Bosnia and Herzegovina, at the time occupied by Austria-Hungary.

During his trial he stated: "I am a Yugoslav nationalist, aiming for the unification of all Yugoslavs, and I do not care what form of state, but it must be freed from Austria."[1] He was a member of the Young Bosnia movement which included ethnic Serbs, Bosniaks, and Croats.

The distinction will become important especially during WWII and later during Yugoslavia's breakup in the 1990s, and it's at the heart of the rise and fall of Yugoslavia.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavrilo_Princip#CITEREFDedijer...

The distinction is extremely important as since the breakup of Yugoslavia Serbian nationalists have tried and practically succeeded in erasing Young Bosnia's ideology presenting them as right-wing Serbian nationalists. Even saying they were Yugoslavian nationalists probably doesn't correctly convey to people of today what they really meant and wanted—they mostly also considered themselves anarchists/libertarian communists (one of the most read authors among the group was Kropotkin, Princip was actually reading his Memoirs of a Revolutionist the night before the assassination). Čabrinović was extremely active as an anarcho-syndicalist and had prior problems with authorities for organizing workers' struggles. They saw national (under the premise that most peoples of west Balkans are really the same ethnic group divided by religion) liberation as a means to further workers' liberation (if one looks at economic conditions of Bosnia, and most of Balkans at that time it can make some sense, but that's a different topic). What complicates their case was the fact that the assassination was materially supported by the Black Hand, a secret nationalist organization in the Serbian Army. To see how words and designations can mean little in politics, later in 1920's Yugoslavia there was a prominent “Yugoslavian nationalist“ movement ORJUNA (ORYUNA, Organization of Yugoslavian Nationalists) which was an openly fascist organization—the complete opposite of what Young Bosnia was.

I understood it that since the US unified and was able to allow african americans into the military, they were strong enough and stable enough to participate. Additionally since african american (human) equality was front and center, germany's hate-fueled racist agenda was especially distasteful adding social and political motivation to participate.

Was Germany's involvement in WWI really based on a "hate-fueled, racist agenda"?

Of course it was for WWII but I thought Bismark was more into empire building than out to get rid of anyone except the Germans...

1. Bismark would have never supported Germany's behaviour leading up to WWI. The people in charge thought they had the genius of Bismark, but had a bit more in common with Nero.

2. The primary 'hate-fueled racist agenda' in WWI was the Serb-Austrian relationship... And that was less about direct racism, and more about imperialism. (Which the Entente was completely guilty of.)

This seems extraordinarily nitpicky given that the first paragraph exists merely to set up the simplistic view of the war's causes which the rest of the article is dedicated to knocking down.

I mean, by all means point it out, but bailing out on the whole article because of that is a bit much.

Bailing out of the whole article because of that little mistake is the only right thing to do if you want your brain to stay clean and not influenced by dilettants of the Internets. Why should I now read the whole article when I know I have to check every other 'fact'?

Fellow HNers who read the whole thing already confirmed that the article is bullshit. So I think I was right. Experience my friend.

How about refute the core of the work instead of focusing on a small issue?

The core of the work is claiming that the reunification of Germany and the Franco-Prussian war along with the US civil rights movement post Civil War set the stage for World War 1. The first point is not novel nor unbelievable. I find that the second point is far fetched, and the author doesn't really support this argument in article.

Which is fine, but that's not what the comment was talking about.

Well when it comes to WW2 he says "The U.S. military that desegregated in 1948 had recently assisted in putting down the second German attempt at empire in the 20th century – an attempt that itself grew out of bitterness and hate caused by the terms of surrender dictated by the French at the conclusion of World War I." Which is all essentially bullshit. The Treaty of Versailles was not unusually harsh, certainly when keeping in mind Germanys conduct in Belgium, unrestricted submarine warfare, and invention of chemical warfare and it was much more lenient then what Germany planned on leveraging against the allies. Germanies economic problems came much more from large amount of wartime borrowing and trying to weasel out of Treaty though intentional inflation, followed up by the global great depression.

Yet for some reason everyone, including the French, agreed a decade later to cancel the reparations which were expected to be fully repaid in 2008 (~90 years after end of WW1).

But more importantly, those who (order) misconduct in war are very rarely the same people who pay the reparations.

You are pedantically correct, but in all other ways wrong. Read it, it's an interesting piece even if you disagree with the conclusions.

I don't know if the text has been changed, but it reads:-

> After all, it was the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Serbia in 1914

and doesn't say anything about _where_ the assassination happened.

edit: the words "in Serbia" have been pointed out to me; there is a bug in my reading comprehension; sorry for the errant comment.

The bit where it says "in Serbia" seems to be talking about where the assassination happened. That could potentially refer to where he was Archduke instead, but that would be a really odd way to construct the sentence if so, and in any case would still be wrong.

According to Wikipedia:

> Franz Ferdinand Carl Ludwig Joseph Maria (18 December 1863 – 28 June 1914) was an Archduke of Austria-Este, Austro-Hungarian and Royal Prince of Hungary and of Bohemia [1]

Even if the author meant that Franz was an Archduke in Serbia, he would still be mistaken.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Au...

I read it as: "assasination of the [person] of [country origin] in [place] in [year]". I can see why it's confusing.

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