Opinion of Gavrilo Princip

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Yes, I was waiting to make this thread.

[Meursault]

A visionary artist who made the whole of Europe his canvas.

[WalterMitty]

a loser who literally changed the world.

hard to believe a nobody can literally have that much power.

[dead0man]

a loser who literally changed the world.

hard to believe a nobody can literally have that much power.

He was a convenient spark, the spark would have eventually happened with or without him.

[Beet]

A terrorist.

[H. Ross Peron]

Vile human scum who indirectly caused virtually all the evils of the 20th Century and a bloodthirsty Serbian ultranationalist like Milosevich to vote.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Vile human scum who indirectly caused virtually all the evils of the 20th Century and a bloodthirsty Serbian ultranationalist like Milosevich to vote.

Any attempt to smash the decadent, reactionary Habsburg Empire should be applauded.

[H. Ross Peron]

Vile human scum who indirectly caused virtually all the evils of the 20th Century and a bloodthirsty Serbian ultranationalist like Milosevich to vote.

Any attempt to smash the decadent, reactionary Habsburg Empire should be applauded.

It seems to me at least that a large portion of the various minority nationalities of Austria-Hungary wanted a genuine multinational federation rather than full independence. Not to mention the collapse of the empire left each of the newly independent states prone to imperialist and Bolshevist aggression from abroad and subversion by fanatical ideologues at home.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Vile human scum who indirectly caused virtually all the evils of the 20th Century and a bloodthirsty Serbian ultranationalist like Milosevich to vote.

Any attempt to smash the decadent, reactionary Habsburg Empire should be applauded.

As I keep saying... stop trying.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Misguided freedom fighter. He was attempting to liberate his people from an oppressive empire, so you can't really blame him. If anything, it's Franz-Josef who started WW1.

[Cranberry]

Well, I'm Austrian, so I'm probably biased, but it strikes me as if he destroyed any chance of Austria-Hungary finally becoming a modern state, throwing Central Europe into the chaos it was until 1945/1990. Surely he wasn't the sole reason for WW1, but he played his part.
And no one kills the Austrian future head of state

[Peter the Lefty]

HP.  You don't try to bring down a reactionary system by killing the only good person inside of it.  His reason for killing the archduke was literally because the archduke wanted a confederation of sorts that would appeal to the various nationalities within the empire. 

[windjammer]

HP.

Franz Ferdinand was a great man. He was the one of the few people who perfectly understood that AH needed reforms. (like more power to the minorities). That's why he was so hated by Franz Joseph.

Princip basically destroyed the only chances of AH to become a modern state.

[RogueBeaver]

Vile human scum who indirectly caused virtually all the evils of the 20th Century and a bloodthirsty Serbian ultranationalist like Milosevich to vote.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

HP.  You don't try to bring down a reactionary system by killing the only good person inside of it.  His reason for killing the archduke was literally because the archduke wanted a confederation of sorts that would appeal to the various nationalities within the empire. 

It would be a lot like a Radical Republican assassinating Lincoln because he didn't go far enough with his plans for reconstructing the South and ensuring equality for African Americans.

[politicus]

HP.  You don't try to bring down a reactionary system by killing the only good person inside of it.  His reason for killing the archduke was literally because the archduke wanted a confederation of sorts that would appeal to the various nationalities within the empire.  

Any reform of A-H would be counterproductive, to say the least, to Princip's goal of a Greater Serbia.

[Oakvale]

Vile human scum who indirectly caused virtually all the evils of the 20th Century and a bloodthirsty Serbian ultranationalist like Milosevich to vote.

rofl

The GREAT MAN 'theory' of history really needs to die.

[Cassius]

HP, although I don't think he deserves the blame for all the post-war horrors of the 20th century that is being heaped upon him in this thread. Sure, I disagree with his course of action, and in the end it did not produce positive consequences; but, he could not have foreseen that, and more to the point, the war and much of the upheaval that followed it would have still occurred (although, of course, this does depend upon whether some unknown factor came into play in a counterfactual world where FF wasn't assassinated, throwing a spanner in the works of the European balance of power at the time).

Just to address the idea of the 'great man' theory, I'd argue that, it doesn't need to die, so much as to be merged with the idea of 'social forces' determining history. Sure, 'great men' often take advantage of the situation that they're handed with; for example, it is doubtful that Napoleon would have risen to the position of Emperor of France had the French Revolution not occurred. However, 'great men' are important inasmuch as they help determine the specific details of history; it is undoubtedly true that, with or without a revolution, France would have undergone serious social change towards the end of the 18th and in the beginning of the 19th centuries; however, if not for the succession of missteps made by the royalists, then maybe the revolution would not have taken on the form it did; perhaps France would have ended up as a constitutional monarchy, with no reign of terror, no directory and no Napoleon. Perhaps it might be more like the United Kingdom is today. Or maybe not, who knows?

To use another example; suppose that Julius Caesar had been purged during the conscriptions of Sulla. The Republic was undoubtedly unstable and on the verge of falling apart during the first century BC, and maybe it would have ended up as an empire. But, the path that it took during that time was fundamentally shaped by the actions of Caesar; Rome would have changed, but without him, it would have changed in a different way, one which would have had an immense impact upon the future development of western civilisation.

To sum up, my view is that change is a constant, but how change manifests itself (and in turn influences future changes) is very much dependent upon the actions of individuals.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Misguided freedom fighter. He was attempting to liberate his people from an oppressive empire, so you can't really blame him. If anything, it's Franz-Josef who started WW1.

^^

World War was going to happen one way or another.

[windjammer]

Misguided freedom fighter. He was attempting to liberate his people from an oppressive empire, so you can't really blame him. If anything, it's Franz-Josef who started WW1.

^^

World War was going to happen one way or another.

Definitely.
Franz-Joseph was obviously not affected at all by the death of Franz Ferdinand. He just wanted to declare war to Serbia.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Vile human scum who indirectly caused virtually all the evils of the 20th Century and a bloodthirsty Serbian ultranationalist like Milosevich to vote.

Ignoring the silly idea that one teenager was actually responsible for the war, much less its aftermath, Princip was a Yugoslav nationalist and one of his co-conspirators was a Bosnian Muslim.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Mostly I'm always shocked at how young he was.

[Mechaman]

Vile human scum who indirectly caused virtually all the evils of the 20th Century and a bloodthirsty Serbian ultranationalist like Milosevich to vote.

rofl

The GREAT MAN 'theory' of history really needs to die.

Yes really.

ANd more to the point why do we blame this random Serbian teenager when we could easily blame the incumbent archduke for itching for an excuse to kill more Serbians, the powder keg of alliances that was set up between the superpowers of Europe in the preceding decade that made such a major war a possibility to begin with, or how about we blame the sandwich maker at the cafe that Princip stopped at before the Archduke and his crew decided to go down the wrong street (Princip's successful assassination was actually possible because of several other botched attempts at the Archduke that happened like literally twenty minutes before he shot the guy and the Archduke decided to go to the hospital to visit the wounded people from the bomb attempt).

Hell, none of this would've been possible if that Idiot King Pekah didn't conspire against the Assyrians.

[ingemann]

Misguided freedom fighter. He was attempting to liberate his people from an oppressive empire, so you can't really blame him. If anything, it's Franz-Josef who started WW1.

Sad that Franz Ferdinand was the supporter of pro-Slavic forces in the empire, which was a major reason for that he was target, because the Serbs feared that he would reform the empire, so that the "Yugoslavs" would "stop" (not that the majority ever did) supporting independence.

[ingemann]

Also while I don't buy the great man of history, I think that Princip was a very insignificant butterfly, which flapped its wings at the absolute worst possible point in history. Yes the WW would not have happened if Europe was not already a barrel of gunpowder, but Europe had been such for years and they had avoided other sparks, like Morocco or the Balkan Wars blowing everything up. But the murder of the Austrian-Hungarian heir could not be ignored, as the central powers had ignored other provocations in the past.