11th of November
Posted in History, Reading and Writing on November 11th, 2007 by FKG
Today is Remembrance day, which marks the day that the first world war ended 89 years ago. We attended a little ceremony at Monroe park just across the street from our place this morning. And as some old fella was emotionally rambling on about the war, I got to thinking “what if?” Like what if the war never happened? Would the world be where it is now?
Just imagine how the history of the world would’ve turned out if the bumbling Austrian Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand didn’t get himself killed in Sarajevo. No one would’ve had the excuse to declare war on anyone. Especially Germany who jumped at the chance to execute their Schlieffen Plan to invade France. A certain little known disgruntled Austrian born wannabe artist would never have experienced the horrors of war, humiliation of defeat and hence not formed his political party with the suspect ideology who would later become infamously known as the Nazi party.
World war 2 would never have eventuated, then their would have been no cold war, no veitnam war, no conflict between the Jews and Palestinians, no training and arming of Osama by the Americans and thus no war in the middle east, no war in Iraq and then maybe the world would be in a peaceful state today. It’s as simple as that.
But the reality is far from it. If anyone had a time machine and tried to meddle with past events, somehow history would find away to teach us the error of our ways with some unforeseen alternate eventuality. Just like in the thought provoking book I have recently read Making History, by british comedian Stephen Fry. In which the protagonist finds out the hard way, that his good intentions of preventing the existence of Adolf Hitler would actually pave the way in his place for an even more brutal dictator who makes the world into a hellish place.
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