Author Topic: AP Therapy Group - Death of the IF. How do you cope?  (Read 24140 times)

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Offline TimM

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Re: AP Therapy Group - Death of the IF. How do you cope?
« Reply #60 on: March 15, 2013, 03:22:12 PM »
 
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But they are the prime motivating factors. History, just as life, has an amazing way of connecting all of the dots in between...

So one has to wonder what a random element, namely me, would affect.  If I intercepted Princip, knocked him out, and locked him up somewhere, so he missed the fatal appointment with Franz Ferdinand, what would have happened.  Had there been no assassination attempt, they would have been no reason to investigate.  Even if it delayed the war by say, one year, that still might have made a difference.  Russia might have had more time to prepare, and as such, would have been in better shape to fight the Germans.  If the war had not gone so badly, Lenin might not have had the support and backing to take power (one of his big promises was that, if he took power, he would make peace with Germany).

If Tsarist Russia had remained, perhaps Nicky would have convinced them not to impose such harsh reparations on Germany after the war.  That would have taken the wind out of Hitler's sails (the harsh reparations played havoc with the German economy in the early 1930's, which Hitler capitalized on).
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Offline TimM

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Re: AP Therapy Group - Death of the IF. How do you cope?
« Reply #61 on: March 17, 2013, 03:35:41 PM »
edubs 31 wrote:

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While writing this I was thinking about your 'what if' scenario Tim. If a single cataclysmic event is actually the result of many smaller events pieced together one by one...like the links of a chain with a wrecking ball attached to the end...would breaking the smallest/weakest link truly change everything?

We always talk about what history would have been had the Archduke not been assassinated, but it's the events that led to his assassination, not the murder itself, that were far easier to alter. With this in mind the single turning point that led to World War I was when no one told the driver, Leopold Lojka, that the route from City Hall had changed. He was under the impression that the festivities were to continue as scheduled, and therefore Franz Joseph Street would have had multiple cars and several police officers stationed along either side. Instead the street was virtually empty since Ferdinand had requested to go straight from the reception to the hospital to see the victims of the failed bombing attack from earlier that morning. It was their bad luck and Princip's great fortune of course that he just happened to be on the street and leaving Schiller's Deli at the right time. It also turned out to be a fateful decision to thrown the car in reverse and head back towards Appel Quay rather than to proceed down Franz Joseph and loop back around.

But how incredibly easy would it have been, prior to leaving City Hall, for someone in the know such as Governor Potiorek, Count Harrach, a guard, or the Archduke himself, to have simply mentioned to the driver the following? "Take us to the hospital"

Had those five simple words been spoken, would the history of the world been considerably different?

"Take us to the hospital" = No assassination
No assassination = No World War I
No World War I = No Russian revolution
No Russia revolution = No violent overthrow of the Tsarist regime
No overthrow of the Tsar = No Soviet Union
No Soviet Union = No Cold War and millions of lives lost

And also...

"Take us to the hospital" = No assassination
No assassination = No World War I
No World War I = No German defeat
No German defeat = No rise of fascist dictator Hitler
No rise of Hitler = No World War II and millions lives lost

But your yourself said that it would have only delayed, not stopped the war (assuming the Black Hand didn't have some kind of Plan B).  Still, as I said, any delay might have changed things.  Russia might have been better prepared.  The reparations made to Germany might not have been so harsh.  Or maybe, and this is reaching, a diplomatic solution might have been found. 

The First World War totally destroyed the world as it was known back then, and the decisions made afterword by the Allies, the British and French carving up the Middle East between them, for example, had long term disastrous effects.  We're still reaping a bitter harvest from the decisions of 1918.  So, if I could find a way to change it, to eliminate much of the horror and suffering of the last century, I would try it.
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Offline edubs31

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Re: AP Therapy Group - Death of the IF. How do you cope?
« Reply #62 on: March 17, 2013, 09:57:32 PM »
Oh I didn't mean that I myself necessary believed it. It's just an interesting thought. I suppose if I was time warped and had no chance of returning there any number of things I would try to change.

Problem with my messing with the butterfly effect is that you don't know A) how history will turn out because of it, and B) how it will effect you. Lets say you and I stopped WWI Tim, and maybe WW2 because of it. Who is to say that the first global war would end up being our WW3 nightmare. Nuclear weapons conflict with a billion or more dead and economies crushed. That would have been even worse than WWI and WW2 combined, bad as they were.

I like science and math and how they relate to our world. The concepts involved in chaos theory and fractal geometry. Still I'm comforted by the thought, perhaps I ought to call it the "possibility", that things do truly happen for a reason. There were countless chain links involved that allowed for the death of Franz Ferdinand and the subsequent start of WWI, but there are just as many to allow you or I to take a sip of coffee this morning. There is a fixation on what could have been done that day, and hopefully I've simplified it with my example of how a simple warning could have altered the outcome.

But what of the incredible coincidence that Princip just happened to be on the street, and the car was reversing? What of the fact that the previous bombing was the specific reason why the aide to the Governor was in the hospital instead of available to tell the driver that the route had changed. Or that Princip was even available that day. Or that he even survived childhood when six of his nine siblings died, or that he was born into an embittered peasant family, or that he was born into the Austrian empire, or that he was born in the first place...or his parents, or human beings, or life on earth, or the earth itself.

We are all miracles. Everything the happens needed a gagillion things to line up perfectly for it to happen. Be it mundane or extraordinary. So my question of course is how much, if any, of our destinies are random chance, luck and circumstance as opposed to destiny and fate?
Once in a while you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right...

Offline TimM

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Re: AP Therapy Group - Death of the IF. How do you cope?
« Reply #63 on: March 18, 2013, 03:20:10 PM »
Of course, I'd hardly call the First World War a miracle.  As I have said, it left the world a worst place, not a better one.

However, your comments made me think of a story I read many years ago.  It postulates that our current history is in fact, an alternate one.  In the real history, Nazi Germany won World War II and took over the Earth.  Someone was sent back, a la Terminator, to change it, and thus the history we know was created.  Since we were changed along with it, we would always remember it that way.

The same would apply here, if I went back and eliminated Princip (and maybe Rasputin and Lenin, just to be sure).  Whatever history emerged would be the "correct" one because it would be remembered as such.
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