History, by Curran: WWI Is Over! (92 Years Later)

Hi there, hi there, and welcome to a bright and shiny new year of higher education at our very own, beloved, revered, and always entertaining high school. Wherever that may be. To-day's lecture has been brought to you by the letter W and the number 1! I know that's supposed to be how we end the show, but really I think that, as old as we are, we can transcend such childish adherence to rules and format and things like that. I'm just kidding, Sesame Street is Awesome with a capital 'A' and tops in the department of social relevance. Please view the 2006 documentary "The World According to Sesame Street" for class next week to understand how the program reaches millions of children all over the world. There are over twenty co-productions produced by companies around the world, assisted by Children's Television Workshop. Each focuses on educating kids about things specific to their culture, in addition to basic reading and math. the current list of co-productions includes Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kosovo, Mexico, Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Palestine, Russia, and South Africa.

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So anyway, regarding the headline, The Great War is finally over. Really, the story is that Germany finally paid the last of the reparations demanded of them by the Treaty of Versailles. "The initial sum agreed upon for war damages in 1919 was 226 billion Reichsmarks, a sum later reduced to 132 billion, £22 billion at the time." That's $34,805,445,470 in to-day's American money, so tells me x-rates.com/calculator. Which would've been a totally ridiculous sum to pay in 1919 (Versailles). The point the other countries were trying to make (especially Belgium and France, on whose soil the war was actually fought) was that Germany was a bad apple. No more starting any wars, okay? You just keep paying us and, also, we're taking back the land you stole and essentially eliminating your military capacity. No money for Germany. No land for Germany. No soldiers for Germany. Versailles. The payments would've been finished sooner if Adolph Hitler hadn't had slightly different ideas for his country's future (Germany, not Austria. History books stop caring about them after Franz Ferdinand is shot). Here's a short Daily Telegraph article.

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So, how did the war get started? A bunch of reasons, but none of them is apparently as important as the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by the Coward Gavarilo Princip. So here's the incredibly detailed version.

It was a lovely day at the end of June, 1914 when the Archduke of Austria decided to have a peaceful motorcade proceed through Sarajevo, Bosnia with the top down to prove he meant peaceful relations with the people around him who were standing on the land he wanted to rule. He was accompanied by his wife, Sophie, some diplomats, and several bodyguards. It was really like a parade, so there were crowds flanking the cars as they drove through the city. Stories differ, but there were at least six young men involved in a plot to kill the guy. The men involved were part of a terrorist organization called the Black Hand. Scary. Also, none of them were older than their mid-twenties. Youth in revolt, why can't you just let your country be peacefully assimilated? So the cars are going by. This dude has a bomb. Out of fear of being stopped, he doesn't throw it. The cars continue. They pass in front of another one of the Black Hand guys, he's got a grenade. He throws it. Car blows up, injuring at least two in the car and many on-lookers. Oh, hey, it wasn't the Archduke's car, they're driving away. The guy swallows his cyanide capsule, oh this just isn't your day. It's expired. Bet you didn't know they did that, did you? Next course of action, throw self into river adjacent to motorcade route. Ouch, literally: it's only a few inches deep. Step 4: be arrested by police.

Everyone's like, "Franz, we gotta get out of here." Franz is all, "No way, dudes, we gotta go visit those guys in the hospital." They do so. Meanwhile, the other members of the Black Hand are thinking the jig is up and they're not in Ireland, so that's no good. One of them decides he's hungry, so he goes to Schiller's Delicatessen to get a consolatory sandwich. Didn't kill the ruler of Austria-Hungary, can still grab a bite to eat. His name was Gavarilo Pricip. As he's exiting the establishment, in the most absurd freak coincidence, Ferdinand's car is passing right in front of him. With his innate Serbian-ninja reflexes, he pulls out his gun and fires a shot into in the car, no more than a side-walk's width in front of him. It hit Ferdinand dead-on. Duchess Sophie reacted, but the recorded history is unclear on the manner in which she did. Some say she, being pregnant, threw herself over the seat of the car to protect the baby. Others say she put herself between the Archduke and the assassin. Whatever happened, she was also shot and killed within seconds. Princip was arrested and later executed in July, 1918, three months before he was 24.

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So that's how it started. How it ended is even better. All the countries get together on a train and sign the Armistice on November 11, 1918, at 11:11 AM. They wanted every history student ever down the line to remember that one. But here's the thing: they waited all morning, specifically to have it occur at that time. That means that people were still fighting in the trenches for hours. If you take the total dead (about 13,690,430) and divide by the total the days the world was at war, from the assassination to the Armistice (about 52 months) (which isn't at all to say that everybody just instantly stopped fighting everywhere), you end up with about 1,160 people dead per hour, or about 19 dead per minute before the treaty was signed.

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Well, that was almost as depressing as Switzerland's national anthem.

"In the sunset Thou art nigh
And beyond the starry sky,
Thou, O loving Father, ever near
When to Heaven we are departing,
Joy and bliss Thou'lt be imparting,
For we feel and understand
That Thou dwellest in this land."

Surrender is practically built into the national character. Why hasn't anyone invaded them lately? What's their army gonna do if you did? Open their cans for them? Frankly, I don't see Switzerland winning in a knife fight against, say, Germany. Because over there, the word for 'knife' translates to "I'm stabbing you with a bayonet."

But, you have to admit, they do have the best chocolate and clocks, and their national sport is second to none.