Thursday's History Society talk

Members of the History Society and a large number of visitors were treated to an illuminating and hugely informative talk on Thursday evening by Bob Cartwright when he gave his views on the origins of WW1.

Bob studied Modern History at University, specialising in Balkan History. His interest was rekindled 25 years ago whilst he was working in Vienna. On witnessing large crowds, he discovered that taking place was the funeral of Empress Zita, the last Empress of the Austro Hungarian Empire.

Having watched on TV the historians A J P Taylor and Brian Horrocks looking directly into the camera and speaking without notes, Bob set a target for himself to be able to do the same. This he achieved admirably when he spoke for an hour on a complex subject without any aide memoire.

Within days of the outbreak of war large numbers of documents were released by the countries involved trying to prove their innocence but as Bob commented you don't need to read the whole of a report to ascertain its viewpoint- only to look at who has instigated it. (Links here to the current day with regard to the Gladman Inquiry!) And so the countries sleepwalked into war.

Great Britain didn't do enough to stop it but at the time there was near civil war in Ireland and, whilst we had a huge navy, our army consisted of only 4 divisions.

During his talk Bob raised several what ifs:-

• A stray bullet just missed Franz Ferdinand whilst he was attending a shooting party in England just seven months before his assassination at Sarajovo
• and, on their last fatal journey, the car carrying Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie was supposed to take a different route. However, no-one informed the driver and when he did try and change direction the car stalled giving Gavrillo Princip ample time to carry out the assassination.

Amazingly, the car carrying Franz Ferdinand on June 28th 1914 had the registration number A111118. Fifty three months later that was Armistace Day on 11/11/18. Bob said that this co-incidence seems too far-fetched to be true but photographs taken on the fateful day seem to support it.

As a result of extensive research, Bob's verdict is that the Austro Hungarian Empire and in particular Franz Conrad, its Chief of Staff and Leopold Berchtold, its Foreign Affairs Minister, were largely responsible for the outbreak of war.

He concluded by commenting that future writers and historians could well refer to WW1 and WW2 as the Thirty Years War.

A most thought provoking talk.

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