re: Is Gavrilo Princip the most important person of the last century?

If not for WW1 would he have came to the US?

I would argue that Otto Von Bismark is in the top 5 all-time of most important human beings in history:

1) Jesus Christ
2) Genghis Khan
3) The Prophet Mohammed
4) Otto Von Bismark
5) Alexander the Great

This would make for an interesting discussion.

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come on. Even WWI would have happened without him.

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People keep saying this. It's not actually true. Europe was a powder keg, but none of the major states were going to blow the fuse without some serious shite happening. The assassination of the Arch Duke, or something akin to it, was a necessary precedent action to war.

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People keep saying this. It's not actually true.

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I think it is.

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Europe was a powder keg, but none of the major states were going to blow the fuse without some serious shite happening.

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Maybe, maybe not.

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The assassination of the Arch Duke, or something akin to it, was a necessary precedent action to war.

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I look it as not a condition precedent, but rather an excuse. It was going to happen anyway.

The Black Hand was dead set on starting a war (and Darth can kiss my arse in disagreement as to why), so as many others have said, if it wasn't him, it would have been some other puppet.

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A series of Russian Revolutions began in 1905 through 1917 and was not going to be stopped until the monarchy was overthrown. even if the Russian army wasn't decimated by WWI, they would have been feckless in stopping the Bolshevik tidal wave

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If there was no war Germany may not have sent Lenin along with a shitload of financial support back to Russia. Lenin and the money he got from Germany played a pretty important role wouldn't you say?

I wouldn't say Princip was the most important person of the twentieth century, although certainly his assassination of Archduke Ferdinand would have a strong argument for most important single event.

I often like to think about potential historical turning points such as this, and how things might have been different if they had not occurred, or had occurred differently. Consider, for instance, the First Battle of the Marne in 1914. It was an extremely close-fought battle and could have gone either way. Of course, historically the Allied Powers won and saved France. But what if the Germans had won? World War One would be over almost before it started with crushing German victories over both France and Russia (who were at that point reeling from defeats at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes). Germany would have emerged as the world's preeminent power. France would have found itself in a similar position to what Germany was in post-historical WWI: beaten and humiliated, with a populace no doubt champing at the bit for revenge. What happened to Russia would have depended on how long she tried to fight on (or was forced to do so) against Germany and Austria-Hungary alone. The USA would not have been forced out of its isolationist bubble. In such a world I could see France falling into fascism, and a subsequent "redo" war between the Allied and Central Powers within twenty years, but with the Franco-Russian alliance being both the aggressors and viewed historically as the "bad guys."

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Without him, every war since ww1 wouldn't have happened. No space race, no ussr, no rise of fascism, no technological boom.

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While it was/is one of the most significant events in modern history, I think you're trying to use too much butterfly effect here... I think these "rankings" are laughable for that very reason. "If" x then y and z wouldn't have ever happened....please, how can anyone with any certainty make those type of statements? Hell, you could even take it a step further and say Leopold Lojka was just as important...

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1. Christ


Eh. Maybe. I think you could easily say that it's Emperor Constantine, without whom Christ's influence is likely relegated to a small section of the Roman Empire.

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I think Jesus and Paul go hand in hand. Both were instrumental. Constantine was huge too but if it hadn't been him, it would've been someone else I think.