Saving Franz would not have stopped the war. Delayed, maybe, but he was just an excuse. Austria wanted to invade Serbia anyway, they would have found a different reason before too long.
this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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Delaying it might have prevented it.
Current historians' consensus is that at no point before the war's outbreak was it inevitable, especially since the alliances tying the major powers together were all strictly non-binding.
In every involved country, pro-war and pacifist groups struggled for supremacy, and in each country, unfortunately at this point in time, the pro-war groups won.
But a few years later, the balance could have tipped.
Both in Russia and in Germany, leftist and democratic movements were on the rise even before the war.
If they had gained more support, a local conflict in the Balkans would not have escalated that far, keeping France out of it, and in turn, there would have been no reason for Britain and the USA to get involved at all.
I wasn't actually aware of that new consensus, I haven't looked too deeply at it for a few years. I'll have to take another look, that period of time is very interesting to me.
Its also possible that it would have still been a war, but not a world war, without an Assassination to anchor the sentiments to.
It might have been a conflict, lol.
Let's save the library of Alexandria and just retry society from there and then
Which fire do we save it from?
How about we save some time and just install some sprinklers?
If you look at how the assassination of Francis Ferdinand went, it's almost like someone successfully sabotaged it, came back and saw the outcome, then went back and fixed it again.
I do think it says something about society that the first thought is always "go back and kill..." Rather than "go back and prevent them from becoming the worst human on earth"
I think partially the assumption is that it's an in and out mission. Much harder to change someone's life for the better in the course of a day than be guaranteed to stop their part in evils to come. If you told me I had one day to convince Hitler to not do the holocaust or just kill him, I don't think I'd bet millions of lives on my skills of persuasion. Also, and this may be a bit doomer of me, but at a certain point people may never take to rehabilitation. I don't know that Stephen miller could ever change the person he is. I'm not saying we shouldn't try, but again, I wouldn't be millions of lives on it.
Part of the reason hitler was never assassinated was that the allies wanted him alive so he could continue making terrible decisions. Like how the first trump regime was less effective than the current one, because trump was still making some decisions then.
Killing a single person does nothing to change the social conditions that gave them a valid path to power.
He was never successfully assassinated but there were definitely a lot of attempts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Adolf_Hitler
Only one of them planned by an allied official, and that in a personal capacity and told to abandon the scheme by his superiors.
going back in time and killing that fish that decided to come out of the water
Stop WW2 from happening by protecting Franz Ferdinand so WW1 never happens.
Yeah I messed up the meme, that's who I meant.
Edited it now.
Prevent the unification of Germany 🤑🤑🤑
Your best bet is to kill Bismarck, but it might have been one of those things that was inevitably going to happen.
Fuck/Marry/Kill but WW1
Manfred Von Richthofen / Anyone not called Romanov / Gavrilo Princip
My novel touches on this. I thought it was a neat idea to prevent the assassination. What would of happened if WWI was prevented.
Let’s shoot franz Ferdinand twice
Alternative timeline Hitler: history's first lolcow thanks to never gaining any power.
alternate time line paradox if hitler dies, would else could be unleashed instead.