Recently my class was lucky enough to have World War II veteran Helmut Lemke come in and tell us his amazing stories from the war. In this post I will be exploring the concept of luck using evidence from his stories, and examples of luck throughout his life.
my class with Lemke
Lemke as a young boy
My class has been assigned a project on a concept we thought was important in Helmut Lemke’s story, so my classmate Maria and I decided to create a podcast in which we will discuss the concept of luck. This podcast will include the following ideas: how luck affected his journey, whether or not he was aware of his luck, where he’d be without his luck and examples of each of these!
Now, how exactly did we create this podcast? So one day after school Maria and I got to use the PLP room to record our podcast. We had already started tossing around ideas so we worked together to create a format. We already had our questions so we looked through our notes to figure out which stories we wanted to use where. We decided to make our podcast conversational so we decided to not write a script but instead know generally what we were talking about.
Once we felt ready, we began recording. We used Opinion to create our podcast which was a great app because it allowed for us to edit as we went along. Creating our podcast was actually quite fun in my opinion, because we just had a conversation about Helmut Lemke’s story and his luck throughout it. Afterwards we went through, cut out the parts we didn’t want and we were done!
I hope you enjoyed our podcast, and I know not everybody believes in luck, so feel free to comment any disagreeing opinions below!
So I am currently about 6 months into my first year of PLP. It’s quite different from regular school, definitely in a good way though. PLP doesn’t let me just fake my way through and learn about as much as I need to for the grade I want, but it instead makes me so much much more responsible for my learning and also makes me want to learn and take an interest in what I’m learning.
So far this year I’m probably most proud of the News Video that Nolan, Maria, Marley and I created on the Halifax explosion. I enjoyed making it, and felt I learned lots about what happened on that day. Along with that, I thought the blog post that went along with it was pretty good, as I felt I incorporated more of my own voice than I usually do, which is something I want to work on in the upcoming months.
Throughout this year I feel I have grown as a learner. I haven’t only learned many new things, mainly about the wars, but I’ve also learned how to learn and present this. For my first blog post I focused on Sir Wilfrid Laurier and whether or not his habit of compromising were beneficial to him. I decided to make an explain everything to answer my question. This was not my best work, but I guess that’s to be expected as I was new to the program. But looking at the blog post now I am kinda cringing at it.
Since then I have kind of improved at blog posts, though I’ll admit they still need some work. As you can see in my blog post about The Dust Bowl, or the drought during the Great Depression I have improved at presenting my learning.
One important thing I think I have improved at this year is trying to get people to do things. Currently in PLP we are working on a class video project and one of my roles in the production is to be in charge of budget. I had to find out estimates on how much different departments would need, and then calculate how much We’d need from everybody. I then had to make sure people were okay with giving $5 and then I started collecting. It took a little while to get most of the money and also a lot of urging. Many people who had originally agreed to pay, decided that it was unfair and didn’t want to give any money. But after I talked to them and reminded them that they’d originally agreed, and it wasn’t fair to the rest of the class to back out now, I eventually got almost all of the money. This is an example how I’ve improved my skills, as, at the beginning I never would have felt comfortable asking everybody for money.
Along with that, during the Hanford project I really had to get on my group to do work sometimes, and motivate them to work on the video. Even yesterday (02.27.17) I finally got Anatolia to upload the Hanford Video project because I reminded her that despite losing the video on her laptop, she still had it on Showbie, and even if it wasn’t the most recent version it was still better than nothing. This shows my problem solving skills well.
These two experiences have really expanded my comfort zone and helped me feel more comfortable to speak up when needed.
Throughout the rest of the year there are a few things I’m hoping to improve on though. I feel like my blog posts can be boring and lack personality so I’ve started trying to make them reflect who I am more than they currently do. I’m also going to try to procrastinate less, because I’ll admit that I often do things the night before (ex. It’s currently 10:18 pm, the night before my SLC as I write this sentence.) I hope that I improve on starting my assignments much earlier, which will hopefully keep the final product seem less rushed, and also keep me from being as stressed about completing it. My final goal (although I have a few more goals in my head) is to create more blog posts than are assigned. I feel this will elevate my blog to a higher level than it’s currently at.
Hopefully throughout the rest of the year my blog will improve so if you’re a reader of my blog (let’s be real, nobody is) be prepared for more posts which will hopefully be more interesting and creative!
June 6th 1944 was a major turning point for the Allied forces in World War II. This date marks the largest amphibious attack in history. Operation Neptune was when the Allied forces invaded Normandy and is more commonly known as D-Day. On D-Day the US 4th infantry division landed on Utah Beach, the 1st and 29th US infantry divisons landed on Omaha beach, Gold Beach was invaded by troops from the British 50th division, the British 3rd Infantry division invaded Sword Beach, and the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division and 2nd Armoured Brigade landed on Juno Beach. Throughout my research one thing that stuck out to me and made me proud to be Canadian is how many times i read that Juno Beach and the Canadian troops was one of the most successful D-Day attacks. This of course made me wonder: how did the axis defence and attack strategy at Juno Beach compare to those at the four other D-Day beaches?
The five different beaches attacked on D-Day were all defended similarly, but each had differences. The beach that was most heavily guarded was Omaha beach and this attack did have the most casualties. The main objective here was to obtain a beachhead between Port-en-Bessie and the Vire river and to advance south from there towards St. Lo. The Axis had strong defences on this beach. The crescent shape allowed for protection from all directions, and there were 12 strongpoints that could direct fire on the incoming troops. Along with that, on the beach there were 3 types of obstacles: 10 feet tall gate like structures approximately 250 yards back from the water when it was at high tide, then 200 yards away from shore there were logs at an angle in the beach, which mines stapled to the ends. Finally there were 5 1/2 feet tall metal hedgehogs. The defences on this beach were very well planned by the Germans which made it so the American troops didn’t manage to meet their objectives on D-Day, but they did manage to gain a small foothold.
The other beach that Americans were tasked with attacking was Utah beach. The beginning of this attack made it seem like the day would be disastrous for the Americans. The day started off with a lot of confusion. The currents forced the naval troops off track, and they ended up landing 2km off of their target. Luckily, the area where they ended up landing had sparse defences because the low lying lands behind where they landed were flooded due to German controlled locks. Though the troops didn’t achieve many objectives, throughout the day the Americans managed to move 4 miles inland and were quite successful considering their rocky beginning.
One of the most important D-Day tasks was at Sword Beach, where the British troops were tasked with both taking back Caen, while protecting the entire eastern flank against a possible German counter attack. At Sword Beach they managed to effectively use the DD tanks, as 33 out of 40 of them made it to shore. The British Armour helped the infantry make it across the dangerous beach with relatively low casualties. The battle for the beach lasted for about an hour. The 1st battalion which was on the right side of the beach cleared it much faster than the 2nd battalion, on the left side, so they quickly reduced the number of German strong points behind the sea wall. By the end of the day, the British troops were only a few miles short of Caen, and had landed 29 000 troops on the beach at the cost of only 630 casualties. They did meet the objective of repelling the German attack, so it was a relatively successful attack.
Taking Gold Beach was also the responsibility of British troops, their objectives being to meet up with Omaha Beach and capturing Bayeux, and the Caen-Bayeux road. The forced them to land an hour later than the American troops had, which meant they suffered through more naval bombardment, weakening their forces. When they did land, the wind had concealed most of the land obstacles, luckily the air and naval forces had managed to soften defences. Along with that, many of the Axis troops were Russians, who weren’t as likely to put up as much of a fight. There was street fighting until 10, but the British troops eventually managed to take the town and continued from there. By the end of the day they had moved 6 miles inland and managed to meet up with the Canadian troops at Juno Beach, forming the largest beachhead of the day. While they didn’t meet their objectives of capturing Bayeux, or meeting up with the troops at Omaha, they managed to meet up with Juno Beach and captured Bayeux the next day, making it the first inland French town to be freed. All in all, the D-Day attack on Gold Beach was very successful.
Bayeux
Bayeux
Bayeux War Cemetery
All of the attacks on D-Day were quite important, and while some were more successful than others, in the end they each played a huge role in freeing Normandy and turning the war around. But the Canadians on Juno Beach got the furthest into France and met most of their objectives. They were supposed to land at 7:45, but bad weather conditions forced them to delay, which allowed the tide to rise enough to make some of the German obstacles effective. This delay also made it so there was a gap between the naval attacks and actually landing. The most dangerous part of the attack though, was crossing the beach when they did land. The journey from the shoreline to the sea wall had the most casualties at Juno Beach on D-Day, but by 9:30, Canadian troops were advancing through the practically undefended French countryside. One tank unit even managed to meet the D-Day objective and made it to the Caen-Bayeux road, but had to pull back due to a lack of support. The Canadians had made it quite far and managed to meet up with the troops at Beach. They technically did reach the objective of reaching the Caen-Bayeux road, but they did have to pull back. The only objective they didn’t reach was meeting up with the troops at Sword Beach. The Canadians at Juno Beach were very successful.
On D-Day the Canadians accomplished many objectives and were one of the most successful beaches of the day. All of the beaches we quite similar, Omaha being the most heavily defended. The two most successful beaches were Juno and Gold. This day may not have gone exactly as planned, but the Allies did make a lot of progress, and from there, went on to free the parts of Europe that were taken by the Axis.
Juno Beach
Juno Beach
Juno Beach
(the photos of Juno Beach and Bayeux were taken by me and/or my family)
Over the course of six years over 44 000 Canadians lost their lives, over 54 000 were injured. From 1939 to 1945 more than 1.1 million Canadians served in the Army, Navy, Air Force and other various sources across the common wealth. World War II was a long six years full of death.
For this blog post we had to research one of the many Canadian soldiers who lost their lives during the war. Using Canadian archives we had to search for an interesting soldier with many primary documents and discover their story. After hours of searching through many interesting soldiers and learning many stories, I finally decided to do my assignment on William Swift. He had 216 pages of documents. They covered everything, from when he first enlisted to how he died. There was a letter from one of his friends sent to Swift’s mother, and a list rythong that was on him when he died. I looked through all 216 pages, getting a glimpse into his life and thinking about what being over seas must have been like for him.
William Swift was born on May 3rd, 1905 in Vernon BC. Later in his life he moved to Nelson BC, despite the fact that his 4 sisters and 5 brothers were still living in Vernon. He was unemployed when he decided to enlist for the war. This is just a tiny bit of information I found looking through the documents. Below are a few examples of what I used.
Once looking through all of the documents and doing a bit more research into WorldWar II and what life must have been like for William Swift, I wrote a diary entry as if I were him. This forced me to put myself in his position and try to imagine what he was going through. Of course, I can never fully know the extent of what being overseas was like for him. This is just a guess of what may have been going through his head at the time.
Isn’t the Great Depression an oxymoron? How can something so bleak be considered “Great”? But I guess that’s due to the misuse of the word. Anyways…
The thirties were a time of despair, with Canada’s economy plummeting and the stock market crashing. The whole country was in a depression: The Great Depression. Black Tuesday marked the beginning of this horrible decade. On Tuesday, October 29th, 1929, the New York Stock exchange dropped 12%. It didn’t go back to normal for another ten years.
Of course two years after this sudden economic crash, the prairies went into a terrible drought. What great timing…but the fact that two years into the depression a natural disaster worsen the county’s condition further made me wonder: How much worse did the drought make the depression?
The 1920s were fairly prosperous for Canadian farmers, with successful wheat farming and favourable weather. But in the late 20s the price of wheat plummeted with the economy, as wheat was overproduced globally. Of course, even if the wheat industry hadn’t taken a hit then, with the upcoming drought it wouldn’t have gotten a chance to prosper further. In 1931 the Great Plains went into a drought that wouldn’t end for nearly a decade. While it was more like a series of droughts, there wasn’t enough time for the farms to recover between the multiple waves of dryness.
The damage began with the soil drying out and all the crops dying but it didn’t end there. This drought, that some scientists believe is the worst drought North America has experienced in 300 years, not only killed crops, but also the plants which kept the top soil in place. This allowed the top soil to loosen, which meant that wind could caused severe dust storms. These storms blew dust everywhere, covering houses and suffocating livestock. They dumped mounds of soil over everything, and even gave children pneumonia. During dust storms visibility was limited to approximately one meter, although it’s not like anyone would have being going out during them. These storms created big black clouds of dust that forced people inside and stirred everything up.
In 1933 alone there were 139 days of storms. The Dust Bowl only added to the disparity of the depression, putting the prairies in even more of a crisis than the rest of the country already was. By the end of the drought many people had left the prairies to escape the dust and their unsuccessful farms. Those who did stay struggled to make a living, in fact, 2/3 of the farmers were forced to line up for monthly aid.
The drought didn’t only affect the prairies though, but also Canada as a whole. Canada is heavily reliant on trading, one of their main exports being wheat. Of course, the wheat industry failing caused Canada’s economic conditions to worsen. Saskatchewan’s provincial income fell by 90%,The drought meant that not only could Canadians not afford food, but they also couldn’t produce it.
This is a newspaper article I created to answer my question help you to further understand the impact the drought had on Canada.
While the depression itself had a terrible impact on Canada’s economy, the Dust Bowl greatly contributed to the tough times the country went through. Let’s just hope that a drought of that magnitude doesn’t hit the prairies again, and if it does I sure hope we aren’t already in a depression.
Happy new year! 2016 was an interesting year, so of course the last project of the year had to be just as interesting! The project was filled with learning (of course), stress (as always) and a lot of last minute planning (well duh…) but the final product was worth all of the hard work we put in to it.
This year for the exhibition my class was tasked with the challenge of creating an immersive experience of Canada’s emerging identity from pre WWI to the depression. My group got assigned post war, 1920s. It was a time of excitement, women finally got the chance to vote, there were new innovations, lots of partying and in general people wanted to enjoy life after the rough times of war. My group was made up of me and four of my classmates: Luciano Boniface,Maria Melhado, Michael Sutherland and Kirby Harris. This was a pretty strong group, as we’re all hard workers, but there was only one non newbie in the group, so most of us were quite inexperienced with exhibitions. We didn’t let that get in our way though, we were all up for the challenge!
Our project began with doing a lot of research. We learned about the time period, the key players and a general timeline of important events. We found out what the 20s were famous for and what people in general don’t know about the time. Then we had to come up with our setting. We first thought of 3 potential settings and then came up with a list of pros and cons for each and developed our ideas from there.
After quite a bit of planning and brainstorming we decided we’d do a voting booth, where people could learn a bit about women’s new rights, and a strike. Then it was time to figure out our characters. We decided that I should be a rich woman who was voting, Maria should be a First Nations soldier, Kirby lead a strike, Michael was a strike breaker and Luciano was a homeless beggar. From there we developed our scripts, here’s a part of the script:
Then it was time to make our props. Here’s a list of what we needed for our setting:
Protest signs
Tables for the polling station
A ballot box
Polling booths
Backgrounds
Display boards and clothing racks (for walls)
On the day of the exhibition right at three we started setting up. Once we set up our group felt awkward because we had so much empty space. So 10 minutes to go we took the art display boards from the hall way and the clothing racks from the lost and found (which we covered with paper) to create walls and make it look like we had less empty space.
When we began to present it took a couple tries to get into it, but once we got started it went fairly smoothly. All in all, I’m very proud of what my group managed to accomplish. If I were to do this again I would definitely do a few things differently. I would figure out how to use the space better because ours looked kind of empty. Along with that, I’d try to get a more interesting character because my part in the exhibition felt really dull compared to my groups’ characters.
In general though, I think we did a great job, especially considering our limited time, he fact that we weren’t able to set it up until 2 hours before hand, and not getting to rehearse with actual people going through.
This project taught me both a lot about the 1920s and how to create an immersive experience. We had to make a performance and a set that people could walk through and experience. This project added a new technique to my long list of interesting ways to present information!’
You know when you almost walk into somebody and you both try to avoid each other but step the same way and end up hitting each other anyways? Well that’s basically what happened to the Imo and the Mont-Blanc on the morning of December 6th, 1917. These were two ships, both inside the Halifax Harbour, which collided resulting in the largest man made explosion before the nuclear bombs.
For this assignment we had to create a news report on The Halifax Explosion with a group of no more than four. My group was made up of Marley, Maria and Nolan. Our first step was to do research on the event. We used the Canadian Encyclopedia and CBC to do this. Then using our information we wrote a script as if the event had just occurred.
Once we finished our script it was time for filming. We decided to film against a green screen and later edit the video to look like a news room. On our first day of filming we hadn’t fully planned out the format of our video so we didn’t get much done, but we did come up with a pretty good green screen set up.
*insert green screen setup pic*
We put a block under the green screen which we then sat behind to allow us to edit in a news desk later. Our next filming session was after school at Marley’s house, where we got over 30 minutes of Nolan bloopers. While these were funny they weren’t very productive, and it took Marley so long to sift through them to get our actual footage. But at least by the end of our filming session Nolan could say the word subsequent.
During our last filming session we managed to be quite productive. Marley, Maria and I all got all of our clips filmed and ready to go, so then it was time for editing. It is quite hard to collaborate when it comes to editing, so Marley ended up actually putting together the video and making it look good. She used the software final cut to actually create our video. The group helped her out by finding virtual newsrooms that we could use, and finding pictures to go along with the script. After many hours of editing, and a long group house party (which killed my battery life) the News Report was finally finished.
The Halifax Explosion devastated the city, and a memorial service is held for it each year on December 6th at 9:00am in Halifax, by the Memorial Bells at Fort Needham to commemorate the casualties of the incident. I urge you to take a minute out of your day this year on December 6th to remember those lost and injured during the tragic incident.
During World War I almost 61 000 Canadian soldiers were killed, one of them being John Douglas Armstrong. He was an engineer from Ottawa who, in May of 1916 went across to Europe to fight in the war. He never made it home.
For this blog post we had to research a Canadian soldier who fought in World War I and make a journal entry as though we were him. Ms. Willemse gave us a link to a website where we could find a soldier who fought in World War I, and another page where if we type in their name it gave us even more information on the soldier. Sounds easy enough? Maybe not. See to get an understanding of who this person was we had to find a soldier with lots of information on them. Some people found soldiers right away with lots of sources, but I personally spent an hour searching before finding a soldier with more than two documents, he had 4 but they were two different documents each on the website twice. After hours of typing in random names and sifting through the soldiers trying to find one with quite a bit of resources I realized this meathod wasn’t working. So instead I decided to search by dates. I searched for all soldiers who died between April 9th and April 12th 1917, the dates of the Battle of Vimy Ridge because I thought it could be interesting to do research on a soldier who died during the greatest Canadian battle in WWI. And that’s how I came across Lieutenant John Douglas Armstrong.
I found out information about him using newspaper articles, his forms and a few other sources that were on the website given to me by Ms Willemse. I had quite a bit of information but felt like more would be better. I searched his name on google and came across a couple great pages that gave me more information on him. Here are the main sources I used for information.
Along with those I used this website, and this one. Together I used these sources to try to determine what he may have been thinking on April 8th 1917, the day before he died. Then I wrote this journal entry.
On April 9th 1917 John Douglas Armstrong was shot in the abdomen and passed away almost instantly. His last words were cautioning his friend not to advance to quickly, even when dying caring more about his friend’s safety than his own. He died with a smile on his face. John Douglas Armstrong is now buried in Villers Station Cemetery.
Have you ever heard of the Manhattan Project? I can guarantee that you wouldn’t have known what it was in 1944, unless you were one of the few scientists selected to work there. Most of the people involved with the project didn’t even know what it was.
For the first unit this year in PLP, we studied the Manhattan Project, an American Program that played a key role in World War II. Its purpose was to create atomic weapons to be used in war. This project was top secret and only the key players in the project actually new what was being developed.
We started our unit by creating a character card about an important person involved with the Manhattan Project. I decided to do mine on Lieutenant General Leslie Groves, and while almost everyone else did theirs on people no one had heard of I chose the director of the Manhattan Project. Ms. Willemse and Mr. Hughes wanted us to choose less known people for our character cards but I also remember them saying that we needed the key players too. I was looking for someone good to do mine on when I realized that no one had chosen a single key player so I decided that I should. While it may have been a bit easier to do mine on Groves because there was so much information on him it made choosing the most important facts that much more difficult.
After the character card assignment we put our historical perspective skills to the test. We downloaded the app “Los Alamos: The Secret City of the Manhattan Project” which allowed us to walk around Los Alamos and get a sense of what life there was really like. We had to use the information from this game, along with other research and prior knowledge, to write a letter as if we were someone living in Los Alamos writing to our loved ones. When Ms. Willemse told us about this assignment our initial question was whether or not we could give detailed information and she told us we’d worry about that latter. What we didn’t know at the time was that after writing the letter we’d have to get into pairs and censor each other’s letters. This exercise made us first imagine what it would be like to live in Los Alamos, and then think about what type of information would actually be allowed to be shared with people outside of the city.
This is part of my final letter, can you guess what is blacked out? Family members got letters like this everyday and had to try to fill in the blanks, and now you can try too.
After that assignment is when our main project began. We had to create a video in the style of “History in Five” where we had to get into groups of five, choose a main topic and then come up with five subtopics that had to do with our theme. My group’s topic was the Secrecy at Hanford, and my group and their subtopics were:
Nolan: Hanford Working Conditions Anatolia: Security Measures Mike: Keeping it Top Secret
Me: Hanford Work Ethics Gabi: Why Security was Necessary
I was kind of nervous for this project because it’s my first year in the PLP program so I had never done a big project like this before. I didn’t know how to edit videos or the process of putting together something like this, but I was excited to learn. Luckily the other members of my group had been in PLP since grade 9 so they were pros. They helped me along the way and were patient with my learning process.
For this project I had to do research into my subtopic, write my own script and create my own video. Of course, this being PLP we didn’t just do research on our topic but instead we actually went to Hanford, one of the secret cities that was part of the Manhattan Project. During this field school we got a chance to go to the site of the B Reactor, a museum and more. Here’s the full itinerary of what we did:
While at Hanford my group asked people who now work there questions that we came up with prior to the field study. This is how we got most of our research done, and we even filmed many of these interviews to use as clips within our video.
We didn’t start writing our scripts until after the trip because we got most of our information at the site. When we arrived back at the school it took my group too long to finish writing our scripts despite the information we now had. By the time our first draft was due all we had to hand in was our interview clips and some voice overs on black screens. In fact, it took until the day our second draft was due for everyone to have finished writing their script.
It took my group a long time to edit as well, because we decided to do it all on Anatolia’s laptop. This meant we could only edit one at a time which slowed down the editing process. We did it on her laptop because we needed it for the green screen effects we used. I decided to try and put mine together on iMovie on my iPad and sent it to Anatolia to add into the movie. Then we put the green screen effects in after having put the rest of the movie together. I’m glad I did this because I’m not sure if I ever would have gotten a chance to edit mine otherwise, I just wish that more of my group and used their iPads to edit.
Despite these road blocks though, our video progressed through each step of the process. I’m honestly not 100% sure if it’s completely finished yet, after all, there is always something to improve, but I’m still proud of what we managed to make. It took quite a while and lots of late nights, but the hard work was definitely worth it.
If (let’s be real, when) I am to do a project like this again I will definitely start writing my script before the trip. This way I will be able to film on site which will give the video that much more effect. It will also help us to know exactly what clips we need and use our time to get those specific clips. Plus having the script written and all of our video clips sooner will allow more time for editing and making sure the project is made to the best of our abilities. Also, I will try to get my group to edit our individual sections on our iPads rather than making the whole video on one laptop, because that really limits the amount of time we have to work on our individual videos.
I learned a lot from this project, in both the creation process of PLP projects, and about the Manhattan Project. It was quite interesting, and getting to go to Hanford made it seem so much more real and allowed me to connect with what I was learning. Overall our film could have been better, but I’m proud of our group and what we managed to create, along with all of the hard work we put in.
What caused World War I? That’s an easy question, right? Wrong! In fact, the cause of World War I is still highly disputed among historians. For this blog post we had to research different reasons historians had for why the war began and choose our own stance on the topic. Then, of course, we had to find a creative way to display our findings. I decided to create a few political cartoons to highlight my key ideas, two of which I drew on paper, and I edited the other on my iPad.
The cause of World War I is highly disputed among historians and while researching what the cause was, I found many different ideas. After finding multiple views on the beginning of World War I I came to the conclusion that, while there were many factors that caused WWI, the main issue was the many alliances formed between various countries.
The two main alliances were the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance. The Triple Entente consisted of France, Britain and Russia, and Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy were the three counties who made up the Triple Alliance. Along with those alliances there were other, smaller, alliances, the most notable being Russia and Serbia. Russia was allied with Serbia because of their common Balkan background, and felt the need to protect the smaller, struggling country. These alliances made it impossible for a regional dispute to stay isolated, and not escalate.
When a disruption did occur it happened to be the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The disruption that sparked war could have been any minor disagreement, the assassination just happened to occur at a time when it would cause much more than a small dispute.
Bosnia, a region in southern Austria-Hungary, wanted to become its own country. Serbia also wanted this freedom for the Bosnians. Bosnian nationalists saw, and took advantage of, their opportunity to strike at Austria-Hungary when Ferdinand announced his trip to Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. Assassins were recruited throughout Bosnia and Serbia, and were trained to kill the Archduke. These assassins were part of a terrorist group called the Black Hand. Franz Ferdinand, the Archduke of Austria, was assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian-Serb, who one of these assassins. Archduke Franz Ferdinand was heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary when he was killed.
This assassination caused a chain reaction of events that set off WWI. The Austria-Hungary government felt the assassination was a direct attack on them, from Serbia. They believed that the terrorists had been aided by the Serbian government, and put an ultimatum on Serbia. When this ultimatum was denied by Serbia, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. They began this war as a way of showing that terrorism would not be tolerated, and they also hoped it would inspire nationalism within the country. The government of Austria-Hungary just hadn’t expected on fighting against two countries.
This dispute would have only lead to a small war, if not for all the alliances. Russia had agreed to aid Serbia if you Austria-Hungary attacked, so when war was declared, Russia mobilized. The French wanted power over all of Europe and were allied with Russia, so they mobilized right away, as well. Germany, having had agreed to help Austria-Hungary in the case of war, then declared war on both Russia and France. Belgium originally hadn’t planned on joining the war until Germans invaded Belgium on their way into France. The chain reaction of European countries joining the war had began, and continued until almost all of the continent, and eventually other continents, were pulled into war due to various alliances.
World War I would never have grown to the size it became without all of the alliances. These made the war grow much more than it needed to, and the amount countries joining in, to defend their allies spiralled out of control. Without the many alliances World War I would have never occurred.
