World War I Could Have Been Stopped 9 Times

Sarajevo, 28 June 1914, 10:50 in the morning. The Archduke's driver takes a wrong turn, the engine stalls, and five feet away stands a 19-year-old with a pistol. Within six weeks, Europe is at war. But did one wrong turn really start the First World War? Not on its own. That summer, the road to war forked again and again: in Sarajevo, in Vienna, in Berlin and in Saint Petersburg. In this animated documentary we count every fork, in order: the warning nobody passed on, a city guarded by 120 policemen, the bomb that bounced off the roof, the new route nobody told the drivers about, the famous wrong turn, the blank cheque, the ultimatum that Serbia almost accepted, the Tsar's mobilization and a war plan that couldn't be changed. Then we give our verdict. ⏱ Chapters 0:00 The Wrong Turn at 10:50 1:02 The Powder Keg 2:41 An Invitation 4:16 Seven Men on the Quay 5:20 Greeted With Bombs 6:43 The Wrong Turn 8:17 A Blank Cheque 9:44 Forty-Eight Hours 11:36 Willy and Nicky 12:31 The Plan That Couldn't Be Changed 14:04 The Verdict Which fork was the real point of no return, 1 to 9? Tell us in the comments. Subscribe for more of history's wrong turns. Sources include Christopher Clark (The Sleepwalkers), Margaret MacMillan (The War That Ended Peace), Sean McMeekin (July 1914), David James Smith (One Morning in Sarajevo), Tim Butcher (The Trigger) and Vladimir Dedijer (The Road to Sarajevo). Character lines are dramatized from quotes recorded in memoirs, diaries and trial records; where an account is uncertain, we say so in the narration. Casualty figures are historians' estimates. #history #ww1 #animatedhistory