What if?

[Music] Foreign Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie were on an official visit to Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. As they traveled and inspected the land, Cabrillo Princip, a 19-year-old Serbian nationalist, shot the royal couple at point-blank range, killing them instantly.

What followed was one of the most terrifying moments in human history. Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for the assassination and vowed to retaliate. But then Russia stepped in to protect Serbia, and then Germany stepped in to help Austria. On the 28th of July 1914, exactly one month after Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were murdered, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.

So began one of the deadliest conflicts in human history, what we now refer to as the First World War. It lasted four years, and by the time it ended in 1918, 16 million people were dead, 21 million others severely injured, and the world had changed forever. We all collectively understood how quickly society can crumble, how low we can get as humans, and how barbaric we all are under the shadow of morality. We learned that everyone is a killer; all you have to do is push them to the limit.

However, when you sit down and really think about it, you can't help but wonder: what if? What if Gorillo Princip's gun misfired? What if the Archduke was able to escape before the Serbian nationalist could find him? What if there was no World War One?

On the 11th of November 1918, Germany surrendered, and on the 28th of June, exactly five years after the murder of the Archduke, Germany and the Allied Nations signed the Treaty of Versailles. That was the formal end of the war, but because Germany had lost the war, the treaty was very harsh against them. It forced the European powerhouse to crumble to its knees. They were forced to pay reparations so expensive that it left their economy in ruins. Germans were starving, and their government was thrown into chaos.

But in the year 1934, a hero rose amongst them—a man who had promised to rescue the sinking ship that had become their economy, to give their government a sense of stability, and to make them a force to be reckoned with once again. His name was Adolf Hitler. Just five years after he rose into power, Hitler invaded Poland from the west, and two days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany, starting World War II.

The results of World War One and the harsh treatment of Germany by the Treaty of Versailles caused World War II. It's safe to say that if there was no World War One, there would have been no World War II, obviously. But sadly, there was, and the results of the second war far outweighed the first. In just six years, 60 to 80 million people were killed—around three percent of the world's population at the time.

Without such a devastating number of deaths, European nations at the time would have had more resources to build their economy. Germany would have become an economic, scientific, and cultural powerhouse. Perhaps the world would have been speaking German and not English. The war was certainly terrible, but as the saying goes, "out of the ashes rises the phoenix."

It did bring with it some good. If there was no world war, we wouldn't have had nuclear weapons today, but we also wouldn't have had computers or even the internet. You might not have been able to hear me at this moment, or certainly not this soon in humanity's timeline.

Because, in truth, military spending in the quest for a greater arsenal than rival nations is what drove a lot of technological advancements. If the military didn't need planes to travel faster, safe airline travel would have taken several more decades than it did. If soldiers didn't need antibiotics to treat their infections, perhaps research and testing would have taken much longer too.

Most of the medical procedures we take for granted today were created out of a need during the world wars: blood transfusions, storing artificial limbs, facial reconstruction, and plastic surgery—all advanced greatly because the soldiers at the time lost a lot of blood, limbs, and came home with disfigured faces that needed reconstruction.

[Music] Perhaps the peo...