Balkan Blunders Reflection

The catalyst or should I say the main reason for the start of WWI was the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand which I must say I have never looked into much before. I never realized that as our handout states it, "The terrorists who took world history in their hands in the summer of 1914 were basically a bunch of kids." I actually found it kind of humerous how the entire assassination was carried out. One of the assassins, Mehmed, chickened out as the plan was about to go into action, and was arrested later because of his bragging about his participation in the assassination. Vaso, another assasin, was sent to jail for sixteen years because he was not old enough for the death penalty. Ironically, he became a history teacher after he got out of jail. Another member of the group called the Black Hand was Cvetko Popvic, who became a museum curator after jail. It seems like these so called assassins were really not much more than confused kids looking to prove themselves. The fourth person in line was Nedelko Cabrinovic, who managed to throw a bomb at the Archduke's car but he missed and harmed the crowd instead. What I thought was funny about Cabrinovic was that he attempted to swallow a cyanide capsule and jump in a nearby canal but not knowing that the pill was expired and the river was ankle deep. He was vomiting while he was pulled out of the river. So there was already four chances to kill the Archduke and the remaining members heard the explosion and thought that Ferdinand was taken care of. However, due to an unfortunate series of events, Ferdinand's driver took a wrong turn on the way to the hospital and ran into another one of the assassins, Princip. It was Princip who finally killed both the Archduke and his wife. So it almost seems to me that the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was destined to happen since he dodged his death so many times but in the end died due to a wrong turn from his driver.

Gassed by John Singer Sargent

This is probably one of the most influential pieces of artwork about World War I that I have ever seen. Sargent drew upon his experiences

from his trip in 1918 to northern france as inspiration for this painting. He saw groups of soldiers who were blinded by mustard gas during that trip. I think that the reason why Sargent uses yellow so much in this painting is to show that the reason for the soldiers' conditions are due to mustard gas. It is a sad depiction of the horrible effects of war but it is real nonetheless. The blinded soldiers are forced to hold on to each other and to walk past their fallen friends. Some of the soldiers seem to be in agony and one particularly is sitting amongst his dead comrades, almost wishing that what he were seeing was not real. The huge open field that they are standing in helps to show that these soldiers are alone on the battlefield. Also in the background there seems to be another group of blind soldiers, showing that many soldiers have been affected by the atrocities of war.

Connection Across Time: The use of mustard gas was new in warfare for the first world war. However, the use of gases in both war and defence has evolved over the years. We received a current event paper not so long ago in class about a new weapon that is being developed. In Gauhati, India, the military plans to use the ghost chili, the world's hottest chili, as a weapon. They will use these peppers to make tear gas-like hand grenades to immobilize suspects. These weapons will stop the intended targets in their tracks but it will not blind them as mustard gas did to the soldiers during WWI. I thought this was interesting because using items found in nature such as plants or peppers as weapons has been going on for a long time.

Explosion by George Grosz

I think that this painting truly depicts the horrors of war. If i were to describe this painting in one word it would be chaos. I have stared at this piece for a few minutes and I still find it difficult to discern the different objects. What is clear however is that there is destruction. At the center of the picture I believe there is a fire. Obviously there are many buildings that are crashed and broken. There is smoke spewing out of many of these buildings which tells us that there must be a huge fire. I think the smoke and fire represent the fighting that was never at such a grand scale before WWI. The fire represents all the soldiers who left their homes for war while the smoke represents the confusion and chaos that was the effect of all the fighting. Grosz was one of many others who saw the cruelties and effects of war and probably painted this in an attempt to show it to those who could not see the horrible effects.

Machine-gun by C. R. W. Nevinson

I found this image while browsing online and it instantly caught my eye. I knew I had seen it elsewhere and surely enough it is the first picture for the chapter that we are currently on. I did a little research on the artist who drew this, Nevinson; and it turned out that he was the son of a famous war correspondent. This shows that Nevinson was affected closely by the war and his painting shows his own feelings as well as the general mood at the time. A quick glance at this painting and one will automatically notice the use of dark, drab colors. These dull colors serve to show that it was a dark and gloomy time in history. The soldiers seem to be unhappy and almost disgusted at what they are doing. They are using a machine gun, a new invention during the time of WWI. This gun could fire many more rounds than weapons preceding it and could therefore take more lives as well. The hard, defined lines that represent the machine gun are also used to depict the soldiers. This shows that the soldiers are turning almost robotic and become one with the killing machine. Another interesting thing that jumped out at me was that the soldier in the middle has red pants on. In a panting where all the other colors are dark and drab, the center of the painting has a splotch of red on it. I believe that this use of the color red is a symbol of the bloodshed that occurred during this gruesome war. It was the largest war up to date and millions of people suffered and died. The background seems to be metal wires, most likely representing the barbed wires that were so common at the time. Overall this painting is a good depiction of the mood of the war, dark and dreary.

Reflection on the Timetable Worksheet

Last Friday we had an activity where we placed the events of World War I in the correct chronological order. The fact that we had the opportunity to get extra credit on the test made me ever more determined to get this right. However, at first glance, the worksheet might as well have been written in a completely different language because I was utterly confused. It seemed to me that all of these events occurred so close to eachother that there was no way for me to put them in the correct order. As I continued to stare intently at the worksheet, and with Dan's help, we were able to work out what order these events had occurred. We figured that M.A.I.N. was the first event to take place because it was those four reasons which provided the catalyst for the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. The rest of the sheet was not as bad as I initially thought, and we were able to place most of them in the correct order. The only problem was that when we had one of our events placed in the wrong order, the rest of them were all off by one. I think this worksheet helped me get a better grip on what happened during World War I and also proved to be an amusing change from the norm. I definitely would not mind doing activities such as this because not only is it fun but it also helps me learn better.