COMPLETELY PERSONAL: THE ASSASSINATION THAT DESTROYED A CENTURY

Marvin Olasky 


The current issue of WORLD’s cover date is
June 28, a date that should live in infamy. On
June 28, 1914, an assassin killed Austrian
Archduke Franz Ferdinand in the Balkan city
of Sarajevo. That incident touched off World
War I, which ended with 18 million dead
bodies and led to a Communist takeover of
Russia (millions more) and, eventually, World
War II (tens of millions more).
Recently I read in Christopher Clark’s “ The
Sleepwalkers” (see “ A century ago,” in this
issue) how one false step among the leaders of
England, France, Germany, Russia, and
Austria-Hungary led to another. While
turning the pages, I watched on the AMC
network “ The Godfather” (second greatest
American movie of all time, according to the
American Film Institute) and its sequel, “ The
Godfather Part II” (32nd greatest).
The regular refrain in “ The Godfather,” as its
characters plan murders, is, “Nothing
personal. It’s just business.” Europe’s leaders
had the same rationale as they slouched into
war during post-assassination July. The two
“ Godfather” films form the tragic story of
how, in director Francis Ford Coppola’s
words, “a good man becomes evil.” A
theologically deeper assessment might note
that it’s about sinners becoming even more
sinful. World War I’s beginning one century
ago had a similar arc.
Here’s one more famous “ Godfather” line:
“Keep your friends close, but your enemies
closer.” Europe’s warring monarchs in 1914
were close (three of them were cousins)—and
this spring I looked back with wonder and
dismay at the arrogance and miscalculation
that (nothing personal) slaughtered so many
people.
At that point I almost went thoroughly astray.
The assassination of Franz Ferdinand took
place because of a thoroughly unlikely set of
circumstances. The assassin with a handgun,
Gavrilo Princip, was a bad shot, but
Ferdinand’s driver made a wrong turn and
backed up, then stopped, in a way that left
Ferdinand several feet from Princip, who at
that distance couldn’t miss. And that got me
thinking: Why didn’t God (acting as He
usually does, in ways subtle enough to give
atheists deniability) keep Ferdinand from
being shot?
Think about it: No assassination, no war, no
Communist coup, no German hyper-inflation
and depression that paved the way for Hitler,
no World War II, no Holocaust…One small
flick of the wrist for God, one large leap for
mankind to the century of peaceful progress
that postmillennialists expected in 1900,
rather than the century of disaster that fueled
much premillennialist thought.
Then I thought: No, our merciful God must
have had His reasons for allowing the
assassination and the subsequent slaughter.
Musing that God makes all things work
together for good, I starting writing a playful
counterfactual column: What could have
happened had Ferdinand’s driver not made
the wrong turn, and if war had never come?
In my fanciful column I wrote that Germany
became Europe’s economic, scientific, and
technological power. It expanded its
leadership in science and did not make life so
miserable for Jews that leading physicists
ended up in America. The result: Germany
developed nuclear weapons and, given
German arrogance, used them to get its way
through much of the world. I was planning to
end the column with German nuclear bombs
dropping in August 1945, on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki—and dozens of other cities.
Well. Halfway through writing I picked up
my copy of J.I. Packer’s “ Knowing God ,” in
which the theologian notes that Christians err
by thinking that “if they were really walking
close to God, so that he could impart wisdom
to them freely, then they would…discern the
real purpose of everything that happened to
them, and it would be clear to them every
moment how God was making all things work
together for good.”
Packer continued, “Such people spend much
time poring over the book of providence,
wondering why God should have allowed this
or that to take place.” His recommendation:
Don’t do it. We do not and cannot have
“inside information as to the why and
wherefore of God’s doings.” Packer is right.
Trash my counterfactual. Not the Godfather
but God makes us an offer we cannot and
should not refuse: Trust me.
Massive killing is, of course, fodder for
atheists who can gibe that for God it’s nothing
personal, just business. But the brilliance of
Christ is that it couldn’t get more personal:
We die, He died—so all who trust in Him can
live forever.