A Deep Dive Into The Bullet Proof Vest and How They Work in Reality vs Hollywood Depictions

Bulletproof vests are one of Hollywood’s favourite action movie plot devices. Easily concealable and seemingly impervious to all weapons, they provide writers with a handy eleventh-hour means of saving their characters from certain death. But how can such a relatively thin and flimsy piece of fabric stop a speeding bullet, and are real-life bulletproof vests really as impenetrable as in the movies? Well, lock and load as we dive into the fascinating – and dangerous – history of ballistic body armour and the incredible modern day seemingly otherwise fabric suits that are made to stop bullets.

The widespread adoption of practical firearms in the 15th century led to the rapid decline in the use of traditional plate armour. While a medieval suit of armour could protect its wearer against swords, pikes, maces and other kinds of melée weapons – as well as certain kinds of arrows – all but the heaviest and most expensive suits were mostly useless against musketball. Armies thus began to abandon armour in favour of more lightly-equipped, mobile troops, with certain pieces such as breastplates and helmets being retained by officers as specialized troops like heavy cavalry. For example, during the English Civil War of 1642-1651, the Ironside cavalry of Parliamentarian or “Roundhead” leader Oliver Cromwell wore musket-proof breastplates or cuirasses composed of two layers of armour: an inner layer that absorbed most of the bullet’s energy, and an inner layer that prevented it from penetrating. This two-layer design would later be used in many soft ballistic armour systems. By the 18th Century, however, firearms had become powerful enough to penetrate even these defences, and plate armour was largely relegated to a ceremonial role. For example, the gorget, a piece of armour which originally protected the throat, was shrunk down to a non-functional size and worn on the chest by officers and military policemen as a badge of rank. Ornamental breastplates – often highly polished and decorated – were also worn by officers, aristocrats, and members of elite military units like Cuirassiers. Incredibly, this tradition persisted into the 20th Century, with French Cuirassiers wearing their Napoleonic-era breastplates and helmets into battle during the first weeks of the First World War.

But for the most part, plate armour largely disappeared from the battlefield for more than 200 years. The thickness – and consequently the weight – of steel plates needed to stop modern firearms projectiles was simply too great to be practical. However, several inventors discovered an unexpected material that proved unusually resistant to gunfire: silk. In Japan, for example, where firearms had been introduced in 1543 by Portuguese traders, armour makers discovered that multiple layers of tightly-woven silk quilted together was enough to dissipate the energy of a musket ball and stop it from penetrating. Combined with steel plates, this material was used to construct a new type of armour called tosei-gusoku or “bullet tested.” However, these suits were expensive to produce, and reserved only for the wealthiest samurai.

Following the 1866 French military expedition to Korea – a failed punitive response to the execution of seven French missionaries, Huengson Daewongun, regent of the Great Joseon State, ordered the development of flexible bulletproof armour. The result was the Myeonje Baegab, a vest composed of 30 folds of heavy cotton fabric. These vests were used successfully during the 1871 United States expedition to Korea, triggered by Korean fortresses opening fire on American ships.

The surprising protective power of silk was rediscovered by ex-naval surgeon George E. Goodfellow, who made his name treating the gunshot wounds of gunslingers like Wyatt Earp in the Old West town of Tombstone, Arizona. In 1881, trader Luke Short and gambler Charlie Storms got into an argument and shot each other with pistols at point-blank range. One. 45 calibre revolver bullet penetrated Storms’s heart, and he quickly died of his wounds. During the autopsy, Goodfellow extracted the bullet, which was wrapped in a handkerchief which had been in Storms’s breast pocket. Incredibly, the projectile had not penetrated the silk. After witnessing several similar cases, in 1887 Goodfellow published an article in the Southern California Practitioner titled Impenetrability of Silk to Bullets. He later experimented with an early form of soft body armour resembling the Korean Myeonje Baegab and constructed of 30 folds of silk. However, nothing much came of his invention.

But Goodfellow’s article would directly inspire the man now recognized as the father of the modern ballistic vest: one Casimir Zeglen. Unusually given his most famous creation, Zeglen was not a soldier, police officer, or even an engineer or inventor, but rather a Catholic priest. That’s right: the inventor of soft body armour was literally a man of the cloth…. Born in 1869 in Poland – then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire – at age 18 Zeglen joined the Congregation of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ – better known as the Resurrectionists – and in 1890 moved to the United States, settling in Chicago. On October 28, 1893, the recently-reelected mayor of Chicago, Carter Harrison, Sr, was assassinated by newspaper distributor Patrick Eugene Prendergast. Having suffered a severe head injury at age four, throughout his life Prendergast became increasingly disturbed and erratic in his thoughts and behaviour. In 1893, he fanatically supported Carter Harrison’s re-election campaign in the deluded hope that he would be rewarded with a political appointment. When said appointment failed to materialize, Prendergast visited Harrison at his home and shot him three times with a .38 calibre revolver. One of the shots penetrated Harrison’s heart, killing him instantly. Arrested soon after, Prendergast was found guilty and sentenced to death, being executed by hanging on July 13, 1894.

Casimir Zeglen was deeply affected by Harrison’s assassination, and set about developing a means of protecting future politicians and other individuals from such senseless acts of violence. Drawing directly from George Goodfellow’s 1881 article, Zeglen developed a special method for laminating together silk sheets, creating a lightweight protective vest only 1 centimetre thick. On March 16, 1897, Zeglen arranged a live demonstration of his invention before a large crowd including the Mayor and Chief of Police of Chicago. Apparently having just as much faith in his sewing abilities as he had in the Almighty, Zeglen donned the vest himself and hired a marksman to shoot him at point blank range. The crowd gasped as Zeglen crumpled to the ground, but a moment later he raised his hands and got to his feet, completely unharmed. The crowd then erupted into wild applause.

Yet despite this stunning and well-publicized success, Zeglen struggled to find American investors for his invention. Part of the problem was the extreme precision needed to make the vest work; poorly-sewn copycat versions tended to get their wearers killed, and Zeglen lacked the technical knowledge to mass-produce vests to the required level of quality. Undeterred, in December 1897 Zeglen returned to Poland and joined forces with famed inventor Jan Szczepanik [“Yan Sheh-che-pah-nick”]. Known as the “Polish Edison” or the “Leonardo da Vinci of Galicia”, Szczepanik had many impressive innovations to his name, including a photoelectrically-controlled weaving machine that could cheaply mass-produce coloured tapestries, and an early form of television known as the Teltroscope. In only a few months, Szczepanik succeeded in perfecting Zeglen’s design and creating an automatic line to mass-produce bulletproof vests. There was only one problem: at $800 apiece – more than $25,000 today – the vests could only be afforded by the extremely wealthy. It was at this point a disillusioned Zeglen broke off the partnership and returned to America. And while Szczepanik offered to buy his patent for a generous price, Zeglen refused. Nonetheless, Szczepanik, a skilled and well-connected businessmen, succeeded in selling the vests to many of the wealthiest and powerful figures in Europe, including Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and King Alfonso XIII of Spain. The vests were also enthusiastically adopted by gangsters in America – especially Zeglen’s adopted hometown of Chicago. The ultimate validation of Zeglen’s design came on May 31, 1906 during Alfonso’s wedding in Madrid, when he and his new bride, Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg, were attacked by Catalan anarchist Mateu Morral. As the wedding procession was returning from the Royal Monastery of San Jerónimo to the Royal Palace, Morral threw a bomb at the newlyweds’ carriage, which killed 30 bystanders and wounded 100 more. However, the fragments failed to penetrate Alfonso’s protective silk vest, saving his life.

There is a persistent rumour that Szczepanik also sold a vest to Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir apparent to the throne of Austria Hungary. As the story goes, when Franz and his wife Sophie were assassinated in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 – the event that ultimately triggered the outbreak of the First World War – his assassin, Bosnian Serb student Gavrilo Princip, suspected that the Archduke was wearing protective armour and opted to aim for his head. However, no concrete evidence has been found to support this claim. It should also be noted here that nobody, not even Emperor Franz Josef himself, cared about the assassination. In fact, the Emperor expressed relief over the killing because it rid him of an heir whom he deeply disliked. More on this and what REALLY started WWI in the Bonus Facts in a bit.

But in any event, back in America, in March 1901 Casimir Zeglen offered one of his vests to George B. Cortelyou, personal secretary to President William McKinley. For unknown reasons, Cortelyou declined the offer. Six months later, McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo, New York by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. Given the relatively low power of the .32 calibre Iver Johnson revolver used by Czolgosz, had McKinley been wearing one of Zeglen and Szczepanik’s vest, he almost certainly would have survived.

Sadly, from this point on Casimir Zeglen all but vanishes from the historical record. Abandoning his bulletproof vest venture, he founded the Zeglen Tire Company and the American Rubber and Fabric Company, which produced tubeless, puncture-resistant tires for bicycles and automobiles. Given that the fate of these companies – and Zeglen’s eventual date of death – have been lost to history, it is safe to assume he was unsuccessful in his endeavours. Meanwhile, Jan Szczepanik continued to promote Zeglen’s bulletproof vest with a series of death-defying live demonstrations – all the while claiming to be the vest’s sole inventor. Indeed, so successful was this marketing campaign that in Europe it is typically Szczepanik – not Zeglen – who is credited as the father of the bulletproof vest. However, Szczepanik’s success was not to last. Zeglen’s design was only effective against relatively low-velocity black-powder pistol rounds; with the widespread adoption of more powerful smokeless-powder ammunition, within 10 years the vest became useless against all but the weakest handguns.

The outbreak of the First World War saw the sudden and unexpected return of plate armour to the battlefield. With the exception of a few special units like the aforementioned French Cuirassiers, troops marched into battle in 1914 without any kind of protective equipment – not even helmets. The famous spiked pickelhaube worn by German troops were made of boiled leather and designed to deflect sword blows; they offered no protection against bullets or shell fragments. But as the war bogged down into brutal trench warfare and both sides began mercilessly bombarding each other with artillery shells, the rate of severe head wounds began to soar. In response, all sides introduced not only protective headgear like the French Casque Adrian, the British Brodie Helmet , and the German Stahlhelm, but an exotic assortment of metal plate armour, including pieces to protect a soldier’s neck, shoulders, and chest. However, most of these devices proved too heavy and bulky to be practical on the battlefield. Those that were adopted, like the German sappenpanzer or “Lobster armour”, were mainly issued to static or specialized troops like machine gunners, sentries, or sappers AKA military engineers. Still, such armour was largely designed to protect against shell fragments, and could not block anything more powerful than a pistol round. One notable exception was the American Brewster Body Shield, a breastplate and face protector made of chrome nickel steel which was capable of stopping full-powered rifle bullets at a few hundred yards. At 18 kilograms, however, it was unwieldy to wear and very few were issued. Interestingly, just prior to the war the U.S. Army considered adopting a silk ballistic vest similar to Casimir Zeglen’s design. However, this idea was abandoned due to the prohibitive cost of silk and the limited usefulness of such soft armour against rifle rounds.

During the 1920s and 1930s, American gangsters began wearing cheaper ballistic vests made of thick layers of heavy cotton, which were capable of stopping most common pistol rounds with velocities up to 300 metres per second such as .22 short, .22 long rifle, .25 ACO, .32 ACP. .380 ACP. .38 Special, and .45 ACP. In response, police forces were forced to upgrade to more powerful cartridges such as .38 Super and .357 Magnum. This remained the state of the art for soft body armour until 1938 when DuPont chemist Wallace Carothers discovered the synthetic polymer Nylon which, while not as strong as silk, was stretchier and much cheaper to manufacture. Initially used in toothbrushes and women’s stockings, following the outbreak of the Second World War Nylon was pressed into service to make parachutes and flak jackets, among the first pieces of soft body armour to be widely issued in combat.

Flak jackets were the brainchild of Colonel Malcolm C. Grow, the Surgeon General of the U.S. Eighth Air Force. Grow noticed that the vast majority of wounds suffered by bomber crews operating over occupied Europe were caused by fragments from exploding German antiaircraft shells AKA ‘Flak’ (and if you’re wondering where that word came from, it is an abbreviation for Flieger Abwehr Kannone, German for “Anti-Aircraft Gun”). Convinced that many of these injuries could be prevented by some kind of light protective armour, Grow worked with the British Wilkinson Sword Company to develop a protective vest which in 1943 was officially adopted by the U.S. Army Air Force as the Flyer’s Vest, M1. Weighing in at a whopping 10 kilos, early vests were made of cotton canvas lined with manganese steel plates while later versions incorporated increasing amounts of lighter ballistic nylon. Several different versions of the flak jacket were also developed throughout the war for different kinds of aircrew, including the Flyer’s Apron, M3 for waist gunners, the Flyer’s Apron, M4 for ball turret gunners, and Groin Armor, M5 for seated crewmen like pilots, copilots, navigators, and bombardiers. M1 infantry helmets modified to fit over flying helmets and headphones were also widely issued to protect against head injuries.

While developed in the UK, flak jackets were rarely used by the Royal Air Force as they were too bulky to wear in cramped British bombers like the Avro Lancaster. However, over 300,000 M1 and 100,000 improved M2 vests were issued to USAAF crews throughout the war. They were also widely worn by U.S. Navy personnel aboard aircraft carriers, whose open decks provided little protection against shell and aerial bomb bursts. And while useless against machine gun bullets and cannon shells, flak jackets were effective against shell fragments and helped reduce the number of fatalities from chest and abdominal wounds among USAAF crews by nearly 40%.

Meanwhile, much experimentation was done on body armour for use by regular ground forces. In 1940, the British Medical Research Council or MRC developed an outfit comprising three plates of 1mm manganese steel – the same as used in British helmets: one covering the chest, another the lower abdomen and groin, and a third the lower back – all held in canvas webbing pouches that could be strapped on over or under a soldier’s uniform. Around 5,000 were produced, being mainly issued to British, Polish, and Canadian paratroopers and field medics starting in 1944. However, despite weighing only 1.5 kilos, troops found MRC armour uncomfortable to wear and it was quickly discarded.

Meanwhile, in 1942 the Soviet Red Army introduced an armoured vest known as the SN-42 Stalnoi Nagrudnik or “Steel Breastplate”, which comprised two plates of 2mm pressed steel covering the torso and groin. Weighing 3.5 kilos, the SN-42 was issued mainly to assault engineers and tank riders, and was capable of deflecting a 9mm pistol or submachine gun bullet at point-blank range.

And in 1944, the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps developed an innovative protective vest called the M12, based on a fibre-reinforced resin material called Doron. This material was moulded into plates 3mm thick and 130 millimetres square, which were inserted into pockets in a ballistic-nylon vest. Far lighter than earlier metal-based armour, the vests were issued in limited numbers during the Okinawa campaign from April-June 1945 and found to be effective against shell and bomb fragments and pistol bullets up the .45 ACP.

After the war, the US Army continued to improve on the M12 design, producing the M1951 vest widely used during the Korean War and the M1955 used in Vietnam. However, as before, these vests were only effective against shell fragments and pistol rounds, while armour capable of stopping more powerful weapons was too heavy for regular combat and was only issued to specialized personnel. For example, in 1967 Natick Laboratories in Massachusetts developed the T65-2 plate carrier vest, designed to hold armour plates made of hard ceramic like boron or silicon carbide or aluminium oxide. Capable of stopping more powerful small arms projectiles like the 7.62×39 round fired by AK-style rifles, the 8-kiloT65-2 was issued to pilots of low-flying helicopters during the latter half of the Vietnam War.

As in the 1930s, the development of lighter and stronger body armour awaited a breakthrough in materials science. That breakthrough came in 1965 with the development of poly-para-phenylene terephthalamide – better known as Kevlar. Discovered by DuPont chemist Stephanie Kwolek, Kevlar was originally developed as a replacement for steel in belted automobile tires. With a tensile strength of 3,620 Megapascals, it is pound-for-pound 10 times stronger than steel while maintaining excellent flexibility and cut and puncture resistance – making it ideal for making ballistic vests.

In 1971, Lester Shubin, Director of Science and Technology for the National Institute for Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, initiated a research program to evaluate the ballistic performance of Kevlar. And if you happen to be an animal lover, you may want to skip this part. These tests involved strapping different thicknesses of Kevlar cloth to anaesthetized goats and shooting them with various calibre firearms, all while monitoring blood oxygen levels and other indicators of lung and heart injuries. The program revealed that Kevlar was capable of protecting against most common handgun rounds like .38 special and 9x19mm at short ranges, preventing the bullet from penetrating and reducing blunt force injuries to less-than-lethal levels. Indeed, Kevlar ballistic vests were found to increase the wearer’s probability of survival by a whopping 95%.

The National Institute of Justice published its findings in 1976. However, by this time Kevlar ballistic vests had already been commercially available for several years, developed by companies such as Smith & Wesson and American Body Armor. Such vests soon became standard equipment for police forces around the world, and according to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, have saved the lives of nearly 3,000 officers annually since 1987.

Like earlier forms of soft body armour, Kevlar ballistic vests work in two stages. The outer Kevlar layers absorb the energy from the bullet, causing it to slow down, deform, and spread its energy over a wider area. The inner layers then prevent the bullet from penetrating and help further spread the force of impact. Indeed, most ballistic vests also incorporate additional pads called trauma pads to further reduce blunt-force injuries. However, while a ballistic vest can stop a bullet and save its wearer’s life, they may still suffer severe bruising or even broken ribs, depending on the type of bullet and the range at which they were shot.

Since by design the outer Kevlar layers are damaged by bullet impacts, ballistic vests become less and less effective the more hits they absorb and can be defeated by multiple hits to the same area. Kevlar also loses some of its strength when exposed to ultraviolet light, bleach, water, and salt from human sweat, meaning the ballistic layers must be encased in a water and light-proof covering of ordinary nylon. Vests are also typically retired and replaced every five years or so to ensure maximum performance.

But while soft body armour can protect against most common handgun rounds, they are still largely useless against rifle bullets, which are significantly more powerful. For example, a typical 9x19mm handgun has a muzzle velocity of 360 metres per second and a muzzle energy of 481 Joules. By contrast, the 5.56x45mm NATO cartridge used in many modern assault rifles has a muzzle velocity of 993 metres per second and a muzzle energy of 1,755 Joules – nearly three times higher .

On that note, given that the bulletproof vest Doc Brown wears at the end of Back to the Future appears to be a soft Kevlar type and that the Libyan terrorists were using AK-style rifles, we’re going to have to call Hollywood bullshit on this iconic scene. Sorry to ruin your childhood, but Doc Brown is very, very dead.

Indeed, the only way to stop full-power rifle bullets is with solid ballistic plates like the Small Arms Protective Insert or SAPI used by the United States Armed Forces. Modern ballistic plates are typically made of hard ceramic like aluminium oxide or boron or silicon carbide, often laminated together with polymers like ultra high molecular weight polyethylene or Kraton to form a tough, impact resistant composite material. These plates are in turn coated with a tough polymer layer to protect the wearer from spalling – the back of the plate flaking off into deadly, high-velocity fragments when the front is struck by a projectile – and backed with soft trauma plates to help spread the force of impact. These are then inserted into pockets on a special vest called a plate carrier, which is typically made of ballistic Kevlar fabric for additional protection.

There are two levels of solid armour commonly manufactured today: Level III, designed to stop intermediate rounds like 7.62×39 and 5.56×45 and the full-power 7.62×51 NATO cartridge; and Level IV, designed to stop more powerful rounds like 30.06 [“thirty-aught-six”] armour piercing. However these specifications tend to vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, and come with a number of caveats. For example, as with soft armour, solid plates can be defeated by multiple rounds hitting the same area. Also, most plates are designed for use against regular lead-cored bullets, which are easily deformed by the hard ceramic. Bullets with cores made of tungsten, tungsten carbide, or other harder metals are much more likely to penetrate. Finally, plate armour is 5-8 times heavier than soft armour on a protected area basis, making it significantly less comfortable and convenient to wear. As in every aspect of life, there are no ideal solutions – only tradeoffs.

Speaking of tradeoffs, this all finally brings us around to how many bullets a piece of body armor can absorb before it is rendered useless. Well, as you might imagine given how many different types of body armor we’ve been describing exist, this depends. As for some general examples, we’ll start with soft armor. The moment these are hit by a bullet, the fibers around the area of impact are compromised and lose some of their ability to absorb and dissipate the energy of a bullet. Thus, if another shot were to hit reasonably close to where the first hit, the bullet has a good chance of penetrating, even if the vest would have normally been able to handle it fine. Thus, while it is possible they can take multiple hits in some cases, and even be rated for such, depending on the caliber of bullet, way the armor was made, etc. it’s generally deemed unsafe to rely on this.

Moving on to ceramic plate armor, in most cases these plates are designed to shatter when hit by a bullet, dissipating the force of the impact via breaking up the bullet so that the smaller pieces can be absorbed by some backing material like Kevlar or some form of polymer or sometimes both. However, a side effect of this is that a large portion of the plate is then completely useless against a second shot similar to our previous example with soft armor. That said, there are types of ceramic armor that are designed to take multiple rounds, just, again, relying on this is generally considered unwise in most cases.

This brings us to polyethylene armor plating. In this case the impact of the bullet actually melts the plate which then re-hardens, trapping the bullet within it. Due to this, polyethylene armor can survive being shot numerous times without losing its ballistic integrity and we found examples of manufacturers that claimed their polyethylene armor could take hundreds of rounds before failing. Polyethylene plates also have the advantage of being roughly half the weight of ceramic for the same level of protection.

Hybrid body armor is also quite common at the higher levels, meaning your mileage may vary from a given piece of body armor to another, with the NIJ’s ratings giving a decent overview of what it’s capable of and often the manufacturer’s testing giving even more insight into how many rounds of a given type of bullet the vest can take before failure.

All this said, again, while a given piece of body armor may pass the tests and even be claimed by the manufacturer to protect against much more, most manufacturers recommend replacing body armor even after a single shot. And, beyond that, even in some cases if you just drop your armor on the floor. This is because although body armor is designed to stop bullets, some types are surprisingly fragile. For example, ceramic plates can easily crack if dropped, sometimes in ways that aren’t visible to the naked eye.

Moving on to soft body armor, stretching or deforming the fibers in some way, again in ways that are sometimes not obvious to the naked eye, also can compromise their integrity. Some manufacturers even advise replacing Kevlar-based body armor if you just get it wet as, as previously alluded to, this potentially weakens the fibers. On that note, because daily, otherwise innocuous, activities can sometimes compromise body armor, the standard in the body armor industry (set by the NIJ) is also to replace a given vest a maximum of every 5 years, even if it’s never been hit by a bullet.

Finally, for the fashionably minded individual who might need some protection from getting shot, it turns out bulletproof suits are not just a thing in the movies, but a real product that makes military and police body armor look like something made from an era when hitching up your covered wagon to go to the market was a thing. Perhaps the most famous manufacturer of these is the Colombian company Miguel Caballero, founded in 1992 by, you guessed it, a guy named Miguel Caballero. What exact materials he uses to make his line of bullet proof clothing isn’t clear, though he states it’s a “hybrid between nylon and polyester”. The advantage of his material is it is significantly lighter and thinner than Kevlar at equivalent protection levels. And, indeed, if you go check out their website, their undershirt body armor looks pretty much like any other undershirt unless you look really closely. As for the price tag, this isn’t listed on the website, but it would appear a basic suit top made by the company will run you upwards of about $20,000-$30,000, though you can get other product, such as an undershirt for less, apparently starting at around $4,000. Funny enough, one of Caballero’s favorite ways to advertise is in fact to put the clothing on someone and then personally shoot them, leading to the company’s slogan, “I was shot by Miguel Caballero” with apparently a few hundred people shot by the man himself to date. They even have a youtube channel where you can go and see him shoot his wife in the stomach. Not just stopping bullets, some of Caballero’s product are also rated to stop knives, be fireproof, waterproof, etc. Essentially, think the type of snazzy and robust clothing seen in most spy movies and that’s pretty accurate in this case.

And that, dear viewers, is the long and fascinating story of the bulletproof vest. While certainly capable of saving the wearer’s life under many circumstances, these devices are hardly the magical plot armour Hollywood would have us believe. So the next time you take a shortcut through the shady part of town – or try to buy plutonium from Libyan terrorists – remember: the best way to survive a bullet is not to get shot in the first place. A genius like Doc Brown should have known that.

Bonus Facts:

As alluded to, the commonly held notion that WWI was started out of outrage over the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie at the hands of Serbian nationalist secret society known as the “Black Hand” isn’t entirely correct. In fact, again as noted, Emperor Franz Josef himself expressed relief over the assassination because it rid him of an heir whom he deeply disliked. The Emperor commented that “God will not be mocked. A higher power had put back the order I couldn’t maintain.”

Indeed, it wasn’t just the Emperor who was relieved; it was reported by an Austrian newspaper that the general consensus among the various political circles was that the assassination, though a tragedy, was for the best. As far as the Austrian people were concerned, it was noted “The event almost failed to make any impression whatever. On Sunday and Monday, the crowds in Vienna listened to music and drank wine as if nothing had happened.” Indeed, it took the government itself a full three weeks to react.

So why go to war over an assassination, if nobody cared? Because, while nobody seemed to much care about the assassination itself, Austria-Hungary had been looking for an excuse to wage a “preventative war” against Serbia as a state in order to weaken or destroy them so as to take back territory in the Balkans, which had been taken during the Balkan Wars. They had not taken it back up to this point because they lacked Germany’s support; without that support, they feared Russia too much, because of the treaty Russia had with Serbia.

With the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife on June 28th, 1914, Austria-Hungary was able to secure the promise from Germany that it would aid in a war with Serbia and possibly Russia, if Russia chose to enter the fray due to their treaty with Serbia. It should be noted here that Austria-Hungary did not really expect Russia to enter the fray as they expected this to be a very small war that would be over quickly, before Russia would be obligated to respond. Now with Germany’s support if Russia did enter the fray, Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia with remarkably severe terms that Serbia would be sure to reject, thus giving Austria-Hungary an excuse to go launch a limited war on Serbia to reclaim territory in the Balkans.

Surprisingly, Serbia responded relatively well to the ultimatum, but they did dispute a few minor clauses, which gave Austria-Hungary the excuse they needed to go to war. At this point, the following general series of events happened due to a variety of existing treaties between various nations, which escalated this minor clash into the first “Great War”.

• Russia bound by their treaty with Serbia decides to come to Serbia’s aid.
• Germany, with the recent treaty with Austria-Germany, declares war on Russia.
• France, bound by an existing treaty with Russia, now is at war with Germany by association. Germany then invades Belgium to have easy access to France.
• Britain, allied to France with an existing treaty, declares war against Germany. This was unexpected by Germany as they expected Britain to stay out of the war, due to the fact that the treaty with France was loosely worded and not entirely binding. However, Britain also had a 75 year old treaty with Belgium. So because of both of these treaties, they decided to declare war on Germany.
• With Britain now warring with Germany, Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa enter the war as they were colonies of Britain.
• Japan honors an existing treaty with Britain and declares war on Germany.
• Austria-Hungary declare war on Japan for declaring war on Germany.
• The U.S. tries to stay out of the war but in 1917 decides to enter due to Germany’s submarines hindering the United States’ commercial shipping because the U.S. was shipping a lot of supplies to the Allies.

So in the end, a small quick war over a minor land dispute got turned into a lengthy war that was joined by powers all over the globe due to a variety of existing treaties dating back as much as 75 years before the war started and as a result, over 20 million people died and 25 or so more million injured and endless numbers more having their lives irrevocably altered, not to mention it set the world on the path to the even greater conflict in WWII. All because one tiny country wanted a tiny bit more land.

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