This is the actual pistol used by Princip to murder the Archduke Franz Ferdinand: a Browning 1903 Model Semi Auto Pistol.

This pistol has Fabrique National grips and maker markings with Browning's patent.

It was the standard issue pistol of the Shanghai Municipal Police. This legendary police force and its evil foes were depicted very well by Hollywood in many of it's 1930's Gangster and Gang movies centered around Shanghai, and also by the Indiana Jones movie 'The Temple of Doom'.

The Browning 1903 was also a very popular pistol with the American Gangsters of the 1930s such as Bonnie and Clyde.

 

The uniform that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was wearing at the time of his murder:

 

 

 

It is often forgotten that the Archduke's wife, Sophia, was also killed:


 

The assasination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand is always the reason that is given in the United States for the cause of the First World War.

National and Colonial rivalries between the United Kingdom and the Kaiserreich and Prussian expansionism and nationalist ambition, are never examined or explained.

I have heard that the Emperor Franz Josef did not even like his nephew the Archduke; I don't know if that is true, but the assasination was one of many factors that caused the war, and the other factors (such as the ones mentioned above) seem, from my amateur opinion, the more important historic causes of war.

The assasination was obviously an affront to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.


Was it alone enough to cause the Central Powers to go to war with Serbia and the Triple Entente Alliance?

Please Vote For Iron Europe At Moddb.com's Best Mods Of 2008

Please take a moment to vote for us at Moddb.com's Best Mods of 2008.

You just need to register at Moddb.com, and then click the big "Vote for the Mod" logo near the center of the page, and then your vote is registered.

Register and vote here:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/iron-europe-1914-1916


By voting you will help give our WWI first person shooter PC game mod, Iron Europe:1914-1916, standing in the PC modding community and the recognition it really deserves.



It is too bad we are not a little further along in creating Iron Europe, but we needed some more people to work on the mod when we registered at Moddb a few weeks ago, and registering did help a lot, because four new members, Just Conner, DannyCon, Frodo, and invasion101 joined the team, and two of them are modellers.

Moddb is headquarters for all PC game mods being created, and it is a site where modders can post information about their mod and ask for help.

The research and planning of the Iron Europe: 1914-16 has been conducted with meticulous attention to historical detail, including almost every facet of the war on the Western Front, from the uniforms and the weapons to the trenches and villages, even the average height and ages of the soldiers, we have researched and planned this mod with a post graduate level of historical research.


Although I don't expect we will take first place, it would be nice to be in the top 100 Mods of the year.



And please visit our official Iron Europe Forum!

http://z15.invisionfree.com/Iron_Europe/index.php

Iron Europe: 1914-1916 Mod Page Launched At Moddb.com

Here's the page we just launched on the moddb.com website; it shows some of the modding work we have completed:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/iron-europe-1914-1916

Progress on the mod has been going slowly but steadily.

I guess I'm learning that modding a video game is a little bit harder than I thought.

Essentially, you have to make a lot of models of everything you want in the game, in order to give it that certain authenticity of how things looked during the time period which is being focused on.

We have an excellent modeller who goes by the nickname of N!ghtmare.



Now, if we could just find even one more modeller, and of course even better would be two, I think our modding team would be in excellent shape.



I could also use an additional Researcher and Writer, so if you ever wanted to write a few pages about a WWI battle, based on the maps we are including, and have it electronically beamed into people's homes 24/7, which an audience of mostly males, ages 13-45 will read before they enter into the game, please contact me.

In addition, we could also use someone who would like to research uniforms, weapons, army structures, and research the maps by finding historical and modern photos on the internet of the geographioal locations featured in the maps.



We will also eventually (although I would say we are probably a year to a year and a half away) research the French Army and have a series of maps based on the battles they fought in WWI.

I think we are going to avoid Verdun because another modding group is making a mod based on the Verdun battles.

Instead, we can focus on Ypres, the Somme, Champagne, and Alsace-Lorraine.

So, we could use someone who has a good reading knowledge of the French language.

We will also need French Voice Actors to say some commands, phrases, and insults, and we will include those recordings inside the game.


We are not a business, so learning about the First World War and helping make the game is a rich experience in itself and is its own reward.