Posted on 06/28/2015 12:56:45 PM PDT by aquila48
On Sunday June 28 1914 in Sarajevo, Gavrilo Princip fired the shot that killed the Archduke and started the train of events that led to global war. Here is a step by step account of how the dramatic day unfolded...
Our journey starts with an extremely promising omen. Here our car burns, and down there they will throw bombs at us. Archduke Franz Ferdinand comments wryly on the fact that his journey to Bosnia in June 1914 begins with his car overheating The Archduke: Franz Ferdinand, the bumptious, little-loved 51-year-old nephew of the ailing Emperor Franz Joseph, was heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. In 1913 he was made inspector general of the armed forces of Austria-Hungary; it was this role that took him to Bosnia in June 1914, to inspect the army’s summer manoeuvres.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
A socialist - liberal that helped start WW1.
Gavrilo Princip, member of The Black Hand. He assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, causing a chain of events that led to the World Wars, to the consequent decline of European civilization, and arguably to the rise of the Communism Russia, China, etc...
He lit the match that killed hundreds of millions.
First of all, the arch duke Ferdinand was not executed. He tripped.
Secondly, the entire premise of the first world war was a lie. Carlos Estephan Rodrigo Rivera of our holy father Orphanage was framed by the famous luchedore Pedro Ramon Argon Egnociones.
The entire distraction was perpatrated to draw attention away from the growing Blue Agave ranching takeover by Senior Dob Pablo and Mr. Patrone Silvero.
Goodness knows that Europe was spoiling for a fight, and that thanks to their need to “balance” each other and rig together treaties to try to tie each other down, this complete non-event, even in the minds of the Hapsburg emperor, could have amounted to a 4th rate conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia at best, and not this civilization-ending ripple of events that is ready to dash the west on the rocks for good this time.
Then again A/H did us no favors by turning down an almost complete capitulation by Serbia before shots were fired.
I attended a symposium last year on the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the war, and the bottom line was best expressed by the head of the department of History of the host: "What started World War One? Nobody knows." My best personal guess is that many of the participants were actually, for various reasons, looking forward to a war of some sort, but not that war. No one could have anticipated what that turned into because nothing like it had ever happened before.
For Princip I have nothing but disgust. He was no patriot, he was a murderer of unarmed people who truly meant him and his country no harm. The symbology of that assassination was impeccable; the reality brought Hell down around his shoulders and everyone else's.
Just watched a documentary about WW1 last night. Horrible, horrible war.
L
I wonder how THIS week will be remembered 100 years from now...
Franz Ferdinand may have intended to implement the trialist solution, making the South Slavic areas of he empire into a third unit on a par with Austria and Hungary. Whether he could have done it is another matter--the Hungarians would have opposed it. For Princip and his fellow conspirators, the trialist solution was worse than the status quo because it might have meant that the Bosnian population would be content to remain part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Franz Ferdinand may have intended to implement the trialist solution, making the South Slavic areas of he empire into a third unit on a par with Austria and Hungary. Whether he could have done it is another matter--the Hungarians would have opposed it. For Princip and his fellow conspirators, the trialist solution was worse than the status quo because it might have meant that the Bosnian population would be content to remain part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Franz Ferdinand was not only not an oppressor of the Slavs, he was a proponent of turning the dual monarchy of Austria and Hungary into a triple monarchy, adding the Slavs. Though this was awkward to implement because part of the Slavs lived north and some south of the other two groups.
The Serbs wanted him dead because if he succeeded he would mollify the other groups of south Slavs and end Serbia’s chances of breaking them away from AH to form a Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia. Which, when the actually succeeded, worked out so well.
BTW, at least certain factions in the Serbian government and possibly the government itself were directly involved in the assassination. Serbia had a remarkably bloody and terroristic history.
Sorry, should have read all the way down before responding.
Last year in Sarajevo on the 100th, they unveiled a statue of Prinzips, while a reenactor looking like him walked past and fired a pistol into the air twice.
Real class act, IMHO.
Visitors to France often get to Normandy and it’s an inspiring place. However Verdun and the American Meuse-Argonne cemetery north of there are also beautiful places. The American Mont Faucon cemetery is kept in pristine condition and is I believe the largest U.S. military cemetery in Europe.
Princip's group, Young Bosnia, was mostly Bosnian Serbs but I think included some Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats. They may have wanted Franz Ferdinand dead but that doesn't mean that all of the Bosnian Serbs shared that view. Young Bosnia was influenced by anarchists who believed that it was a good thing to assassinate rulers--probably the great majority of the South Slavs were horrified by the murder of Franz Ferdinand and his wife.
The Serbian government could have done a better job of warning the Austrians of a possible plot and of watching the border to prevent weapons being sent into Bosnia--so I wouldn't be surprised if the Serbian government had more complicity than is generally believed.
I was in Sarajevo when it was still under Communist rule--Princip was treated as a local hero. The bridge near the assassination site had been renamed after him.
True, the trialist solution would not have fixed everything--the Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks would need a unit too.
His uncle was not happy with him, either for his schemes to change this alignment or for that matter, anything else - Franz Joseph was so conservative he makes me look like a Kos Kiddie. Especially not for marrying "below" himself - that Sophie could be considered that way and treated so shamefully shows us just how hidebound FJ actually was. She was a beautiful woman in many ways and died trying to shield her husband from the assassin. But the Habsburgs (among others) had a history of preferring to turn into genetic freaks (Charles II of Spain) than to open up the bloodline.
The real problem was that the Black Hand was working not in the interest of the Serbia that was, but a Serbia imagined that it was going to take quite a bit more than one man's death to establish and, in the event, never was. What did happen to Serbia was horrifying. They didn't do badly at all in the beginning, but it wasn't just them versus Austria anymore. That turned out to be two minor powers sparring in the midst of absolutely everyone else (even Romania and Bulgaria in the end) throwing bullets around for interests of their own.
The professor I alluded to earlier put it this way: OK, let's say we stop in 1916 and negotiate peace. Who sits at the table and what issues are discussed? We ran out of board space. And that was very different from WWII.
You are quite right about the term “Serbs” being more than a little ambiguous.
When I said rogue elements of the government were certainly in on it I was referring to Apis, the head of their military intelligence and a guy who wielded influence all out of proportion to the title. He was also the head of the Black Hand, the terrorist group that actually launched the assassination. A great many other Serbs (of Serbia and elsewhere) were also members, notably including lots of high-ranking officers in the Serbian Army. Serbian prewar politics reads more like an overdone conspiracy novel than anything else. After all, they’d murdered their king and queen only ten years before. Apis led that plot, too.
Some believe intentional foot-dragging by these guys prevented the killers from being caught in Serbia and also from sufficiently explicit warnings being conveyed to the AH government.
It is as if the US government had been heavily infiltrated by a secret group in the 30s and early 40s working behind the scenes to get us into war with the Nazis, with some at or near the very top. Oh, wait, that did happen.
You are also entirely correct about what happened to the Serbs in the war. They lost by far the greatest percentage of their population. They successfully fought off the Austrians for a couple of years, then the German varsity came in and they staged the most appalling retreat across the mountains to the coast and their allies.
There was at least a movement for a Yugoslav division of the monarchy. I’m unaware that the Poles, Czechs and Slovaks had any such desires to be amalgamated. The northern Slav problem being greatly complicated by the Poles in Germany and Russia.
There were great discrepancies between the provinces in terms of economic development and literacy. The Czechs were ahead of most others except perhaps the German-speakers. Bosnia was probably the most backward with illiteracy rates of about 90%. There was massive emigration to other countries (US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile) because of the poverty.
I read a book by a British scholar published a year or two before the war began. He doubted that most of the Southern Slavs in the empire wanted to be united with Serbia. Vienna was one of the great cities of Europe and the Austrians were civilized. Belgrade was a small town and some of the South Slavs in the empire may have regarded the kingdom of Serbia as backward. Plus there was the religious issue--the split between Catholics (Croats and Slovenes) and Orthodox (Serbs) dating back to 1054, plus the Muslims perhaps figuring they were better off with the status quo.
Quite a mess, eh?
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