Assassination in Sarajevo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg were shot to death in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, by Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Black Hand which originated from the Serbian Union or Death organization [1], a group aiming at the unification of the South Slavs. The event sparked off the outbreak of World War I. (See: Causes of World War I).
Contents |
[edit] Background
Under the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, Austria-Hungary received the mandate to occupy and administer the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina while the Ottoman Empire retained official sovereignty. This arrangement led to a number of arcane and internecine political and territorial disputes over several decades, involving Russia, Austria, Bosnia, and Serbia. The labyrinthine and Machiavellian diplomatic plots and conspiracies involving these territories over the years engendered hostility amongst the indigenous populations, breeding resentment which eventually led a fringe political group, the Black Hand, to plot Ferdinand's assassination.
In late June 1914, Ferdinand visited Bosnia in order to observe military manoeuvres and to open a museum in Sarajevo. June 28th was the 14th anniverary of the Morganatic Oath, where Franz Ferdinand was given permission by Emperor Franz Joseph to marry his love, Sophie Chotek (a Slav born too far beneath his station), in exchange for Franz Ferdindand's oath that the children from this union would never ascend the throne. Sophie Chotek was happy to accompany her husband to Bosnia and celebrate their anniversary far from the Vienna court where she was treated poorly.
Franz Ferdinand was widely believed to be an advocate of trialism, under which Austria-Hungary would be reorganized by combining the Slavic lands within the Austro-Hungarian empire into a third crown. A Slavic kingdom could have been a bulwark against Serb irredentism and Franz Ferdinand was therefore perceived as a threat by those same irredentists. Princip stated to the court that preventing Franz Ferdinand's planned reforms was one of his motivations.
The day of the assassination, June 28, is June 15 in the Julian calendar, the feast of St. Vitus. In Serbia, it is called Vidovdan and commemorates the 1389 Battle of Kosovo against the Ottomans at which the Sultan was assassinated in his tent by a Serb; it is an occasion for Serbian patriotic observances.
[edit] Conspiracy
In late 1913, Danilo Ilić came to the Serbian listening post at Užice to speak to his handler and recommend an end to the period of terrorist organization building and a move to direct action against Austria-Hungary. Colonel Popović stated to the historian Albertini that he passed Danilo Ilić on to Belgrade to discuss this matter with Chief of Serbian Military Intelligence and leader of the Serbian secret society Black Hand Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević (Apis). Ilić and Apis took the secrets of their discussion to their graves, but soon after their meeting, Apis’ right hand man and fellow member of the Black Hand, Major Vojislav Tankosić, called a Serbian planning meeting in Toulouse, France. This is established by the statement of Paul Bastaić and Mustafa Golubić to the diplomat and historian Milos Bogićević. During this January 1914 meeting, various possible Austro-Hungarian targets for assassination were discussed including Franz-Ferdinand, but ultimately, at this meeting, it was decided only to dispatch Mohamed Mehmedbašić to Sarajevo, to kill the Austrian Governor of Bosnia, Oskar Potiorek.
Mehmedbašić was delayed and before he made an attempt on Potiorek, Apis ordered the assassination of Franz-Ferdinand (as evidenced by Apis’ confession to the Serbian Court). Mehmedbašić told the historian Albertini that Ilić summoned him to Mostar and informed him that Belgrade had scrapped the mission to kill the governor in favor of the murder of Franz-Ferdinand and that Mehmbedbašić should stand by for the new operation.
Ilić recruited the Serbian youths Vaso Čubrilović and Cvjetko Popović shortly after Easter (April 19, 1914), for the assassination as evidenced by the testimony of Ilić, Čubrilović, and Popović at the Sarajevo trial. Three Bosnian Serb youths living in Belgrade, Gavrilo Princip, Trifun Grabež, and Nedjelko Čabrinović testified at the Sarajevo trial that at about the same time, (a little after Easter) they were eager to carry out an assassination and approached Milan Ciganović and through him Major Tankosić and reached an agreement to transport arms to Sarajevo and participate in the assassination.
At trial, the 3 youths from Belgrade testified that Tankosić, directly and through Ciganović, not only provided six hand grenades, four Browning Automatic Pistols and ammunition, but also money, suicide pills, training, a special map with the location of gendarmes marked, knowledge of contacts on a special channel used to infiltrate agents and arms into Austria-Hungary and a small card authorizing the use of that special channel. Major Tankosić confirmed to the historian Luciano Magrini that he provided the bombs and revolvers and was responsible for the terrorists’ training and that he initiated the idea of the suicide pills.
After receiving this training and support from Major Tankosić and his associates, the three conspirators traveled from Belgrade to Šabac and handed the small card to Captain Popović of the Serbian Border Guard. Popović, in turn, provided them with a letter to Captain Prvanović and sent them on to Loznica, a small border town. When they reached Loznica, Captain Prvanović summoned three of his revenue sergeants to discuss the best way to cross the border undetected. Sergeant Grbić accepted the task and led Princip and Grabež with the weapons to Isaković’s Island, a small island in the middle of the Drina River that separated Serbia from Austria-Hungary, (Čabrinović crossed at another point without weapons) and then handed off the two terrorists and their weapons to the agents of the Serbian Narodna Obrana for transport into Austria-Hungarian territory and from safe-house to safe-house.
The terrorists and weapons were passed from agent to agent until they arrived in Tuzla where the terrorists left their weapons in the hands of the Narodna Obrana agent Miško Jovanović. The agents reported back their activities to the Narodna Obrana President, Boža Milanović, who in turn reported to the then Caretaker Prime Minister Nikola Pašić. The report adds the name of a new military conspirator, Major Kosta Todorović, apparently the immediate superior of Captains Popović and Prvanović. Pašić’s handwritten notes document the Prime Minister’s advanced knowledge of the plot and that he was able to connect Major Tankosić. The Austrians captured the report, Pašić’s handwritten notes, and additional documents corroborating the Civilian Government’s foreknowledge of the plot, and the involvement of Major Todorović and Captain Prvanović.
From Tuzla, Grabež and Čabrinović went on to their parents’ homes to lie low until Franz-Ferdinand’s arrival and Princip stayed at Ilić’s mother’s house and there met Ilić. After meeting Princip, Ilić went to Tuzla to bring the weapons to Sarajevo. Miško Jovanović hid the weapons in a large box of sugar and the two went separately by train to Doboj where Jovanovic handed off the box to Ilić. Ilić brought the weapons back to his mother’s house on June 15 and kept them in a suitcase under a sofa.
Ilić testified that on June 18 he went to Brod and here begins an interesting twist in the plot, because Ilić claimed that from this time on he opposed the assassination. According to Čeda Popović, Đuro Šarac was sent to Šabac by Tankosić to meet with Ilić and cancel the assassination. It is about 100km along the river Sava from Brod to Šabac.
In further testimony Ilić, Princip and Grabež describe how after Ilić returned from Brod he tried to prevent the assassination. But then, and this is a point of some controversy, on the eve of the assassination, Masterspy Rade Malobabić arrived in Sarajevo on the orders of the Chief of the Serbian General Staff, Marshall Putnik, and apparently gave the final go ahead on the assassination and only then did Ilić hand out the weapons to the assassins. The evidence of this is Rade Malobabić's confession to a priest, Colonel Ljubomir Vulović's statement to the Serbian Court that he received orders from Putnik and sent Malobabić into Austria-Hungary, witness accounts from Sarajevo, and Dragutin Dimitrijević's confession to the Serbian Court that he had ordered Malobabić to organize the assassination. Still all these statements and accounts are open to multiple interpretations and its possible Malobabić was conducting other business on behalf of the Serbian Military on this particular visit to Austria-Hungary.
To sum up so far, the Serbian Military, including the Chief of the Serbian General Staff, Marshall Putnik, Colonels Apis and Vulović, Majors Tankosić, Mojić and Todorović, Captains Popović and Prvanović, sergeant Grbić, and two other unnamed sergeants, and Rade Malobabić is implicated by the evidence in the assassination conspiracy. A number of agents of the Narodna Odbrana, an organization officially recognized by Serbia and reporting to the Prime Minister, are also implicated in the assassination. Knowledge of the plot circulated widely and we must now turn our attention to how, once the Serbian Caretaker Government became aware of the assassination plot, the Serbia Civilian Government failed to take firm measures to prevent the assassination.
Caretaker Prime Minister Pašić learned of the assassination plot and informed members of his cabinet in late May or early June according to Ljuba Jovanović in the article "The Blood of Slavism". Other evidence making it clear Pašić had sufficient advanced warning to have prevented the attack include Pašić’s handwritten notes on the briefing by the Narodna Obrana and the statement of Serbian Military Attache to Vienna, Colonel Lešanin to the historian Luciano Magrini. The statements of Colonel Lešanin, and Ljuba Jovanović cite certain half-measures taken by the Prime Minister providing Pašić with plausible deniability.
The half-measures were doomed to failure and the Prime Minister surely must have known that. The first half-measure was the instruction to the border guards to block the assassins. Jovanovic’s account makes it clear that the Prime Minister did not give his order immediately, but rather reviewed it with his ministers after some time had elapsed, giving the assassins time to cross into Austria-Hungary, and he did not give the order through the proper channel. In the Spring of 1914, the Serbian Civilian Government was in the process of trying to establish its authority over the Serbian Military and the Serbian Military was resisting by all means available including refusing to follow orders, forcing Prime Minister Pasic to resign, and, when the Prime Minister was reinstated, an attempted putsch in Macedonia. Prime Minister Pasic needed to get King Petar to issue the order if there was to be any chance it would be obeyed and this the Prime Minister did not do. The second half-measure was to give Austria an oblique warning through Serbia’s embassy in Vienna. The ambassador was a known ally of the military conspirators and his instructions were carried out poorly and not followed up on. To be successful, Prime Minister Pasic should have approached the Austrian Ambassador to Serbia personally and provided the details he knew about including the name of one of the assassins, the agents who passed them along, the fact that the weapons were in Tuzla with Misko Jovanovic and so on. This also, Prime Minister Pasic did not do and so the assassination and its terrible consequences were allowed to proceed.
[edit] The assassination
Note: The exact course of events was never firmly established, mostly due to inconsistent stories of witnesses.
The seven young conspirators were inexperienced with weapons, and it was only due to an extraordinary sequence of events that they were successful. Around 10:00 Franz Ferdinand, his wife and their party left the Philipovic army camp, where he had undertaken a brief review of the troops. The motorcade consisted of seven cars:
- In the first car: the chief detective of Sarajevo and three local police officers.
- In the second car: Sarajevo's Mayor, Fehim Efendi Curcic; Sarajevo's Commissioner of Police, Dr. Edmund Gerde.
- In the third car: Franz Ferdinand; his wife Sophie; Bosnia's Governor General Oskar Potiorek; Franz Ferdinand's bodyguard Lieutenant Colonel Count Franz von Harrach.
- In the fourth car: the head of Franz Ferdinand's military chancery, Baron Carl von Rumerskirch; Sophie's lady-in-waiting Countess Wilma Lanyus von Wellenberg; Potiorek's chief adjutant, Lieutenant Colonel Erich Edler von Merizzi; Lieutenant Colonel Count Alexander Boos-Waldeck.
- In the fifth car: Adolf Egger, Director of the Fiat Factory in Vienna; Major Paul Höger; Colonel Karl Bardolff; Dr. Ferdinand Fischer.
- In the sixth car: Baron Andreas von Morsey; Captain Pilz; other members of Franz Ferdinand's staff and Bosnian officials.
- In the seventh car: Major Erich Ritter von Hüttenbrenner; Count Josef zu Erbach-Fürstenau; Lieutenant Robert Grein.
At 10:15 the parade passed the first member of the group, Mehmed Mehmedbašić. He had placed himself in an upstairs window, but later claimed that he could not get a clear shot and decided to hold fire so as not to jeopardize the mission by alerting the authorities. The second member, Nedeljko Čabrinović, threw a bomb (or a stick of dynamite, according to some reports) at Franz Ferdinand's car, but missed. The explosion destroyed the following car, severely wounding the passengers, a policeman and several members of the crowd. Čabrinović swallowed his cyanide pill and jumped into the shallow river Miljacka. The procession sped away towards the Town Hall, and the scene turned to chaos. Police dragged Čabrinović out of the river, and he was severely beaten by the crowd before being taken into custody. His cyanide pill was either old or of too weak a dosage and had not worked. The river was also only 4 inches deep and failed to drown him. Some of the other assassins, either assuming that Franz Ferdinand had been killed, or losing their nerve, left the scene.
Arriving at the Town Hall for a scheduled reception, Franz Ferdinand showed understandable signs of stress, interrupting a prepared speech of welcome by Mayor Curcic to protest "we come here and people throw bombs at us". He then became calm and the remainder of the reception passed tensely but without incident. Officials and members of the Archduke's party discussed how to guard against another assassination attempt without coming to any coherent conclusion. A suggestion that the troops outside the city be brought in to line the streets was reportedly rejected because they did not have their parade uniforms with them on manoeuvres. Security was accordingly left to the small Sarajevo police force. The only obvious measure taken was for one of Franz Ferdinand's military aides to take up a protective position on the left hand running board of his car. This is confirmed by photographs of the scene outside the Town Hall.
The remaining conspirators had been obstructed by the heavy crowds, and it appeared that the assassination plan had failed. However, after the reception at the Town Hall, Franz Ferdinand decided to go to the hospital and visit the wounded victims of Čabrinović's bomb. Meanwhile, Gavrilo Princip had gone to a nearby food shop, either having given up or assuming that the bomb attack had been successful. Emerging, he saw Franz Ferdinand's open car reversing after having taken a wrong turn as it drove past, near the Latin Bridge. The driver, Franz Urban, had not been advised of the hospital change in plan and had continued on a route that would take the Archduke and his party directly out of the city. Pushing forward to the right hand side of the car, Princip twice fired a Belgian made Fabrique Nationale M 1910 semi-automatic pistol in 7.65×17 mm (.32 ACP) caliber (serial number 19074). The first bullet went through the side of the vehicle and hit Sophie in the abdomen, and the second hit Franz Ferdinand in the neck. Princip later claimed that his intention was to kill Governor General Potiorek, not Sophie.
Both victims remained seated upright, but dying while being driven to the Governor's residence for medical treatment. Franz Ferdinand's last words, moments after being shot, were reported by von Harrach as "Sophie dear, don't die! Stay alive for our children!" („Sopherl! Sopherl! Sterbe nicht! Bleibe am Leben für unsere Kinder!“)
Princip tried to kill himself, first by ingesting the cyanide, and then with his gun, but he vomited the apparently ineffective poison, and the gun was wrestled from his hand by onlookers before he had a chance to fire another shot.
Anti-Serb rioting broke out in Sarajevo in the hours following the assassination until order was restored by the military.
[edit] Consequences
The murder of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and his pregnant wife produced widespread shock across Europe, and there was initially much sympathy for the Austrian position. The Austrian Government in Vienna opportunistically saw this as an opportunity to settle the perceived threat from Serbia once and for all.
After conducting a criminal investigation, as well as verifying that Germany would honor its military alliance, Austria-Hungary issued a formal letter to the government of Serbia. The letter reminded Serbia of its commitment to respect the Great Powers' decision regarding Bosnia-Herzegovina, and to maintain good neighborly relations with Austria Hungary. The letter also contained specific demands aimed at destroying the funding and operation of terrorist organizations which arguably had perpetrated the Sarajevo outrage.
This letter became known as the July Ultimatum, and Austria-Hungary stated that if Serbia did not accept all of the demands in total within 48 hours that it would withdraw its ambassador from Serbia. Serbia largely accepted all the Austro-Hungarian demands, apart from the demand that Austrian agents be allowed to conduct an investigation in Belgrade, which it felt would impinge on its sovereignty.
Serbian reservists being transported on tramp steamers on the Danube, apparently accidentally, crossed on to the Austro-Hungarian side of the river at Temes-Kubin and Austro-Hungarian soldiers fired into the air to warn them off. This incident was blown out of proportion and Austria-Hungary then declared war and mobilized its army on July 28, 1914. Under the Secret Treaty of 1892 Russia and France were obligated to mobilize their armies if any of the triplice mobilized and soon all the Great Powers except Italy had chosen sides and gone to war.
Those of the conspirators who were under the age of 20 at the time of the assassination were sentenced to prison rather than execution. Three, including Danilo Ilić, were hanged. Čabrinović and Princip died of tuberculosis in prison. Some minor conspirators were acquitted.
It could be argued that this assassination set in train most of the major events of the 20th century, with its reverberations lingering into the 21st. The Treaty of Versailles at the end of the First World War is generally linked to the rise of Adolf Hitler and World War II. It also led to the success of the Russian Revolution, which helped lead to the Cold War. This, in turn, led to many of the major political developments of the twentieth century, such as the fall of the colonial empires and the rise of the United States and the USSR to super-power status.
However, if the assassination had not occurred, it is very possible that European war would have still have erupted, triggered by another event at another time. The alliances noted above and the existence of vast and complex mobilisation plans that were almost impossible to reverse once put in motion made war on a huge scale increasingly likely from the beginning of the twentieth century.
[edit] Relics
The bullet fired by Gavrilo Princip, sometimes referred to as "the bullet that started World War I", is stored as a museum exhibit in the Konopiště Castle near the town of Benešov, Czech Republic.
Princip's weapon itself, along with the large car that the Archduke was riding in, his bloodstained light blue uniform and plumed cocked hat, and the chaise longue on which he was placed while being attended to by physicians, are kept as a permanent exhibit in the Museum of Military History, Vienna, Austria.
[edit] References
- Albertini, Luigi. Origins of the War of 1914, Oxford University Press, London, 1953.
- Dedijer, Vladimir. The Road to Sarajevo, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1966.
- de Schelking, Eugene. Recollections of a Russian Diplomat, The Suicide of Monarchies, McMillan Co., New York, 1918.
- Fay, Sidney Bradshaw: Origins of the Great War. New York 1928.
- MacKenzie, David. 'Black Hand' On Trial: Salonika 1917, Eastern European Monographs, 1995.
- Magrini, Luciano. Il Dramma Di Seraievo. Origini e responsabilita della guerra europa, Milan, 1929.
- Owings, W.A. Dolph. The Sarajevo Trial, Documentary Publications, Chapel Hill N.C., 1984.
- Ponting, Clive. Thirteen Days, Chatto & Windus, London, 2002.
- Treusch, Wolf Sören. Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand und seine Gemahlin werden in Sarajevo ermordet, DLF, Berlin, 2004.
fr:Assassinat de Sarajevo ko:사라예보 사건 hr:Sarajevski atentat ka:მკვლელობა სარაევოში lb:Attentat vu Sarajevo nl:Moord op Frans Ferdinand van Oostenrijk ja:サラエボ事件 pl:Zamach w Sarajewie pt:Assassinato de Sarajevo ru:Сараевское убийство sr:Сарајевски атентат sh:Sarajevski atentat fi:Sarajevon laukaukset sv:Skotten i Sarajevo zh:萨拉热窝事件
