The day was already a significant one. For the archduke, it marked his wedding anniversary and a rare time that the emperor would allow him to be seen in public with his commoner wife, Sophie. But for many Bosnian Serbs, the archduke’s visit to their country – which had been formally annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1908 – was a far less happy occasion.

The plotters

Opposition to the Austro-Hungarian annexation had given rise to the formation of Young Bosnia, a predominantly student revolutionary movement made up mostly of Bosnian Serbs, but also Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats. It was a cohort within this group who plotted the assassination of the archduke.

As Franz and his wife drove through Sarajevo in an open-top car, the plotters were waiting for him. The first two would-be assassins failed to act, but the third, a man named Nedeljko Čabrinović, threw a bomb at the car. The bomb missed its target, however, bouncing off the hood of the archduke’s car and exploding behind it, injuring 20 bystanders.

Gavrilo Princip fires at the archduke and his wife.

Image Credit: Cuban leader Fidel Castro gives a speech in Cuba circa October 22, 1962 during the Cold War Cuban Missile Crisis. Fifty years after the Cuban missile crisis, Havana remains virulently hostile to the United States, which reciprocates by maintaining a crippling economic embargo against the communist-ruled Caribbean island. AFP PHOTO-/AFP/GettyImages ORG XMIT:

Afterwards, Čabrinović attempted suicide, first taking a cyanide tablet that proved a dud and then throwing himself into a river only to find it was just four inches deep. He was then caught by an angry mob and almost beaten to death before being taken into custody.

The second assassination attempt

The outraged archduke proceeded to a town hall meeting before setting off to visit the hospitalised victims of Čabrinović’s attack. En route to the hospital, his driver took a wrong turn into Franz Josef Street where another of the plotters, Gavrilo Princip, happened to be sitting in a café.

Gavrilo Princip was just 19 when he killed Franz Ferdinand and his wife.

Princip, a 19-year-old Croat previously rejected from joining Serbian guerrilla bands in the First Balkan War due to his small stature, was determined to prove himself. As the archduke’s car backed out of the street, he seized his chance and opened fire.

Sophie, who was shot first, was struck in the abdomen, while Franz was hit in the neck. As his crying wife lay dying, the archduke cried out to her, “Don’t die darling, live for our children” – but shortly after they were both dead.

The aftermath

Too young to face the death penalty, Princip was tried for the murders and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He died in 1918 from a combination of malnutrition and tuberculosis.

Meanwhile, although the 19-year-old and his fellow conspirators attempted to deflect blame for the killings away from Serbia, the assassination of the archduke was viewed as a provocation by the Austro-Hungarians. Exactly one month later, the empire declared war on Serbia.

Rather, a delicate but toxic balance of structural forces created a dry tinder that was lit by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. That event precipitated the July Crisis, which saw the major European powers hurtle toward open conflict.

M-A-I-N

The M-A-I-N acronym – militarism, alliances, imperialism and nationalism – is often used to analyse the war, and each of these reasons are cited to be the 4 main causes of World War One. It’s simplistic but provides a useful framework.

Militarism

The late nineteenth century was an era of military competition, particularly between the major European powers. The policy of building a stronger military was judged relative to neighbours, creating a culture of paranoia that heightened the search for alliances. It was fed by the cultural belief that war is good for nations.

Germany in particular looked to expand its navy. However, the ‘naval race’ was never a real contest – the British always s maintained naval superiority.  But the British obsession with naval dominance was strong. Government rhetoric exaggerated military expansionism.  A simple naivety in the potential scale and bloodshed of a European war prevented several governments from checking their aggression.

Alliances

A web of alliances developed in Europe between 1870 and 1914, effectively creating two camps bound by commitments to maintain sovereignty or intervene militarily – the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance.

• The Triple Alliance of 1882 linked Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy.
• The Triple Entente of 1907 linked France, Britain and Russia.

A historic point of conflict between Austria Hungary and Russia was over their incompatible Balkan interests, and France had a deep suspicion of Germany rooted in their defeat in the 1870 war.

The alliance system primarily came about because after 1870 Germany, under Bismarck, set a precedent by playing its neighbours’ imperial endeavours off one another, in order to maintain a balance of power within Europe

‘Hark! hark! the dogs do bark!’, satirical map of Europe. 1914

Image Credit: Paul K, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Imperialism

Imperial competition also pushed the countries towards adopting alliances. Colonies were units of exchange that could be bargained without significantly affecting the metro-pole. They also brought nations who would otherwise not interact into conflict and agreement. For example, the Russo-Japanese War (1905) over aspirations in China, helped bring the Triple Entente into being.

It has been suggested that Germany was motivated by imperial ambitions to invade Belgium and France. Certainly the expansion of the British and French empires, fired by the rise of industrialism and the pursuit of new markets, caused some resentment in Germany, and the pursuit of a short, aborted imperial policy in the late nineteenth century.

However the suggestion that Germany wanted to create a European empire in 1914 is not supported by the pre-war rhetoric and strategy.

Nationalism

Nationalism was also a new and powerful source of tension in Europe. It was tied to militarism, and clashed with the interests of the imperial powers in Europe. Nationalism created new areas of interest over which nations could compete.

For example, The Habsburg empire was tottering agglomeration of 11 different nationalities, with large slavic populations in Galicia and the Balkans whose nationalist aspirations ran counter to imperial cohesion. Nationalism in the Balkan’s also piqued Russia’s historic interest in the region.

Indeed, Serbian nationalism created the trigger cause of the conflict – the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

The spark: the assassination

Ferdinand and his wife were murdered in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Bosnian Serbian nationalist terrorist organization the ‘Black Hand Gang.’ Ferdinand’s death, which was interpreted as a product of official Serbian policy, created the July Crisis – a month of diplomatic and governmental miscalculations that saw a domino effect of war declarations initiated.

The historical dialogue on this issue is vast and distorted by substantial biases. Vague and undefined schemes of reckless expansion were imputed to the German leadership in the immediate aftermath of the war with the ‘war-guilt’ clause. The notion that Germany was bursting with newfound strength, proud of her abilities and eager to showcase them, was overplayed.

The first page of the edition of the ‘Domenica del Corriere’, an Italian paper, with a drawing by Achille Beltrame depicting Gavrilo Princip killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo

Image Credit: Achille Beltrame, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The almost laughable rationalization of British imperial power as ‘necessary’ or ‘civilizing’ didn’t translate to German imperialism, which was ‘aggressive’ and ‘expansionist.’ There is an on-going historical discussion on who if anyone was most culpable.

Blame has been directed at every single combatant at one point or another, and some have said that all the major governments considered a golden opportunity for increasing popularity at home.

The Schlieffen plan could be blamed for bringing Britain into the war, the scale of the war could be blamed on Russia as the first big country to mobilise, inherent rivalries between imperialism and capitalism could be blamed for polarising the combatants. AJP Taylor’s ‘timetable theory’ emphasises the delicate, highly complex plans involved in mobilization which prompted ostensibly aggressive military preparations.

Every point has some merit, but in the end what proved most devastating was the combination of an alliance network with the widespread, misguided belief that war is good for nations, and that the best way to fight a modern war was to attack. That the war was inevitable is questionable, but certainly the notion of glorious war, of war as a good for nation-building, was strong pre-1914. By the end of the war, it was dead.

Sunday 28 June 1914

The Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was visiting Sarajevo, the capital of one of the Empire’s most restless provinces. He was accompanied by his wife Sophie – it was their 14th wedding anniversary.

By 10:30 am Franz and Sophie had already survived one assassination attempt. But at 10:45 am they decided to leave the safety of Sarajevo City Hall to visit Franz’ comrades – injured from the attack – at the Sarajevo hospital.

They were driven back along the same road along which they had already survived one assassination attempt. But their driver had not been informed of the change of plan (that Franz wanted to visit the Sarajevo hospital).

Mistakenly, he turned right onto Franz Josef street and, after being told he had made a wrong turn, he stalled the car.

11:00 am: the assassination

By pure chance Gavrilo Princip, the third conspirator to attempt the assassination, was waiting on the corner. At a metre and a half range, he fired two rounds from a Browning FN M1910 semi-automatic pistol.

One of the rounds passed through the door of the vehicle, hitting the Archduke’s wife Sophie in the abdomen, severing her stomach artery. The other had hit Franz Ferdinand in the neck, grazing his jugular vein. Both were mortal wounds and the two passengers were confirmed dead half an hour later.

The murder of Franz Ferdinand is one of the seminal moments of 20th century European history, sparking the July Crisis that led to the First World War.

Serbia

In many ways Serbia’s conduct in the early days of the war makes it seem an innocent victim of Austrian aggression; they mostly accept Austria’s ultimatum, they’re unjustly accused of sponsoring the terrorists who killed Franz Ferdinand and finally they are invaded by a much stronger power.

Serbia, however, had been a focal point for nationalist agitation in the Balkans for a long time. It had already gone to war with the Ottoman Empire to expand its territory and the young nation’s exuberant nationalism made those around it nervous.

A drawing of Achille Beltrame depicting Gavrilo Princip killing Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo.

Germany

Germany is often blamed for World War One but usually for the wrong reasons. Contrary to the myth established in the War Guilt Clause of the Treaty of Versailles Germany’s interest in the war was not part of a wider expansionist programme nor was their militarism exceptional when compared to other nations.

Instead Germany’s responsibility derives from their strategy in the first weeks of the war which brought in countries involved at that point. The clearest example of this aggressive strategy was the Schlieffen Plan which brought Belgium, France and eventually Britain into the war. Germany may not have been responsible for the war itself but it was instrumental in launching it onto a global scale.

Austria

Of all the countries involved in the war Austria is the most obviously culpable, after all they were the first nation to issue a declaration of war. They rejected offers of mediation from other countries in favour of an aggressive assertion of their imperial interests in the Balkans.

The Serbian Martyr, French postcard, 1919. Personifications of Germany and Austria-Hungary are shown attacking a defensive Hungary in front. Meanwhile the Kingdom of Bulgaria is shown about to attack Serbia in the back.

Russia

Although Austria was the first nation to declare war Russia was the first major power outside of the direct Austian-Serbian conflict to mobilise so can be seen as responsible for escalating the situation. Russia’s refusal to stand down its mobilised forces was in turn what caused Germany to declare war on Russia and consequently, its triple entente ally France.

Who else?

These countries are the ones with the clearest cases against them but almost every country involved has been held responsible for causing, escalating or prolonging the war at some point. As the M-A-I-N model explains the roots of the war lay in a particular political mentality which imagined war to be beneficial to the state and this kind of thinking was not at all restricted to any one nation.

During their visit, the couple were shot dead by Slavic nationalist Gavrilo Princip and the world was thrown into shock. Nothing would ever be the same again.

Austria-Hungary lost yet another heir

Franz Ferdinand was only the nephew of Emperor Franz Joseph, and had not been his first choice as heir. But after Franz Joseph’s only son, Rudolf, committed suicide in 1889 and his brother – Franz Ferdinand’s father – died from typhoid fever in 1896, Franz Ferdinand was next in line.

When Franz Ferdinand himself was then killed in 1914, his own children were not liable to inherit. Sophie had been of nobility but not of dynastic rank, and so Franz had had to agree to a morganatic marriage in order to receive permission from the emperor to marry her.

This meant that the couple’s children forfeited their rights to inherit the empire.

Franz’s decision to marry Sophie strained his relationship with his uncle, the emperor.

The empire was already suffering from internal political conflict and the loss of three heirs apparent in only 25 years quickened its demise.

Ethnic conflicts in the empire were further fuelled

Stretching across modern-day Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovakia and parts of Poland and northern Italy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was made up of many territories which were in turn home to many different ethnic groups.

In 1908, the dual-monarchy empire had annexed Bosnia, giving rise to Slavic nationalist movements that wanted Austria-Hungary out. Franz Ferdinand, however, intended on creating a triple-monarchy, with a third state comprised of Slavic lands that would be seen as equal to Austria and Hungary.

This goal was viewed as a threat by the Slavic nationalists who wanted to secede from the empire and either join with independent Serbia or form part of a new independent state.

Members of the predominantly student Young Bosnia revolutionary group.

The day of Franz’s assassination was also Serbia’s National Day, which only served to heighten tensions between the visiting future leader of the empire and Bosnian Serbs.

Ultimately, it was members of a predominantly Bosnian Serb student revolutionary group called Young Bosnia who plotted and carried out the killing of Franz and Sophie. But another group was implicated in the assassinations too: Unification or Death, or, as it is more popularly known, the “Black Hand”.

This group, which was formed by Serbian army officers, was responsible for radicalising the Young Bosnian assassins in the cafes of Belgrade and providing them with the weapons to kill the archduke.

It served as the catalyst for World War One

Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for the assassination of Franz, with the month that followed his killing becoming known as the July Crisis. On 23 July, the empire offered Serbia an ultimatum that contained six articles, one of which would have allowed Austrian police into Serbia.

That article was refused by Serbia, leading Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia on 28 July, exactly a month after Franz’s assassination.

Two days later, Russia began to mobilise troops against Austria-Hungary to defend Serbia. In response, Austria-Hungary’s ally Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then went on to attack Luxembourg on 2 August and declare war on France on 3 August.

A day later, Germany declared war on Belgium and Britain responded by declaring war on Germany.

The beginning of World War One, which caused 37 million casualties and scarred the world forever, didn’t only begin because of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. But his death was certainly the catalyst that sparked the conflict.

It left unstable, illegitimate or even criminal regimes which provoked further wars and instability. 100 years later violence in the Middle East and the Ukraine, and deep divisions across the Balkans, have important roots in what happened during and just after the conflict.

There is a tendency to assume that an event this influential, this earth shatteringly destructive, must have been the product of deep structural forces which forced politicians and society into a war and which mere individual decision makers were powerless to resist. Huge events, so the thinking goes, cannot just be the product of bad luck, a miscommunication, lost order, or individual judgement.

Bad luck can lead to cataclysm

Sadly, history shows us they can. The Cuban Missile Crisis is a good example of when choices mattered. The world was spared a catastrophic nuclear war because Kruschev backed down, and the Kennedy brothers were clever enough to ignore some of the advice coming their way and conceded on deployment of some of their ballistic missiles.

In 1983 Stanislav Petrov disobeyed strict protocols when he was on duty in the Soviet early warning command centre when the equipment told him the USA had just launched a nuclear strike and he rightly assumed it was a malfunction, so did not pass that information up the chain of command. He is known as ‘the man who saved humanity.’

Had the USA and the Soviet Union gone to war in the second half of the 20th century future historians, if there were any, would have wisely pointed out that war between these two super powers, with multiple points of friction, armed as never before with giant arsenals with dodgy command and control mechanisms, and deeply antagonistic world views was absolutely inevitable. Yet it did not happen.

A militaristic high society

There were lots of forces driving Europe to war in 1914. Traditional elites still saw themselves as a warrior caste. Child princes and grand dukes, strutted around in military uniforms, sons of the aristocracy read militaristic books like G. A. Henty before joining Guards Regiments from St Petersburg to London.

Emperors and Kings often appeared in military uniforms. War was regarded as a legitimate tool of statecraft. It was also regarded as natural and inevitable. Every state in Europe had been forged and sustained on the battlefield.

Military conquest had delivered vast empires to the European powers. By 1914 no corner of the globe was free from formal control or heavy influence from Europe or her former colonies like Argentina or the USA. Control over other peoples was normalised. It was even regarded as hugely positive.

Misreading Darwin had convinced many that the strong and powerful should swallow the weak and disorganised. It was the fastest way to spread the benefits of Christian civilisation. Periodic wars would clean out the dead wood and even revitalise societies.

Domestically, elites found themselves confronted with new challenges. Socialism, feminism, modern art and music all shook traditional structures. Many old politicians thought that war was a purgative that would scour away these degenerate influences and force the people to return to old certainties: God, Emperor, tradition.

Franz and his wife, Sophie, leave Sarajevo Town Hall on 28 June 1914, just minutes before their assassination. Credit: Europeana 1914-1918 / Commons.

The assassination and 1914 ‘July crisis’

None of this however made war inevitable. It was the decisions taken by the individuals in response to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo that ignited the war, triggering a chain of alliances, which like NATO’s Clause V, were actually designed to prevent it. Some decision makers had deeply personal reasons for going to war.

Austrian Chief of Staff Conrad von Hotzendorf dreamed that victory on the battlefield would allow him to win the hand of the married woman he had become utterly infatuated with. Tsar Nicholas of Russia was so worried about prestige that he thought he had to back Serbia, even if it meant war, because otherwise his own position would be under threat.

The German Kaiser, Wilhelm, was deeply insecure, he panicked just before German troops rolled into France and tried to stop the invasion and send them east towards the Russians instead. His generals told him this was impossible, and the Kaiser backed down, believing himself to be a victim of events rather than their master.

The First World War was not inevitable. Weirdly, it was the belief by too many of Europe’s decision makers that war was inevitable, that made it so.

A member of the Habsburg family, Franz Ferdinand was the heir presumptive of the Austro-Hungarian Empire when he was killed on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo. Here are 10 facts about him.

1. He began his military career aged just 12

It was standard for young Habsburg men to have military careers. Franz began his at the age of 12 when he entered the Austro-Hungarian Army. After becoming a major general in 1894, he was then appointed an admiral of the Austro-Hungarian Navy in 1902 and made inspector general of the Armed Forces in 1913.

It was this latter role that brought him to Bosnia in June 1914.

2. He came from an old European family

The Habsburg family originated in modern-day Switzerland. The earliest known ancestor of the Habsburgs is Guntram the Rich, who lived during the 10th century.

At the time of Franz Ferdinand, the Habsburgs were rulers of Austria-Hungary, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain and Mexico. And Franz was not the only one of his contemporaries to be assassinated: Empress Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary and Emperor Maximilian of Mexico were also killed.

3. He married for love

Sophie was not considered suitable to be a Habsburg bride.

Franz fell in love with Countess Sophie Chotek, a Czech noblewoman who was the lady-in-waiting to Archduchess Isabella. But the couple were not allowed to marry initially because of Sophie’s family; a proper Habsburg bride would be from a reigning – or formerly reigning – aristocratic European family, and Sophie wasn’t.

Upon learning of the relationship, the Austro-Hungarian emperor, Franz Joseph, refused to give his permission for the marriage. Franz and Sophie were eventually allowed to marry on 1 July 1900 but only after giving up their children’s rights to the throne.

The couple had three children: Sophie, Maximilian and Ernst.

4. He was not the original heir presumptive

Franz Ferdinand was only the nephew of Emperor Franz Joseph. But when Franz Ferdinand’s cousin Crown Prince Rudolf committed suicide in 1889, his father, Karl Ludwig, became heir to the empire. And when Karl died of typhoid fever in 1896, Franz was seen as next in line.

5. He did not get along with his uncle

The two Franz’s did not agree on much. Tensions likely began with Franz Ferdinand’s marriage to Sophie, but their relationship became further strained when Franz Ferdinand proposed political reforms unpopular with his uncle and the court.

6. He wanted to restructure the empire

Once emperor, Franz intended to create a triple monarchy consisting of the Slavs, the Germans and the Magyars. This would give Slavs a voice in government which upset the political elite.

His second plan for reform was to create a federal government comprised of 16 states.

7. His assassination wasn’t entirely unexpected

Dr Leon von Bilinski. the Austrian minister of finance, had been warned of a plot to assassinate Franz by the Prime Minister of Serbia, Nikola Pašić. But no one took the warning seriously.

8. He was assassinated by a terrorist

Radical Yugoslavist and Pan-Serb nationalism were spreading throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina during the early 20th century. The Austro-Hungarian Empire had annexed the region from the Ottoman Empire in 1908 but many living there wanted independence.

One group calling for an end to Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina was Youth Bosnia and it was a member of this group, Gavrilo Princip, who killed Franz Ferdinand and Sophie on 28 June 1914. When Princip and his accomplices were arrested they also implicated a secret Serbian military society called “Unification or Death”.

Popularly known as the “Black Hand”, this group was formed in 1911 by members of the Serbian army who wanted to unite all territories with a South Slavic majority that were not ruled by Serbia or Montenegro.

9. Two attempts to assassinate Franz were made on 28 June 1914

During the first attempt, one of Princip’s accomplices, a man named Nedeljko Čabrinović, threw a hand grenade at the archduke’s car. But the grenade bounced off the car and fell under the vehicle behind, injuring those inside.

After this first assassination attempt failed, plans were changed – both for the archduke and his assassins.

Instead of visiting a museum as scheduled, Franz decided to visit those injured in the first assassination attempt in hospital. But during the trip his driver took a wrong turn and the car had to be stopped and pushed back.

Princip, a 19-year-old student from Belgrade, happened to be sat at a cafe close to where the archduke’s car had taken a wrong turn.

Seeing his chance to kill Franz, he drew his pistol and fired two shots, hitting Sophie in the abdomen and Franz in the neck. He had intended to commit suicide following the assassination but was arrested and later sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Franz’s assassin served little of his sentence, however, dying of an illness just four years later.

10. His assassination was the catalyst for World War One

Following Franz Ferdinand’s assassination, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. In turn, Russia, as Serbia’s ally, declared war against Austria-Hungary. Germany joined alongside Austria-Hungary to put pressure on Russia.

Then, Germany declared war against France before invading Belgium in early August, bringing Britain into the war to defend Belgium. The incident was clearly a catalyst for a war that, on the surface at least, seemed inevitable.