The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

26:59By the spring of 1914, the Black Hand has already tried and failed to kill a handful of Austrian officials. It has a network inside Bosnia, but crucial to its arsenal is the generation of young Bosnian Serbs who believe that dying for their cause is a form of victorious martyrdom. When news breaks that the Archduke intends to travel to Sarajevo, wheels are instantly set in motion. There were two plots, basically. There was one bunch of students who were hanging around in Belgrade, and then back in Sarajevo, there was another plot. The Sarajevo plot was much more backed by the Black Hand and were Black Hand members.

27:45It was a guy called Illich and another chap called Mohamed Basich. And they'd been talking about assassinating Franz Ferdinand. And then in Belgrade, a bunch of students were also talking about assassinating Franz Ferdinand. The core group of students are Gavrilo Princip, Nidelko Kabrinovich, and Trifko Grabes. All originally from Bosnia, but now living in Serbia, they are angry, idealistic, and already steeped in nationalist politics, driven by the belief that their homeland should be taken from Austria-Hungary and united with Serbia. When they decide that Franz Ferdinand himself is the right target, the Black Hand in Sarajevo quietly moves to support them.

28:29Their contact is a Serbian newspaper editor named Danilo Ilic. Grabez was able to introduce his friends to a terrorist called Siginovic. He was fairly high up in the Black Hand, but he needed to get some weapons to help these three students in Belgrade. He went to a man who was able to supply pistols, bombs and cyanide, cyanide for suicide once you killed people off. With weapons covered, the students are trained to shoot the pistol and throw the bombs. At the same time, they prepare themselves for martyrdom, should the need and the opportunity for glory arise. The Black Hand then smuggles them into the city of Sarajevo.

29:17And so they helped the students, Princip, Grabis and Cabrinovich, to travel from Belgrade to Sarajevo, helping them with money but also helping them with customs officers along the way who would help them to get through and cross borders. The journey is chaotic. Princip and Grabis deliberately lose Cabrinovich along the way because he can't stop telling everyone where they're going and what they're planning to do. He even stops off to send some postcards, letting people back home know what they're plotting. And yet they all manage to pass through to Sarajevo unseen. The authorities were supposed to check anybody who was coming into Sarajevo at this point, which they failed to do.

30:04And the police also didn't follow up the fact that they'd seen Kibrinovich, who wasn't allowed to be in Sarajevo. But they happily let him travel back to Sarajevo. So the police were frankly not doing their job at this point. Even the agreed meeting for Ilic to acquire the pistols and grenades for the actual attack doesn't quite go to plan. It's late June at the main train station in Sarajevo, just days before the Archduke and his wife are due to arrive in the city. As the train pulls in, exhaling steam into the warm air, a young man, Danilo Ilic, cranes his neck, peering out of the window. He is checking the platform for police, and for any sign of the black-hand comrade he's supposed to be meeting today.

30:53Stepping off the train, Ilic pauses. Even being in the station is a risk to their operation, but he needs to get his hands on the weapons the young men will be using in the assassination of the Austrian heir. As the rest of the passengers file away, he strolls casually down the platform, looking for his contact. Though he's never met him, he has a description of the man who'll be handing over the weapons. No one here seems to match it. He walks away from the platform onto the main concourse Past the ticket office, trying his hardest to look like any other passenger arriving in the city He scans every face, but none fit the bill As he passes the waiting room, however He sees a canvas bag resting below one of the chairs It's a dark, khaki, military-style satchel Stuffed full and unattended Checking through the smudged window in the door, he sees there's no one in the waiting room at all.

31:57Surely their contact wouldn't have just left the weapons in there like that, would he? Looking both ways, he slowly pushes the door open. He moves across the room quickly and sits in the seat above the bag. Still, no one approaches and the room remains empty. Outside on the platform, a guard blows his whistle. Carefully, he eases the bag out from under the seat. Lifting the flap with trembling fingers, he sees a collection of pistols, grenades and bullets all shoved in together. They can only be the ones intended for him to collect, surely. He closes the bag quickly, stands, and hoists the strap over his shoulder.

32:45Leaving the waiting room, he walks purposefully out of the station, doing his best not to look at anyone, lest he draw the attention of any passing policeman As he crosses the road, narrowly avoiding a horse and cart, he keeps one hand on the top of the bag, fearful that too much jostling may cause a premature explosion Finally, Ilic reaches his mother's front door, swings it open, and steps inside There he waits, listening There's no one home Heading into the lounge, he removes the bag from his shoulder and hides it carefully beneath her sofa Making sure the old blanket covering the seat hangs low enough to conceal it Later, he will distribute the weapons to his comrades But for now, they will be safe here And in a few days, they will all write their names in history as heroes, or martyrs, or both.

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34:25Powered by LIV HydroScience, it's an optimized ratio of electrolytes, essential vitamins, and clinically tested nutrients that turn ordinary water into extraordinary hydration. Keep a stick in your backpack or kit bag and stay hydrated while you're on the go this summer with Liquid IV. Tear. Pour. Live more. Go to liquidiv.com and get 20 % off your first purchase with code SHORTHISTORY at checkout. That's 20 % off your first purchase with code SHORTHISTORY at liquidiv.com. Where is Daredevil? I'm I here. Don't miss the return of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again. So what's next? I feel liberated We're going to take this city back Over Medicaid In an all new season Now streaming only on Disney Plus They're hunting us It's time we started hunting them I can work with them This should be tons of fun Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again Now streaming only on Disney Plus On the morning of the 28th of June, 1914 Sarajevo is already awake Long before the Archduke is due to arrive The streets have been decorated with banners of welcome Crowds have already begun to gather to watch the motorcade pass And a brass band is busy tuning up for the main event Franz Ferdinand has spent the early hours looking over the troops At a barracks on the outskirts of the capital Fulfilling his role as Inspector General of the Austro-Hungarian Army Now, just after 9.30, he and Sophie climb back into their open-topped car For the short journey into the city itself The motorcade forms along the Appel Quay, the wide road that follows the Meljatska River through Sarajevo's center In the lead car are the local officials and the police chief Behind them sit a team of security officers The third car, driven by chauffeur Leopold Lojka, carries Franz Ferdinand, Sophie and Oskar Potyarek, the governor A fourth vehicle carries aides and officials No extra guards have been added, no further security measures put in place, and the cars are even open-topped The police lining the route are thinly spaced Unbeknownst to them, mere feet away and in many of the best vantage points, a team of coordinated assassins are already in place

36:50Seven young would-be assassins The three Bosnian students, alongside others recruited by the Black Hand, have mostly spread out, far enough away from each other that if one fails, another can act. But the first two stand fairly close together, pistols hidden beneath their jackets. As the vehicles draw closer, however, they are aware they're being observed by a policeman and don't dare make their move.

37:16All they can do is watch as the Archduke glides past them, oblivious to their malicious intent Further down the route, a third conspirator, the famously indiscreet Kabrinovich, waits with a grenade in his pocket. With the first would-be assassins now out of range, he realizes they must have failed in their mission. It's down to him As the motorcade nears, he steps forward, pulls out the bomb and strikes its detonator against a lamppost Throwing it towards the Archduke's car, he expects it to explode as it lands What he'd failed to understand, however, is that these bombs are designed with a 10-second delay The driver of Franz Ferdinand's car saw it coming and managed to drive, put his foot down and the bomb missed Franz Ferdinand's car.

38:08It actually bounced off the back of it and then exploded under the car behind.

38:16The bomb detonates in a burst of smoke and metal, tearing into the fourth car and the crowd around it. People scream and glass and shrapnel scatter across the road. Gabrinovich then threw himself over the wall into the river. It was June. It was hot. There was only about three inches of water. didn't drown, threw down the vial of cyanide, which was very old and didn't work, and was beaten up by a crowd of people who chased after him and then got arrested. And so it was all a bit of a joke. Fortunately, Franz Ferdinand and Sophie are unharmed. Their car accelerates away as chaos fills the Apple Quay, and the would-be assassin is carted off, still protesting that he is a Serbian hero.

39:00With the farcical attempt at assassination behind them, the Archduke declares, The fellow is insane. Let's get on with our program. Against his security advisor's better judgment, what remains of the motorcade drives on to the town hall, just a few streets away. Once everyone is inside, the mayor nervously begins to deliver his carefully prepared welcome speech. But his royal visitor cuts him off, complaining bitterly that he has come to Sarajevo only to be greeted with bombs. Governor Potyarek assures him the assailant has been arrested And when pressed by Ferdinand's people, he becomes dismissive and defensive He was heard to say, do you think Sarajevo's full of assassins?

39:45Which patently it was, because there was, you know, seven of them kicking around at this point Still, Potyarek agrees that a change to the schedule is wise The visit to the National Museum can be cut But he still wants the couple to enjoy the luncheon at his official residence

40:03The Archduke, never a fan of such niceties, even without bomb attacks, insists on visiting the officers wounded in the explosion first. Governor Pottyrek agrees and orders a change of routes to take the cars directly to the hospital. Franz Ferdinand tries to dissuade Sophie from travelling with him in the same car, but she insists. She said, no, Franzi, I am coming with you. Fatal words, of course. Still, the new plan is confirmed. They will take the main routes to the hospital and avoid the smaller, more dangerous city roads to the museum. But in all the confusion, these new instructions are not passed on to the drivers.

40:48As a result, Loike, the driver of the Archduke's car, has no idea that the route has changed. His job is simply to follow the lead vehicle. So, as that turns right into the very narrow Franz Josef Street, he starts to follow. At this point, Potiorik, the Governor General, shouts to them to stop and go backwards to the route that they had now decided to go, which was along the embankment. If he hadn't shouted, maybe the cars would have whizzed past Princip. As Loike stops the car, he has no idea that another assassin is standing just a few feet away. Princip, who had not been able to do anything when Franz Ferdinand was travelling to the town hall, he'd been wandering around Sarajevo wondering what to do next, and he'd stationed himself on a street corner by Schiller's Delicatessent.

41:42He was standing there with his guns and bombs, not expecting anything. and suddenly the car not only turns in front of him but then stops. I mean, it's a big old car and old cars, you know, huge gear sticks. You can't just go straight into reverse. You have to stop, move the gear stick, go into reverse, takes a few minutes. And that's exactly what the driver was doing. And there was Princip with his gun. And they were sitting ducks, literally sitting ducks. He gets out his gun and he shoots. And he shoots maybe two, three times. Nobody really knows. Definitely two, possibly three shots. One hits Franz Ferdinand in the jugular vein.

42:23One shot hits Sophie in the stomach, hitting a major vein. As the shots ring out, the narrow street erupts in screams and chaos. People scatter in every direction. Some reach for the open car. Others turn on the assassin, Gavrilo Princip, hitting him until he drops the gun and knocking the cyanide from his grasp. The engine surges back into life, and the driver finally manages to reverse, wrenching the vehicle away from the pavement and back towards the river and Poturek's residence.

42:59Sophie's first reaction was to look at Franz Ferdinand. He'd got blood coming out of his mouth at this point. She says, what on earth has happened to you? And then she slumped forward, and her head lands in his lap. He says, Sophie, Sophie, don't die, live for our children. and then he slumps forward as well. One of his retinue tries to hold him up and says, how are you feeling? And he says, it is nothing, it is nothing, it is nothing. And those are his last words, it is nothing. By the time they reach the residence, it is too late to do anything for either of them. Brands Ferdinand was laid on a chaise longue.

43:36Sophie was laid on a bed. Sophie at this point, they really thought she'd just fainted. Women in those days wore several layers of underwear. Nobody had any idea that the bullet had gone through these layers of underwear and into an important vein because the clothes were seeping up the blood. There was no sign of any problems with Sophie. Franz Ferdinand, meanwhile, is, you know, there's blood pouring from his mouth. And so they start by trying to help Franz Ferdinand. Various military doctors rush in. They have to slit open his uniform so that they can help to staunch the blood. But unfortunately, it's just too late.

44:12He dies within minutes of being laid on the chaise long.

44:19As the doctor makes the official pronouncements, the truth settles. The heir to the Habsburg throne and his wife have been murdered on the streets of Sarajevo. The shockwaves of this callous assassination will travel quickly and with devastating force.

44:39With Gavrilo Princip's attempts to make a martyr of himself Thwarted by the public and the police He is arrested immediately and taken for interrogation He's arrested, they've got Khabrilevich as well And then they start trying to hunt down all the rest of them They got all the terrorists within a couple of days really But there were immediate reactions sort of within the empire Within Bosnia, Herzegovina itself there were anti-Serb riots, very violent anti-Serb riots. About a thousand properties, churches, homes, shops were wrecked. Three Serbs were killed on the first night. Meanwhile, the reaction in Austria is far more muted.

45:23The British ambassador claims there are no tears, while the emperor Franz Josef is reported as saying the death of his nephew is one worry less, I suppose. Naturally, those closest to the couple, who knew their true nature, mourn their loss keenly. Their children, Sophie, Maximilian and Ernst, are devastated. Now orphaned, and thanks to the emperor's harsh rules around the parents' marriage, without even the Habsburg name to protect them, they are sent away from Vienna to be cared for by an aunt on their mother's side. But the personal ramifications are nothing compared to the diplomatic ones.

46:01Despite their antipathy towards the couple, the Austrians are now bent on revenge. They found documents that proved that it was the Serbian bombs, Serbian bullets. Serbia was unofficially responsible for the death of Franz Ferdinand, and Austria wanted Serbia to pay for that. So Austria decided that it would send a list of demands that it wanted Serbia to agree to. After a quick consultation with the German Empire to ensure their support, Austria puts together their conditions. They insist that Serbia must publicly condemn all anti-Austrian propaganda in its newspapers, schools and politics. It must shut down all nationalist organizations and dismiss the officials accused of supporting anti-Austrian causes, and it must arrest and prosecute those linked to the Sarajevo plot.

47:00But there is one demand that goes even further. Austria-Hungary insists that its own police and officials be allowed to operate inside Serbia to suppress subversion on Serbian soil. For any sovereign nation that is an extraordinary demand. To accept it would be to surrender control of its own justice system, but to reject it would risk war. Edward Gray, who was the Foreign Secretary in Britain at the time, he said it was the most formidable document he had ever seen addressed by one state to another. And it took the Austrians about three weeks to actually send this to the Serbians. It didn't get to them till the 23rd of July and there were 10 demands and they had to basically reply by the 25th of July.

47:48So that's 36 hours. And the Serbians did reply in three days' time, a document that was clever, evasive, but not much in the way of capitulation. Though Serbia does manage to meet the tight deadline and agrees to almost all the demands, they can't countenance the final one. The Kaiser in Germany read the Serbian answer and thought, that's fine, that's good enough, that'll do. The Austrians didn't like it at all. They broke off diplomatic relations on the 25th of July. Days later, they send their next message to Serbia.

48:27It is the 28th of July, 1914, in the Bollhausplatz, the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Ministry in Vienna. Summer heat drifts into the high-ceilinged room through open windows, carrying the steady murmur of a capital at work. The atmosphere inside the room, though, is tense. At the head of a long table, across which papers are laid out, stands the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, Count Leopold von Berchtold. The document in front of him has been drafted and redrafted, shaped to leave no shadow of a doubt, and fully approved by Emperor Franz Josef. Count Leopold leans over the paper and carefully inks his name onto the page.

49:14The declaration of war against Serbia is signed.

49:20A clerk carries it across the room to a waiting telegraph desk, where the operator sits ready. The first key drops, sharp and mechanical, followed by a rapid series of clicks and taps as the message leaves Vienna in pulses of electricity. From there, it races along copper wires, leaping from exchange to exchange over mountains and borders until it crosses into Serbia. No one speaks. The tapping continues. Then at last, the telegraph falls silent.

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50:36Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. Austria-Hungary is now at war with Serbia. And thanks to the various alliances between the other major players in Europe, they won't be alone in this fight for long. Once Austria-Hungary declares war, events move with terrifying speed. What should have been a local war becomes a continental one, almost overnight. Europe was divided into two alliances. There was the Triple Entente, France, Britain and Russia, and there was the Triple Alliance, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy.

51:25That meant that any kind of dispute between two nations could just draw in all the others, which is exactly what it did. Within days of the announcement, on the 28th of July 1914, the other nations begin to mobilise. Russia mobilised on the 30th of July. Germany saw this mobilisation as an act of aggression, and it declared war on Russia and its treaty ally France on the 1st of August. Now, Germany was particularly wanting to fight France because of the Schlieffen plan that it had, which was to invade Europe by going through Belgium into France. And to do this, they would be violating the London Treaty of Neutrality drawn up in 1839.

52:08And this is, of course, exactly what Germany did, leaving Britain no choice because Belgium neutrality had been broken. Britain had to join in, and on the 4th of August, they declared war as well.

52:25A little over five weeks after the assassination, the great powers of Europe are locked in a war no one can now stop. It will last more than four years. It will kill over 17 million people. And it will bring down four empires. The Russian, the German, the Ottoman, and the Austro-Hungarian. Europe will never be the same.

52:51The men who carried out the Sarajevo attack don't live to see the full extent of what they unleashed. Gavrilo Princip is tried and imprisoned. Too young to be executed, he is sentenced to hard labor and dies in prison of tuberculosis in 1918, alone and broken. The others meet similar ends, either suffering illness, execution, or long years behind bars. And far from the battlefields, another tragedy quietly unfolds. Franz Ferdinand and Sophie's three orphaned children are sent from their home and forced into exile as empires fall and borders shift. In the chaos that follows the war, their lives become a long struggle for survival.

53:37Their daughter lives out her life quietly. The two sons will later be rounded up by the Nazis and sent to Dachau. a concentration camp in southern Germany where they're imprisoned for years.

53:54The cost of that Sarajevo mourning ripples outwards through generations. And yet, perhaps the greatest irony of all is that the man whose name is most closely linked with the outbreak of World War I saw it coming, and was one of the few trying, through diplomacy with the Serbs, to prevent it. Franz Ferdinand could see that a war with Serbia would start off all kinds of terrible things around Europe. He didn't want a world war. He would have been horrified, absolutely horrified at what happened. He could certainly see that if Austria went to war with Serbia, then the Russians would pile in and help Serbia.

54:34And, you know, Russia, all these alliances would then bring the whole of Europe to flames, to a terrible war. and that would also destroy so many of the royal families of Europe, which is what it did.

54:55Next time on Short History, we'll bring you part one of a special two-part short history of the American Civil War. So men are rushing to enlist. Washington, D.C. is absolutely abuzz with people. So many soldiers arrive in Washington, D.C., ready to fight on behalf of the Union, that they're sleeping on the floor of the Capitol. They are being put in any room, in any building, because there aren't tents yet. They simply don't have the material to support armies of this size. People expect that this will be a one-and-done, one big battle, and the war will be over. And it becomes clear at that point that this certainly is going to be more than one battle, and it could potentially be a longer war than anyone had imagined.

55:50That's next time.

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