Franz Ferdinand von Habsburg - Archduke of Austria and heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. He was assassinated in 1914 in Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist terrorist, Gavrila Princip. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand became the formal reason for the outbreak of the First World War.
Childhood and youth
Archduke Franz Ferdinand von Habsburg was born in Graz on December 18, 1863. His father was the brother of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph, Archduke Karl Ludwig of Austria, and his mother was the daughter of the Sicilian king, Princess Maria, the second wife of Karl Ludwig. The first marriage with Margaret of Saxony did not bring children to the Archduke of Austria, and Franz Ferdinand became his first child. Franz had two younger brothers and a sister, Margarita Sofia.
Franz's mother died early from tuberculosis, and Karl Ludwig married a third time - to the young Maria Theresa of Portugal. The stepmother turned out to be only eight years older than Franz. A slight age difference contributed to the fact that warm friendly relations were established between Maria Theresa and her young stepson, which ended only with the death of Franz Ferdinand at the age of fifty.
Heir to the throne
Franz Ferdinand began preparing for the accession to the throne at the age of 26, after the only son and direct heir of the Emperor of Austria-Hungary, Crown Prince Rudolf, committed suicide in Mayerling Castle. So Franz Ferdinand was next after his father in line for succession to the throne. And when Karl Ludwig died in 1896, Franz became a pretender to the throne of Austria-Hungary.
The future of the young Archduke required a good knowledge of what was happening in the world, so in 1892 he went on a long trip around the world. The route ran through Australia and New Zealand to Japan, and from there, changing ship, Franz Ferdinand went to west coast Canada, from where he had already sailed to Europe. During the trip, the Archduke took notes, on the basis of which a book was later published in Vienna.
The Archduke was also entrusted with the role of deputy emperor for the supreme command of the troops. By the will of Franz Joseph, the Archduke went abroad from time to time on representative missions. In the residence of Franz Ferdinand - the Belvedere Palace in Vienna - the Archduke's own office, consisting of advisers and close associates, operated.
Personal life
The Archduke married Sofia Chotek, a countess from the Czech Republic. The future spouses met in Prague - both were present at the ball, where their love story began. The chosen one was lower in origin than the archduke, which entailed a difficult choice - the archduke had to give up either the right to the throne or his plans for marriage. According to the law of succession, members of the imperial family who entered into an unequal marriage lost their rights to the crown.
However, Franz Ferdinand managed to negotiate with the emperor and convince him to leave the rights to the throne for himself in exchange for the renunciation of these rights, which the archduke will give for his own unborn children from this marriage. As a result, Emperor Franz Joseph gave permission for the marriage of Sofia Chotek and Franz Ferdinand.
The Archduke had two sons and a daughter, who, like her mother, was named Sophia. The Archduke's family lived either in Austria or in a Czech castle southeast of Prague. The court elite reacted unkindly to Sophia Hotek. Emphasizing the "inequality of the clan", Sophia was forbidden to be near her husband during official ceremonies, which negatively affected Franz Ferdinand's relations with the Viennese court.
Murder and its aftermath
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the revolutionary nationalist organization "Young Bosnia" operated on the territory of Serbia, whose members decided to kill Archduke of Austria while visiting the city of Sarajevo. For this, six terrorists armed with bombs and revolvers were chosen. The group was led by Gavrilo Princip and Danilo Ilic.
Franz Ferdinand arrived in Sarajevo with his wife by the morning train. The couple got into the car, and the cortege moved along the route. Throughout the journey, the Archduke was greeted by crowds of people, and for some unknown reason there were few guards. The terrorists were waiting for their victim on the embankment.
When the car containing Franz Ferdinand approached the place where the conspirators were hiding, one of them threw a grenade into the motorcade. However, the terrorist missed, the explosion injured bystanders, police officers, as well as people who were traveling in another car.
Happily avoiding the first assassination attempt, Franz Ferdinand and his wife went to the city hall, where the Archduke was waiting for a meeting with the burgomaster. After the official ceremonies were over, one of the Archduke's close associates advised, for the sake of safety, to disperse the people who were still crowding the streets.
The Archduke planned to go further to the hospital, and from there to the Sarajevo Museum. After the assassination attempt, it seemed unsafe for the archduke's close associates to move along the route surrounded by a crowd. To these fears, the Hungarian governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Oskar Potiorek, replied that Sarajevo was not at all teeming with murderers and there was nothing to be afraid of.
As a result, Franz Ferdinand decided to go to the hospital to visit the people who were injured during the assassination attempt, and his wife wished to go with him. A strange incident occurred along the way: it was decided to change the route, but for some reason the driver drove along the previously agreed route, and this mistake was not immediately noticed. When the driver was ordered to turn onto the embankment, he braked sharply and stopped the car at the corner of Franz Josef Street, and then began to slowly turn around.
Exactly at that moment, the terrorist Gavrilo Princip came out of the store nearby, ran up to the car with a pistol and shot Franz Ferdinand's wife in the stomach, and then shot the Archduke himself in the neck.
Having committed a double murder, the terrorist tried to poison himself with potassium cyanide, but nothing happened - he only vomited. After that, Gavrilo Princip tried to shoot himself, but did not have time to do this, because the people who ran up disarmed him. There is an opinion that the driver in the car of the Archduke was in some way connected with the conspirators and helped them, but there is no reliable and convincing information on this matter.
The wife of the Archduke died on the spot, and Franz Ferdinand himself died a few minutes after being wounded. The bodies of the spouses were taken to the governor's residence. After the death of the Archduke through the fault of the Serbian nationalist revolutionaries, Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia. The Russian Empire provided Serbia with support, and this conflict marked the beginning of the war.
Memory
Now the archduke is reminiscent of the beer brand Sedm Kuli, which is produced by the Ferdinand brewery. The Archduke himself was once the owner of this brewery, and the name of the beer refers to the seven bullets fired at the Archduke by a terrorist.
In 2014, marking the centenary of the First World War, the postal authorities of the countries participating in the war issued themed stamps dedicated to this event. Several stamps depicted portraits of the Archduke and his wife.
A British rock band was named after Franz Ferdinand in 2001.
It poses a number of questions for us. Why did it even start?
The simplest answer that lies on the surface: because on June 28, 1914, the Serbian terrorist Gavrila Princip, a member of the Mlada Bosna organization, shot the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo during his visit to the capital of the Austrian province, which became part of Austria-Hungary in 1908. Serbian revolutionaries sought to liberate Bosnia from Austrian rule and annex it to Serbia, and for this purpose they committed an act of individual terror against the Austrian heir to the throne. Austria-Hungary did not tolerate such lawlessness, put forward a number of demands on Serbia, which, in its opinion, was guilty of organizing this assassination attempt, and when it did not comply with them, it decided to punish this state. But Russia stood up for Serbia, and Germany stood up for Austria-Hungary. In turn, France stood up for Russia, and so on. The system of alliances began to work - and a war broke out, which no one expected and did not want. In a word, if not for the Sarajevo shot, peace and goodwill would reign on earth.
Since 1908, Europe and the world have been going through a series of political crises and military anxieties. The Sarajevo assassination was just one of them.
Such an explanation is suitable only for kindergarten. The fact is that, since 1908, Europe and the world have been going through a series of political crises and military anxieties: 1908-1909 - the Bosnian crisis, 1911 - the Agadir crisis and the Italo-Turkish war, 1912-1913 - the Balkan wars and disengagement between Serbia and Albania. The Sarajevo assassination was just one such crisis. If it wasn't there, something else would have happened.
Consider the official Austrian version of the involvement of the Serbian government in the assassination attempt on Franz Ferdinand, announced at the Sarajevo trial. According to this version, Colonel of the General Staff Dmitry Dimitrievich (nicknamed Apis) led the assassination attempt. Indirectly, this version was confirmed by the Thessaloniki trial of 1917, when Dimitrievich confessed to his involvement in the Sarajevo assassination attempt. However, in 1953, the Yugoslav court rehabilitated the participants in the Thessaloniki trial, recognizing that they were not convicted for the crimes they allegedly committed. Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pasic, neither in 1914 nor later, admitted to being aware of the assassination attempt in Sarajevo. But after 1918 - the victory of the Allies and the death of the Austrian Empire - he had nothing to fear.
In fairness, we note that Dimitrievich was involved in one obvious regicide - the brutal murder of King Alexander and his wife Draga in 1903, and in 1917 he really seemed to be plotting the overthrow of King Peter Karageorgievich and his son Alexander. But this is too indirect evidence of his possible involvement in the organization of the Sarajevo assassination attempt.
Of course, the underage and inexperienced members of the Mlada Bosna organization could not organize themselves for such a difficult task and acquire weapons: they were clearly helped by professionals. Who were these professionals and whom did they serve? Let us assume for a moment that the Serbian authorities were involved in the assassination attempt in order to provoke a Serb uprising in Bosnia or a military clash with Austria-Hungary. How would it look in the context of the summer of 1914?
The ruling circles of Serbia could not fail to understand that a confrontation with Austria-Hungary would be fatal for the country.
Like suicide. Prime Minister Nikola Pasic and his government could not but understand that if the involvement of the Serbian authorities in the assassination attempt was established, at best it would be a monstrous international scandal with negative consequences for Serbia. The Serbs were already followed by an unkind trail of regicides after the assassination of the Serbian king Alexander Obrenovic and his wife in 1903, to which all the august families of Europe reacted painfully. In the event of the assassination of a representative of a foreign royal house, the reaction of all of Europe (including Russia) could only be sharply negative. And from the side of Austria it would be legitimate reason for military blackmail, which she resorted to against Serbia and on much less convenient occasions, for example, during the Bosnian crisis in 1908-1909 or during the Albanian-Serbian delimitation of 1913 and the Albanian attack on Serbia in the same 1913 year. Every time Serbia had to retreat before the military-diplomatic pressure of Austria. And it is not a fact that Russia would have stood up for her if there really were strong evidence of the involvement of the Serbian authorities in the assassination attempt. treated political terror sharply negatively. So, when he learned that members of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization were going to poison the water pipes of the leading European capitals in order to thereby contribute to the liberation of Macedonia, he wrote on the report: “People with such views should be destroyed like mad dogs.” So Serbia risked being left alone with Austria. Was she ready for this? The mobilization potential of four million Serbia was a maximum of 400,000 people (and the maximum strength of the Serbian army was 250,000). The mobilization capabilities of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy are 2.5 million soldiers and officers (a total of 2,300,000 people were drafted into the war). The Austrian army consisted of 3100 light and 168 heavy guns, 65 aircraft, in addition, the best arms factories in Europe were located in the Czech Republic. What Serbia alone could oppose to such power? If we take into account the significant losses in the two Balkan wars, the hostility of Albania and Bulgaria, the huge public debt, the situation becomes even more hopeless. So Austria could well put forward an ultimatum with impossible conditions, and in the event of its at least partial rejection, declare war on Serbia, crush it and occupy it. Which is basically what happened afterwards. And either an adventurer or a traitor - a person who did not serve Serbian interests - could go for such a provocation.
There is a version, defended by Western researchers, that allegedly Russian intelligence pushed the Serbs to organize the assassination attempt. But this version is untenable, if only because all the high-ranking Russian officers responsible for intelligence in the Balkans, by the time of the Sarajevo assassination attempt, were on vacation or were engaged in affairs far from intelligence. In addition, in Russia they could not help but understand that the assassination attempt ultimately meant a war between Russia and Austria and, possibly, Germany. And the Russian Empire was not ready for it. The rearmament of the army and navy was to be completed by 1917. And if Russia was the initiator of the war, then the pre-mobilization state of the army and the country would have been announced much earlier than it actually happened. Finally, if Russian intelligence and the Russian General Staff were really behind the Sarajevo assassination, they would have taken care of coordinating the actions of the Russian and Serbian armies in a future war. None of this was done, Russian-Serbian cooperation during the war was pure improvisation, and, unfortunately, not very successful.
The parade of Austrian troops in Sarajevo, as if on purpose, was scheduled for June 28 - the day of St. Vitus, on the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo.
If we carefully analyze the events of the Sarajevo attentate (as the assassination is called in Serbian), we will see that much is unclean here. For some reason, the parade of Austrian troops in Sarajevo, which was supposed to be received by Archduke Ferdinand, was supposedly scheduled for June 28 - the day of St. Vitus, on the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, moreover, on the day of the round anniversary - the 525th Serbs of their statehood. It seems that the Austrian authorities did not do this by chance and that the situation was heating up purposefully. Moreover, when the situation was tense, no serious measures were taken to protect Franz Ferdinand, despite the fact that the Austrian detective authorities knew about the existence of terrorist organizations and during the previous five years successfully prevented the terrorist acts of Mlada Bosna: none of them ended in success. Austro-Hungarian officials were involved in the transfer of terrorists and weapons to Bosnia (this was revealed later - at the Sarajevo trial; and there is no complete certainty that all the perpetrators were brought to justice). The next detail: at the right time, there were no police agents around the Archduke's car capable of covering Franz Ferdinand and his wife from terrorist bullets.
Moreover, on the fateful day of the assassination - as if on purpose - Franz Ferdinand was taken around the city by the longest route. And the question arises: did they turn him into a target? And he really became a target: initially, a terrorist ... bomb was thrown into his car, which, however, hit not the Archduke, but the escort car.
It is characteristic how the governor of Bosnia behaved - the hater of the Serbs Oscar Potiorek - after the first unsuccessful assassination attempt, when representatives of the local authorities and the archduke's retinue discussed what to do next. Baron Morsi of Franz Ferdinand's retinue suggested that the Archduke leave Sarajevo. In response, Potiorek said: "Do you think that Sarajevo is infested with murderers?" Meanwhile, after what happened, it was his direct duty to ensure the speedy and safe departure of Franz Ferdinand from Sarajevo.
Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophia canceled their visit and decided to visit the wounded in the hospital. On the way to the hospital, they were struck by the bullets of Gavrila Princip. It is noteworthy that at the trial, when asked why he shot Archduchess Sophia, he replied that he did not want to shoot her, but Governor Potiorek. It is strange that such a well-aimed terrorist, who mortally wounded Franz Ferdinand, confused ... a man with a woman. And this begs the question: didn’t Potiorek, through his agents, divert the hand of the terrorists from himself and direct it towards Franz Ferdinand? After all, he was supposed to be the original target of the murder, but a couple of weeks before June 28, Franz Ferdinand was chosen as the victim by the Serbian terrorists of the Black Hand organization, with which Mlada Bosna was connected. And the question arises: why him? And another related to him: who was Franz Ferdinand?
Franz Ferdinand was a supporter of the federalization of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and trialism - the union of the Slavic lands into a single kingdom.
Contrary to the assertions of Marxist historiography, he was by no means a hater of the Slavs or Serbs, on the contrary, he was a supporter of the federalization of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and trialism - the union of the Slavic lands of the Austrian Crown into a single kingdom. The explanation that he was killed by Serbian terrorists in order to prevent the implementation of a trialistic project that threatened the unification of Serbian lands within the framework of the Serbian Kingdom does not stand up to criticism: the implementation of this project was not on the agenda, since it had powerful opponents: the Austrian Chancellor, the commander-in-chief the Austrian army Konrad von Getzendorf, the governor of Bosnia O. Potiorek and, finally, the emperor Franz Joseph himself. Moreover, the murder of one of the representatives of the House of Habsburg, who sympathized with the Serbs, could seriously complicate their situation, which happened, since immediately after the death of Franz Ferdinand, bloody Serbian pogroms began throughout Austria-Hungary, and especially in Sarajevo.
After the death of the Archduke, Austria acted out the mourning of the world, but in reality the Austrian officials did not mourn too much. Here is just one significant fact: when the news of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand reached the Russian embassy in Serbia, the Russian envoy Hartwig and the Austrian envoy were playing whist. Having learned the terrible news, Hartwig ordered to stop the game and declare mourning, despite the protests of the Austrian ambassador, who really wanted to win. But it is the Austrian envoy who will bring Hartwig to a heart attack, falsely accusing him of Russia's involvement in the Sarajevo assassination and supporting Serbian extremism. The funeral of Franz Ferdinand and his wife was organized in a humiliatingly modest ceremonial. And although most members of other royal families planned to take part in the mourning events, they were defiantly not invited. The decision was made to organize a low-key funeral attended by only close relatives, including the three children of the Archduke and Archduchess, who were excluded from the few public ceremonies. The officer corps was forbidden to salute the funeral train. Franz Ferdinand and Sophia were buried not in the royal crypt, but in the Attenstadt family castle.
Given the tragic nature of the death of Franz Ferdinand, all this testifies to the most real hatred towards him on the part of a number of representatives of the Habsburg house and hostility on the part of the emperor. It seems that Franz Ferdinand became a victim of rivalry between court cliques, and his death was a move in a political combination designed to solve Austrian state problems, in particular the destruction of Serbia.
The comparatively lenient sentence to the members of the Mlada Bosna organization and those involved in the assassination is indicative. At the trial in Sarajevo in October 1914, out of 25 defendants, only 4 people were sentenced to death, and only three sentences were carried out. The rest received various prison terms, including the murderer of the Archduke Gavril Princip, and nine defendants were acquitted altogether. What does such a verdict mean? About much. Including the fact that the terrorists worked into the hands of the Austrian authorities.
The death of Franz Ferdinand was 100% used to start a war against Serbia. The judicial investigation has not yet been completed, all the more so, the trial did not pass when on July 23 a humiliating ultimatum was put forward to Serbia, in which the Austrian government accused the Serbian authorities of involvement in the murder of the Archduke and demanded not only to stop any anti-Austrian propaganda, but also to close all the publications involved in it. , to dismiss from service all officials seen or suspected of having anti-Austrian views, and most importantly, to allow Austrian officials to conduct investigative actions on Serbian territory. Such demands meant the destruction of Serbian sovereignty. Such an ultimatum could only be put forward by a defeated country. However, Serbia, on the advice of Russia, accepted almost all the requirements of the Austrians, except for the last one. Nevertheless, on July 25, Austria-Hungary broke off diplomatic relations with Serbia, and on July 28 began hostilities against it.
So, if, finding out the reasons for the Sarajevo assassination, we pose the question: “Who benefited from this?”, Then the answer is clear - Austria-Hungary.
Reich Chancellor of the German Empire T. Bethmann-Hollweg, one of the supporters of the war, stated in 1914: "Now we are ready as never before."
But this is only the first level of the problem. It is clear that Russia would stand up for Serbia. Austria could not go to war without Germany's willingness to help her ally. And in the summer of 1914 militant moods reigned in Berlin. Chancellor T. Bethmann-Hollweg, one of the supporters of the war and the occupation of living space in the East, said: "Now we are ready as never before." The military party, represented in addition to him by Generals Moltke Jr., Hindenburg, Ludendorff, warned Kaiser Wilhelm that after two or three years the advantages of Germany would come to naught due to the rearmament of Russia and France. Accordingly, if the Sarajevo assassination attempt was a provocation by the Austrian secret services, who "blindly" used fanatical and narrow-minded Serbian revolutionaries, led by the ideals of romantic nationalism, then it would not have been possible without, at a minimum, coordination with Berlin. And Berlin was ready for war.
However, this is not the last level of the problem. At the beginning of the 20th century there was a state where the sun never set and whose word decided, if not everything, then a lot - the British Empire. It was her intervention or warnings in previous years that often stopped what was about to begin. world war. In the summer of 1914, there was no such timely warning. It sounded only on August 4, at a time when nothing could be stopped or corrected. Why? We will look at this in the next article. Apparently, there was some kind of Grand Plan to draw the states of Europe into the war, and it is possible that the intelligence service of the British Empire - Intelligent Service - could also be involved in the Sarajevo assassination attempt and the outbreak of the First World War. We will talk about this Grand Plan in the next article.
In the words of Anna Akhmatova, the 20th century began exactly one hundred years ago. In the hot summer of 1914, the Peace Palace opened in the Netherlands, and already in August the cannons started talking. The immediate reason for this was that on June 28, 1914, Franz Ferdinand, heir to the crown of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was killed in Sarajevo.
The Archduke was to succeed the Habsburgs on the throne Franz Joseph I who ruled the empire for 68 years. It was under him that in 1867 Austria became a dualistic monarchy - Austria-Hungary (that is, the emperor began to be crowned in Budapest as the Hungarian king). The country was divided into Cisleithania and Transleithania (along the Leyte River) between Austrian and Hungarian possessions.
However, many unresolved national issues remained in the monarchy, the main of which remained the Slavic one. Poles, Ukrainians, Rusyns, Croats, Slovenes, Czechs, Slovaks and Serbs did not have their own statehood.
Some peoples, in particular the Poles, sought to create their own state, some - Czechs and Croats - were ready to be content with broad autonomy.
This issue was of particular relevance in the Balkan Peninsula, where radical changes took place in the last quarter of the 19th century. Independent Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania appeared, immediately entering into territorial disputes between themselves and with the former metropolis of Turkey. In Vojvodina, Krajina and northeastern Croatia, Serbs made up a significant percentage of the population and sought to reunite with young Serbia (which became independent after the Russo-Turkish War in 1878 by decision Berlin Congress).
The issue of Bosnia and Herzegovina added to the urgency. These two provinces were occupied by Austria-Hungary after Berlin and annexed in October 1908. The local Serb population, however, did not accept the annexation. And then the world stood on the brink of war: Serbia and Montenegro announced mobilization in October, and only the mediation of five countries (Russia, Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy) prevented the conflict from starting.
The Council of Ministers of the Russian Empire then understood that Russia was not ready for war. As a result, by March 1909, St. Petersburg and Belgrade recognized the accession of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Vienna.
The Bosnian crisis was not the only harbinger of global conflict. Since 1895, when the conflict between Japan and China began, local wars or armed incidents have constantly been going on in the world. Russia in January 1904 began a war with Japan, which ended in a crushing defeat. By 1907, two blocs had formed in Europe: the Entente (“cordial consent”) - the military-political alliance of Russia, England and France and the “Central Powers” (Italy, Germany, Austria-Hungary). The traditional Marxist historiography viewed the Entente as a force seeking to preserve the existing order of things in Europe and the world, seeing Germany and its allies as young wolves who want their share.
However, besides this, each country had its own local geopolitical interests, including in the explosive Balkan region. Russia has repeatedly confirmed its desire to take possession of the Black Sea straits of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. Austria-Hungary sought to prevent irredentist sentiment among Serbs and Croats in the crown lands. Germany wanted to move into the Middle East, which needed a strong rear in the Balkans. As a result, any excess on the hot peninsula led to a new round of tension.
Peculiarities of the National Hunt
In addition, it is worth noting that the beginning of the 20th century was the golden age of political terrorism.
In almost every country, radical organizations have used explosions and gunshots for political struggle.
In Russia, the organizations of the Socialist-Revolutionaries (Socialist-Revolutionaries) were especially distinguished on this front. In 1904, Vyacheslav Plehve, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Empire, died at the hands of a bomber, and in 1905, the Governor-General of Moscow, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, was killed by militants. Terrorists were active not only in Russia: the Italian anarchist Luigi Lucchini in 1898 killed the wife of Franz Joseph I, Elisabeth of Bavaria (also known as Sissi). Terrorist acts have become a part of life in Southern Europe - in Italy, Spain and the Balkans. Naturally, Serbian activists also used these methods.
Since 1911, the nationalist organization "Black Hand" has been operating in Serbia, striving to unite the Serbian lands into Yugoslavia. It included high-ranking officers of the country, so the authorities were afraid of the "black hands".
It is still unclear to what extent the activities of the Black Hand were controlled by the special services, but it is clear that Belgrade did not give consent to actions in Bosnia.
Anti-Austrian activists in this province were partly part of the Young Bosnia organization. It arose in 1912 and aimed at the liberation of the provinces from Vienna. One of its members was the Sarajevo student Gavrila Princip.
salute and bomb
It is worth adding that Franz Ferdinand spoke from the standpoint of trialism, that is, he believed that Austria-Hungary should also become the state of the southern Slavs under the Habsburg crown - first of all, this would hit the positions of the Hungarians and the numerous Hungarian nobility who owned lands in Croatia, Slovakia and Transcarpathia.
It cannot be said that the heir to the throne was a “hawk” and a supporter of war - on the contrary, he tried to look for peaceful ways out of a crisis situation, understanding the difficult internal position countries.
It is believed that both Serbia and Russia were aware of the terrorists' desire to shoot the Archduke during his visit to Sarajevo. For them, his arrival on June 28 was an insult: after all, on this day, the Serbs celebrated the anniversary of the defeat from the Turks in Battle of Kosovo. However, the heir to the throne decided to show the power of the Austrian army and conduct maneuvers in Sarajevo. The first bomb was thrown at him in the morning, but it did no harm.
The already mentioned Princip, having learned about the failure of the assassination, went to the center of Sarajevo, where, seizing the moment, shot at Franz Ferdinand point-blank. He also killed his wife Sophia.
The response to the assassination was unrest in Sarajevo. In addition to Serbs, representatives of other nations also lived in the city, in particular Bosnian Muslims. During the pogroms in the city, at least two people were killed, cafes and shops belonging to the Serbs were destroyed.
The world community reacted actively to the death of Ferdinand. The first pages of newspapers were devoted to this event. However, there were no direct consequences after the assassination - only in mid-July, Austria-Hungary presented an ultimatum to Serbia. According to this document, Serbia had to close the anti-Austrian organizations operating on its territory, dismiss officials involved in anti-Austrian activities. However, there was one more clause in it - about the admission of an investigative group from Vienna to investigate the murder.
Belgrade refused to accept him - and this was the beginning of the great war.
The question of who exactly could be behind the murder in Sarajevo is still being discussed. Some, noting the strange relaxation of the archduke's guards, believe that the radicals of the Vienna court could have killed the potential federalist monarch. However, the theory about Serbian bombers is still the most popular.
The war began only a month later, in late July - early August 1914. However, after the fact, the assassination of Ferdinand became a symbol of the end of peaceful pre-war European life. "They killed our Ferdinand", - with these words, the anti-war "Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik" by Yaroslav Hasek begins.
In the military history museum in Vienna, you can still see a small Browning FN Model 1910, from which the nineteen-year-old Serbian Gavrila Princip shot Franz Ferdinand. There is also the car in which Franz Ferdinand rode, a bloodied light blue uniform and a couch on which the Archduke died. In the Konopiste castle near Prague, where the heir to the Austrian throne lived, the bullet that killed him is kept. It is called the "First bullet of the First World War." The main outline of the story of the assassination in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 of the Archduke and his wife Sophia Hohenber and the tragic consequences of this terrorist attack have been well studied. Behind the scenes are the secret springs of a fanatical belief in utopia, which turned the tide of development of all mankind.
Battle of two ideas
The most daring fantasies are not enough to imagine the world that could be today, if not for the world wars of the twentieth century. And their trigger was the Sarajevo murder. Without it, how far could natural integration and globalization go without being tested by fascism and communism. How could they be reformed through federalization and expansion of civil rights European empires. How would science and trade develop, how would languages and peoples mix, how much stronger and more significant was the role of Europe as a whole and its integral part - Russia ...
However, the young Mlada Bosna activist Gavrila Princip, who died in 1918 from tuberculosis in an Austrian prison, hardly thought about such fundamental things, including the coming tragedies of the Serbs themselves. “I am a Yugoslav nationalist, and I believe in the unification of all southern Slavs into a single state, free from Austria,” - this is how he explained his act, for which he was ready to pay with his life. Gavrila did not live long enough to fulfill his dream - the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the creation of Yugoslavia on its ruins. But this state turned out to be fragile and fell apart twice - in the 40s and 90s. Life has shown: despite the common origin and language, the southern Slavs are people in culture and mentality different.
But the Archduke killed by Gavrila was also the bearer of the reformist idea. Franz Ferdinand was going to radically redraw the map of the "patchwork empire". He wanted to turn it into a confederation of semi-autonomous states based on the ethno-linguistic principle. The country was supposed to be called the United States of Greater Austria, which, according to the further logic of the development of events, the Balkan countries could also join. That is, a single center, but with the self-determination of each, even a small nation. Looking at the current state of affairs, it is easy to see similarities with the principles of building the European Union - an association that has shown much greater stability than Yugoslavia. The trouble is that in order to realize the benefits of such integration, the Balkan peoples had to go through another century and many wars.
"Yugoslavian" idea
The first ideas of a unified state of the South Slavs originated in the 17th century, and not in Serbia, but on the territory of Slavonia and Croatia. Later they were developed by Croatian philosophers in the form of the "idea of the Great Illyricum" and by the end of the 19th century they had already begun to disturb the Viennese court. After all, by that time the Serbian state had gained independence and significantly strengthened. It could "intercept" the ideas of the Croatian intellectuals and begin to collect the lands of the southern Slavs around Belgrade, which really happened over time.
However, this did not happen immediately. According to the Berlin Peace Treaty of 1878, after the Russian-Turkish war for the liberation of Bulgaria, Austria-Hungary received its preferences: a mandate to occupy and administer Bosnia while maintaining purely formal sovereignty Ottoman Empire. Bosnia was later annexed and became part of Austria-Hungary, although many Serbs lived on its lands. By the beginning of the 20th century, Serbia itself was considered almost an Austrian satellite: the kings of the Obrenović dynasty, Milan and Alexander, focused their policies primarily on Vienna.
The situation changed dramatically after the coup in May 1903, when "patriotic" Serbian officers led by Dragutin Dmitrievich, the future head of Serbian intelligence and leader of the secret nationalist organization "Black Hand" nicknamed "Apis", carried out a coup.
King Alexander and his wife Draga were brutally murdered in the palace. Here is what Russian journalist Vladimir Teplov reported on the details of this crime: “The Serbs covered themselves not only with the shame of regicide, but also with their truly brutal way of acting in relation to corpses. After Alexander and Draga fell, the killers continued to shoot at them and cut their corpses with sabers: they hit the King with six revolver shots and forty saber blows, and the Queen with sixty-three saber blows and two revolver bullets. The Queen was almost all chopped up, her chest was cut off, her stomach was opened, her cheeks, her hands were also cut, the cuts between her fingers were especially large - probably, the Queen grabbed her saber with her hands when she was killed. In addition, her body was covered with numerous bruises from blows with the heels of officers. I prefer not to talk about other abuses of Draghi's corpse, they are so disgusting. When the killers had had their fill, they threw the corpses through the window into the garden, and Draghi's corpse was completely naked. Even the unfortunate monarch had to be buried on the territory of Austria-Hungary.
The new king was Peter from the Karageorgievich dynasty, who reoriented foreign policy towards Russia. The participants in the conspiracy not only were not punished, but almost all of them became close associates of Peter and received the highest military posts. It was they who formed the backbone of the secret nationalist organization "Black Hand".
Disputes with Austria-Hungary (the customs "Pig War" of 1906, the Bosnian crisis of 1908-1909) were resolved unsuccessfully, but the two bloody Balkan wars of 1912-1913, during which the Ottoman yoke was lifted from Macedonia and Kosovo and the dominance of Bulgaria was prevented, finally elevated Serbia. By that time, the "Black Hand" already included many Serbian military and officials, had leverage over the rest - King Peter himself was afraid of it. About Apis, who formally refused high positions, they said: "... no one saw him anywhere, but everyone knew that he was doing everything."
The "Black Hand" was indeed similar to the secret organizations of an earlier time - the Carbonari, Camorra and Freemasons, as evidenced by its rituals and symbols (skull and bones, dagger, bomb and poison). Some of the wording of its charter "Black Hand" borrowed from the "Revolutionary Catechism" by Mikhail Bakunin.
Obsessed with the Yugoslav idea, the members of the organization decided that it was time to get even with the Habsburgs. They decided to start with terror - the hunt for high-ranking Austrian officials and representatives of the ruling dynasty, which, according to the Black Hand, could provoke uprisings of the Slavs in Austria-Hungary and its collapse. In 1911, Apis sent his ally to Vienna with the task of assassinating the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph. In January 1914, the Bosnian Muslim Mehmedbašić was sent to assassinate the Bosnian governor, General Potiorek. But both attempts ended in failure.
In the spring of 1914, Apis chose a new target, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. According to Serbian nationalists, he represented the greatest danger to the Yugoslav idea. The Archduke irritated Apis also by the fact that although he did not like Russians and even more Serbs, he categorically opposed the war with Serbia, an ardent supporter of which was, for example, the Chief of the General Staff of the Austro-Hungarian Army, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf. Such a war, in the opinion of the heir to the throne, would inevitably lead to a clash with Russia, which he considered disastrous for Austria-Hungary.
Popovich-Ferdinand idea
The best minds of Austria-Hungary at the beginning of the 20th century understood that it was no longer possible to rely only on the suppression of "calls for separatism" by brute force - the growth of the national self-consciousness of the peoples, the development of education, freedom of the press shook the imperial foundations, and the most privileged Germans made up only a quarter of the country's population.
In 1906, Aurel Popovich (by origin - an Austro-Hungarian Romanian) published the book "The United States of Greater Austria", in which he proposed to reorganize the country, molded from medieval kingdoms and duchies, in the form of a federation. He started from similar ideas of the Hungarian revolutionary Lajos Kossuth, who proposed the same thing half a century ago, but then put into practice only in relation to the Hungarians and their Transleithania.
Popovich prophetically wrote: Big variety origin, language, customs and way of life different peoples demands from the Habsburg empire such a form of government that could guarantee that none of the peoples will be oppressed, infringed or oppressed by others in their national politics, self-development, cultural heritage - in a word - in their understanding of life. There is little time left. All the peoples of the monarchy are waiting for the saving steps of the emperor. This is a decisive moment in history: will the Habsburg Empire survive or perish? For now, it can still be corrected and saved.”
Popovich proposed to divide Austria-Hungary into fifteen equal states according to the national-territorial principle: three German-speaking states (German Austria, German Bohemia and German Moravia), Hungary, Czech-speaking Bohemia, Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenian-speaking Krajina, Polish-speaking Western Galicia, Romanian-speaking Transylvania, Italian-speaking Trieste and Trentino, Ukrainian-speaking Eastern Galicia, and finally Vojvodina - with both Serbian and Croatian languages. In addition, a number of ethnic enclaves (mostly German) in eastern Transylvania, Banat and other parts of Hungary, southern Slovenia, large cities (such as Prague, Budapest, Lvov, etc.) were granted special autonomy. It was this plan that Archduke Ferdinand supported.
The Popovich-Ferdinand plan scared not only Serbian nationalists. Inside the country, he was most opposed by the Hungarians, who feared losing their privileges in the empire and control over the lands of the Croats, Slovaks and Romanians. Hungarian Prime Minister Count Istvan Tisza threatened: "If the heir to the throne decides to carry out his plan, I will raise the national revolution of the Magyars against him and wipe him off the face of the Earth." Later, there were suggestions that Hungarian officials could have been involved in the Sarajevo murder, but there are no facts confirming this version.
Gavrila served in "Mlada Bosna" ...
It was the Serbs who dealt with the heir to the throne. Bosnia had its own nationalist terrorist organization, Mlada Bosna, which collaborated with the Serbian Black Hand. The difference between the "Young Bosna" and the "Black Hand" was that the Bosnians were more "leftist", adhered to republican and atheistic ideas, because in their ranks there were people from both Serbian and Muslim families. And in the "Black Hand" was dominated by the ideas of the supremacy of Serbia and the empire consecrated by Orthodoxy. But on the fundamental issue - the dream of a united Yugoslavia - the organizations converged.
Mehmedbašić, who tried to kill Potiorek, belonged to “Mlada Bosna”. Contacts between the Bosnians and the Belgrade military from the "Black Hand" were carried out through Danila Ilich, who "in the world" worked either as a school teacher, then as a bank employee, then as a hotel administrator and agreed to become the coordinator of a terrorist group.
At the end of 1913, Ilic traveled to Belgrade to meet with Apis, after which he recruited Serbian youths Vaso Čubrilović and Cvietko Popović for some high-profile murder "immediately after Easter." Soon, for these plans, it was decided to involve three more youths from Mlada Bosna - Nedelko Chabrinovic, Trifko Grabezh and Gavrila Princip, who were also from Bosnia, but lived in Serbia. Belgrade's connection with the Bosnians went through a close associate of Apis since the assassination of King Alexander, Major Vojislav Tankosic and his assistant, the former military Ciganovich.
Later at the trial, they will tell that Tankosic and Tsiganovich gave them six hand grenades, four automatic Browning guns, money and ammunition, poison pills (as it turned out later - of poor quality) in case of arrest, a special map with the location of gendarmerie posts and provided training in shooting . At the end of May, Princip, Grabezh and Čabrinović were sent to Bosnia by secret paths. The captains of the Serbian border guards Popovich and Prvanovich helped the future killers in crossing the border, and the terrorists and weapons for the purpose of secrecy were transported in different ways - for a long time Ilich himself kept pistols and grenades, hiding them under his mother's sofa.
Only on June 27, on the eve of Ferdinand's visit to Sarajevo, did Ilic begin to distribute weapons to those who came from Serbia and introduce them to the previously recruited Chubrilovich, Popovich and the "terrorist with experience" Mehmedbashich. Early morning next day Ilic placed all six along the route of the cortege, urging them to be brave.
fateful day
On the morning of June 28, 1914, Archduke Ferdinand arrived by train in Sarajevo at the invitation of the local governor, General Oskar Potiorek, to observe the maneuvers. At the station, the heir to the throne with his wife Sophia and retinue moved into a cortege of six cars and drove to the city. The mood was cheerful: on June 28, it was 14 years since the wedding of Ferdinand and Sofia.
This day was also considered a great Serbian holiday (“Vidovdan”, the day of St. Vid, the patron saint of the Serbs), which mystically brought great misfortune to the Balkans more than once. It was on June 28, 1389 that the Serbs were defeated in the Battle of Kosovo, on June 28, 1991 the last big war in Yugoslavia began, on June 28, 2001 Slobodan Milosevic was sent to the prison court in The Hague. June 28, 1914 also did not bring joy.
After a cursory inspection of the barracks, Ferdinand went to speak at the city hall. The path ran along the embankment, where a chain of terrorists was already waiting for the victim. The first were Mehmedbašić and Čubrilović, who failed the attack. Chabrinovich was next behind them, having managed to throw a grenade.
But she bounced off the car - the driver of another car was killed by fragments and his passengers (including Lieutenant Colonel Merizzi), a policeman and onlookers from the crowd were injured - up to 20 people were injured in total. Čabrinović immediately decided to commit suicide and cracked open the vial of poison by jumping into the river. However, he remained alive - the poison, as already noted, turned out to be “expired”, because of which the terrorist only vomited, and the river became shallow, the water in it was knee-deep (there had been no rain in the mountains for a long time). The townspeople seized Nedelko, beat him and handed him over to the police.
Unlike today's big names, who would certainly prefer to leave the scene of the attack, and the city itself at maximum speed, the Archduke ordered the car to be stopped and ordered that first aid be given to the wounded. The rest of the conspirators tried to take advantage of the turmoil and again throw a grenade, but they could not approach the cars: they were blocked by a dense crowd of Sarayevites. The attempt seemed to have failed.
After reading Ferdinand's speech in the town hall, one of the courtiers suggested to Potiorek to push the crowd out of the streets, but ran into the insult of the governor: "Do you think Sarajevo is teeming with murderers?" And the Archduke went to the hospital to the wounded Merizzi and other victims again through the crowd - it was decided only to slightly change the route. But they forgot to inform the driver about this, which became a fatal circumstance.
Assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife. Reproduction by unknown newspaper artist
The lost driver stopped on one of the streets near the Latin Bridge and began to turn around. At that moment, the car was noticed by Gavrila Princip, who was buying a sandwich in a cafe.
He ran up and opened fire - the first bullet hit Queen Sofia in the stomach, who decided to support her husband in Hard time and riding with him in the same seat. Later, Princip admits that he did not want to kill the "queen", but aimed at the governor of Potiorek. But it just so happened ... But the second bullet hit Franz Ferdinand himself in the neck.
Like Čabrinović, Princip also decided to commit suicide by biting the ampoule, but again everything was limited to ordinary vomiting. Then he tried to shoot himself, but the people who ran up grabbed a Browning, beat the terrorist (so severely that Princip had to remove his hand in prison) and also handed him over to the police. The wounded Ferdinand and his wife were transported to the governor's residence, but medicine was powerless - Ferdinand's wife died on the way, he himself ten minutes after being laid on the couch. As Count Harrach reported, the last words of the Archduke were: “Sophie, Sophie! Do not die! Live for our children!
two courts
All conspirators except Mehmedbasic were arrested. One of them (probably Ilic himself) managed to break, and he told the details of the preparation, including the participation of Serbian officials, and stated among other things that the weapons were "provided by the Serbian government". What political consequences this had is known.
The investigation also became aware of the names of other members of Mlada Bosna and sympathizers who helped transport terrorists and weapons, among which were Bosnian Serb officers and officials in the service of Austria-Hungary. They were also arrested and tried in the case of the murder of the Archduke.
According to the verdict of an Austrian court, four, including Ilic, were hanged. Two were sentenced to life imprisonment. But the direct perpetrators of the assassination attempt could not be sentenced to death, since according to Austrian laws they were still considered minors, and almost all of them suffered from tuberculosis. Gavrila Princip, Nedelko Chabrinovich and Trifko Grabezh were sentenced to 20 years in prison (all three died a few years later of incurable consumption in the Theresienstadt prison). Vaso Čubrilović received a 16-year sentence, but lived to see the collapse of Austria-Hungary, was released, became a prominent Yugoslav historian, and died in 1990. Popovich received 13 years in prison.
The organizers of the murder from the Black Hand, who dragged their people into a catastrophic war, were retaliated three years later at the hands of the Serbs themselves. In 1917, when the entire territory of Serbia was already captured by the Austrians and the remnants of the Serbian army continued to resist on the front near Thessaloniki, Apis and several other prominent members of the Black Hand were arrested, accused of high treason by a Serbian court and shot.
It is believed that the future Yugoslav king Alexander had a hand in this, who, unlike his father, did not owe anything to the military, was afraid of their enormous influence, considered them to be the culprits of the current state of affairs, and in general - he saw in a coffin, in white slippers. A convenient moment to "shorten" the remnants of the "Black Hand" turned up, perhaps under pressure from Austria-Hungary.
There is a version that the French, together with the Serbs, began secret separate negotiations at the end of 1916, to which the then heir to the Serbian throne, Alexander, sent a confidant (and lover) Petar Zhivkovic. And the categorical condition of the Austrians was the condemnation to death of Dmitrievich.
Major Tankosich, whose extradition was demanded by Austria-Hungary in the famous "July Ultimatum", by that time had already atoned for his own blood: he was mortally wounded in the battles for Pozharevac in 1915.
During the Black Hand Tribunal in Thessaloniki, Apis and the other defendants admitted their role in organizing the Sarajevo assassination. When the three suicide bombers were brought to the place of execution, Apis remarked to the driver: "Now it is quite clear to me and to you that I should be killed today with Serbian rifles only because I organized a protest in Sarajevo." Dmitrievich also named another name - Rade Malobabić, who led the secret operations of the Serbian military intelligence against Austria-Hungary - they say, this "silovik" was not only aware of the plans of the "Black Hand", but was also under its influence and took part in the organization murders.
Was there a "Russian trace"?
They say that during the investigation, Dmitrievich allegedly uttered "forty barrels of prisoners" in relation to Russia: that not only senior officials in Belgrade, but also in St. Petersburg knew about the impending assassination attempt. That the Russian military attache Artamonov promised Russian protection from Austria-Hungary if Serbian intelligence operations were exposed, and that Russia even financed the assassination.
Artamonov himself denied all this - they say that he was not even in Serbia on the eve of the assassination, and the assistant Alexander Verchovsky, who was left to act, although he really had daily contact with Apis, found out about his sinister role in the assassination of Franz Ferdinand only after the war.
Is there any other evidence that Russia could know about the plans of the Black Hand and provide them with at least indirect support? In addition to the fact that Russia really did not leave Serbia in trouble and got involved in the war - very ambiguous. Baron De Shelking, the author of a work on the end of the Russian monarchy, wrote: “On June 1 (14), 1914, Emperor Nicholas had a conversation with the King (of Romania) Charles in Constanta.
I was there at the time... as far as I could tell from conversations with members of [Russian Foreign Minister Sazonov's] entourage, he [Sazonov] was convinced that if the Archduke [Franz Ferdinand] stepped aside, peace in Europe would not be undermined. threat."
After the assassination, the Serbian ambassador to France, Milenko Vesnich, and the Serbian ambassador to Russia, prepared statements in which they noted that Serbia knew about the impending assassination and warned Austria-Hungary. Perhaps this really could have taken place, since not all Serbian officials were delighted with the plans, and even more so with the methods of "work" of the Black Hand. Many wanted to maintain peace and relations with Austria-Hungary.
On 18 June, a telegram to the Serbian ambassador in Vienna, Jovan Jovanović, was ordered to warn the Austro-Hungarian authorities that Serbia had reason to believe that there was a plot to assassinate Franz Ferdinand in Bosnia. The ambassador fulfilled his duty, and on June 21 transmitted a request through the Austrian Minister of Finance, a Pole by nationality, Leon Bilinsky: “The Archduke, as heir, has a risk of suffering from the inflamed public opinion in Bosnia and Serbia. Perhaps some kind of accident will happen to him personally. His journey may lead to incidents and demonstrations that Serbia will condemn, but this will have fatal consequences for Austro-Serbian relations.”
But official Belgrade, represented by Prime Minister Pasic, refuted the statements of his own ambassadors, although later Serbian Education Minister Ljuba Jovanovic recalled that back in late May, Pasic discussed the possibility of an impending assassination with cabinet members.
Justification by socialism
Years after not only the First, but also the Second World War, already in socialist Yugoslavia, it was decided to review the Thessaloniki trial of Apis and his associates. And from a legal point of view, they were justified and rehabilitated, the streets of Yugoslav cities were named after them - the country of Broz Tito needed its "spiritual bonds" for the "Yugoslav idea". Despite the colossal sacrifices of both the peoples of Yugoslavia and all mankind, no correct conclusions were drawn: “it is possible to kill archdukes,” the people's court decided. A controversial attitude towards Dragutin Dmitrievich persists to this day - some say that he is an adventurer and a terrorist. Others - that the great Serbian patriot. As for the perpetrator of the murder, Gavrilo Princip, he is still revered in Serbia today as a symbol of resistance and even depicted in street graffiti. Gavrila's footprints are "cast in granite" at the very spot in Sarajevo where the first shot of the war was fired.
06/15/1914 (28.06). - The assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo as a pretext for the start of the First World War
Shot in Sarajevo
The assassination on June 28, 1914 (N.S.) of the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand Gabriel Princip, served as a "trigger" to unleash. It was prepared by the International Financial International of the Jewish bankers to consolidate their world influence by defeating competitors, pegging all currencies to the American dollar (which became their uncontrolled instrument) and, of course, by eliminating the alternative Russian civilization. Unfortunately, they succeeded. There was also a political goal of the war: the creation of a "Jewish national home in Palestine" - the core of the future state of Israel. But about this side of the war, which the bankers of the whole world agreed to wage only against one enemy - Orthodox Russia, we will say in the material of our calendar for August 1 - the day the great war, a turning point in the fate of mankind. Now let's pay attention to the provocations in Sarajevo.
When we say that Freemasonry to Jewry prepared and unleashed a war, this does not mean that they arranged everything out of the blue, for no reason, according to their artificial plan. Cataclysms of this magnitude never go according to plan. Wars and revolutions are not organized from scratch; they are possible only if there are essential reasons. But, having sufficient means of influence, these causes can be eliminated or exacerbated. The reason for unleashing the Great War was given by the contradictions between Russia and the Central Powers (as they were then called: Germany and Austria-Hungary) in relation to the Balkan Slavs.
Since 1867, the Austrian Empire has become a dual Habsburg monarchy, which pursued a policy of a single state in the external arena, and in domestic politics divided the powers of government between the Austrian and Hungarian administrations. In addition to the Germans (Austrians), who accounted for more than 30% of the population, and the Hungarians (Magyars) - less than 20%, the Austro-Hungarian "patchwork" empire included many Slavic peoples: Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Russians (Little Russians and Carpatho-Russians), Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, etc. Slavs made up about 45% of the population of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was second only to Russia in terms of the number of Slavic population.
Of course, the Slavs did not have equal rights with the two state-forming peoples, and therefore have long turned their eyes to mighty Russia. For this reason, in early XIX century, it was in Austria-Hungary that the pan-Slavist movement arose, which set itself the goal of uniting the Slavic peoples into a single empire with Russia. Among these peoples, the most influential was the Orthodox Serbian, to whom Russia had also long ago assisted in the struggle against the Turks. After the victorious Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. Serbia experienced a great national upsurge, had a strong army, was eager to annex the region of Montenegro and also free itself from the power of Austria-Hungary, entering into an inevitable conflict with it.
Emperor Franz Joseph I was then 84 years old and his energetic heir, nephew Archduke Franz Ferdinand (1863–1914) was already regarded by everyone as the de facto ruler. In addition, he was known as an ardent oppressor of the Serbs.
On June 28, 1914, a parade of the Austrian army under the command of Franz Ferdinand was being prepared in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. The parade was arrogantly (essentially provocative) appointed on the mournful day for the Serbian people of the defeat in Kosovo Field in 1389 by the troops of Prince Lazar in the battle with the Turkish army. This defeat resulted in the loss of Serbian independence for 500 years. The appointment of the Austrian parade on this particular day aroused the indignation of Serbian national organizations, especially since Bosnia was annexed by Austria-Hungary quite recently, in 1908, and even then it almost caused a war. So, the time and place for the provocation was chosen perfectly.. On the day of this military parade, student Gavriil Princip, a member of the youth nationalist organization Mlado Bosnia, killed the archduke, who was considered a supporter of military operations against Serbia.
The surprisingly "careless" behavior of the guards of the heir to the throne is also surprising, with the quite obvious discontent of the Slavic population prevailing in Sarajevo. Amazingly, the heir was killed as a result of the second (!) assassination attempt on the same day. The first attempt was unsuccessful: a thrown bomb wounded the people accompanying him, nevertheless, Franz Ferdinand continued his ceremonial tour of the city in an open car. The program of the event has not been changed. And when the heir went to the hospital to visit the wounded during the first explosion, G. Princip in the center of the city killed the heir and his wife with a revolver.
Direct terrorists - the worker N. Gabrinovich, who threw the first bomb, and the student G. Princip were arrested immediately. Later they seized their accomplice Grabesh (the son of a priest - which was also beaten in the press accordingly), who fled from the scene of the assassination attempt. All three were sentenced by the court to 20 years in prison each (all of them were under 20 years old, and only from this age the death penalty could be applied under the Austrian Criminal Code), all died very quickly in prison (clearly not by their own death), the last in April G. Princip died in 1918 ( in the photo on the left).
During the investigation and trial, the defendants' connections with influential military and political circles were revealed, all of whose representatives were members of the secret society "Freedom" in Bosnia, the "Narodna Obrana" and "Black Hand" societies in Belgrade. Among the leaders of the "Black Hand" Dragutin Dmitrievich in 1913-1915. headed intelligence of the Serbian General Staff (arrested by order of the Serbian king in December 1916 and shot in June 1917), his closest assistant, Major Tankosic, was also involved in the case (died at the front in 1915), and the secretary of the Narodna "was an officer of the Serbian General Staff Milan Pribichev.
“The figure of Vladimir Gachinovich seems interesting,” writes historian N. Gorodnyaya, “to whom many attribute the main role in organizing this murder. It was he who was simultaneously a member of all three organizations - the Bosnian Svoboda, the People's Obran and the Black Hand. It was through him that these organizations contacted the Russian revolutionaries - Lunacharsky, Martov, Trotsky, Radek. By the way, his sudden illness and death in August 1917 suggest poisoning - he knew too much. And he told Trotsky some of this information. In any case, there is evidence that Trotsky, Zinoviev and Radek knew about the preparation of the conspiracy and its organizers. Radek wanted to reveal this secret at the Moscow trial in 1937, but he was not allowed to speak.
In part, these words of Radek are reflected in Izvestia (January 30, 1937): “... And we must also show the whole world that - I repeat his name with trembling from this bench - in a letter, in directives for a delegation heading to The Hague , wrote about the mystery of war. A piece of this secret was found in the hands of a young Serbian nationalist, Gavrila Princip, who could have died in the fortress without revealing it. He was a Serbian nationalist and felt right in fighting for this secret, which guarded the Serbian national movement. I cannot hide this secret and take it with me to the coffin for the reason that if, in view of what I confessed, I do not have the right to act as a repentant communist, then nevertheless 35 years of my participation in the labor movement, with all the mistakes and crimes with which it ended, gives me the right to demand confidence from you in one thing - that all the same, these masses of the people with whom I walked represent something to me. And if I hid this truth and left the stage with it, as Kamenev did, as Zinoviev did, as Mrachkovsky did, then when I thought over all these things, in my dying hour I would still hear the curse of those people who will killed in a future war and to whom I could, by my testimony, give means of fighting against the impending war ... "
Based on this publication, A. Arutyunov ("Lenin's Dossier without retouching") also states the version of Lenin's involvement in the assassination attempt (as the ideological inspirer) and Radek (as the direct organizer). He argues mainly that Lenin was extremely interested in the war as a means of overthrowing tsarist power with the help of the secret services of the Central Powers. Lenin’s work for Germany and the receipt of huge sums from it through Parvus, Ganetsky and Furstenberg has been documented, but still, involvement in the Sarajevo murder has not been proven. And did the miserable emigrant Lenin have such physical abilities?
It is more reasonable to assume that both the Sarajevo nationalists and Lenin and Parvus, each in his place, were pulled by puppeteers in the higher spheres of world politics. It was from there that the desire to push the Central Powers against Russia and overthrow all these major European monarchies came. At the trial, Princip and Gabrinović stated that the Freemasons in 1913 decided to kill the Archduke, and that the organizers of the assassination attempt (Tsyganevich, who got the bombs and weapons and the aforementioned Major Tankosic) were members of the Masonic lodge in Belgrade, they agreed with the executors and with the customers also and the date of the attack.
According to an ancient rule, the disclosure of any crime should begin with an attempt to understand its purpose: who benefits from it? And logically speaking, it is difficult to see any benefit for Serbian nationalists in this: it was quite clear that the response of the authorities would be repressions against their organizations and the entire anti-Serb policy of Austria-Hungary would be toughened. Contrary to the statements of the European (mainly Jewish) press (they were later repeated by the Soviet "historian" Pokrovsky), this was not beneficial for Russia either, which staked on a peaceful resolution of the Slavic problem. The Austro-Serbian conflict turned into a world war due to the work of a different mechanism - those very prudent puppeteers from the world behind the scenes, who correctly believed that the crime would be a shock for the Austro-Hungarian authorities, who would try to punish Serbia, and that the deeply decent Russian Tsar would not be able to betray and leave the Orthodox Serbian people are in trouble.
The entire European press (not only the Austro-Hungarian) immediately declared the murder to be the work of Serbian nationalists, behind whom Russia stands: they say, she wants war. Anti-Serb pogroms began in Austria. The diplomats in this story also behaved rather strangely, reacting to everything with a delay and actually not controlling the wave of hysteria that was building up. As a result, on July 15 (28) Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, after which Russia began mobilization, and on July 19 (Aug. 1) Germany declared war on Russia ...
Once again, history shows us vile facts about the involvement of "God's people" in the most large-scale and bloody crimes against humanity.
There is almost nothing new in the article.
Dear Bogdan, there is little that can be said about the majority of historical events and memorable dates in any calendar. Does this mean that it is not necessary to remind them? And in general, let me disagree with you: it is in this calendar "Holy Russia" that a lot of new things are given, always honest and thoughtful assessments of seemingly well-known truths.
We'll start when they're ready. One pleases the Force born at the moment began to act
There is no better life on Earth than to die for your friends. Start now the massacre with the Jews for the freedom of the Slavs, with the last of my strength I will go to wet the Jews. If I die, then with peace of mind.
The world Masonic behind the scenes is to blame for everything. Both then and now.
Bogdan. Even if there is nothing new for 90%, then for the sake of the remaining 10% it is necessary to publish. Especially. that more than half are ignorant. And thanks to the author!
A war can start elementrano..because of a sideways glance...or because of a stray bullet..or because of the resentment of one king against another...yes, anything..but Jewish provocations. so it goes without saying
Absolute stupid bullshit and even with an anti-Semitic smell
Mikhail Viktorovich, thanks for the educational program
So I hate Zionism, and I perfectly understand its destructive role in history. In theory, I have to agree with what the author writes, and I seem to agree ...
But the author is obviously dishonest, and he obviously works for those very people whom he denounces so angrily. The word "world" with the ancient letter "and with a dot" can only be written by a person committed to cabalism. After all, if the author had adhered to pre-revolutionary spelling, he would have written this letter not only in this case, but in all others. And besides: he would write solid signs at the end of the word, fitu, yat, and would observe other rules of pre-revolutionary spelling. But for some reason he doesn't. He attaches some kind of fetishistic meaning to only this one word, into which he enters a letter unusual for the Russian alphabet.
The fact that in his writings there is a prefix WITHOUT- in those cases where it is necessary to write BES- (SAFE, for example). He says that he is a religious fanatic. For only fanatics and mentally ill people are afraid to use the prefix BESS-, fearing that DEMONS will penetrate us along with it.
In other words: you cannot trust this person. He reeks of Jewish religious fanaticism in its most extreme and vile forms.
very interesting how one shot affected the course of events
Mikhail Viktorovich, thank you for the great educational work! Low bow!!!
