If you know anything about World War I or Scottish indie rock from the early 2000s, then you\u2019ve probably heard the name \u201cFranz Ferdinand\u201d before. Why\u2019s he famous?<\/p>\n
I could go on about how he deserves recognition in his own right, for being an archduke and heir apparent to rule the Austro-Hungarian empire. But Austria-Hungary is in dead empire hell, and that\u2019s not why we care about Franz Ferdinand enough for Scots to name a band after him. He\u2019s famous because he got shot in the neck in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, and died, setting off a series of events that would start World War I, which in turn led to the entire 20th century\u2014World War II, the ascension of the United States as a global superpower, the Cold War, right up until the modern day bullsh*t conflicts that plague the world today.<\/p>\n
Franz is a man famous for being assassinated, but what about his assassin? He was about the opposite of a 50-year-old archduke: a Serbian peasant, only 19 years old when he shot his Browning pistol at the motorcade, first hitting Ferdinand\u2019s wife, then Ferdinand. He wasn\u2019t even the first assassin to attack Ferdinand\u2019s motorcade that day.<\/p>\n
But chance put Franz Ferdinand and Gavrilo Princip<\/strong> on the same street, at the same time. \u00a0When Gavrilo\u2014a kid too young to be hanged under Austrian law at the time\u2014pulled his trigger, he was doing something serious. Serious might not be the right word . . . what am I looking for\u2014oh, right! F**ked up. Shooting a man and his wife in cold blood is f**ked up. But there was no way he could have known he was setting off the biggest butterfly effect in modern human history.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n First, I should make a note: Gavrilo Princip, for many years, was treated as a national hero in Yugoslavia, before the country was all divvied up\u2014Balkanized\u2014into warring factions. After that, Bosnia considered the teenager a terrorist. Either way, they know the name Gavrilo Princip in that part of the world, and if you\u2019re from there, well, you probably don\u2019t need this article.<\/p>\n For the rest of us, we have some catching up to do.<\/p>\n Gavrilo was born a sickly kid in 1894. It seems like illness ran in the family\u2014or maybe living conditions were just terrible\u2014because six of his eight siblings didn\u2019t survive infancy. His father was a postman, but let\u2019s not sugarcoat things: the Princips were peasants.<\/p>\n Gavrilo was able to receive some education, at least, going to schools in Sarajevo and Tuzla, before heading off to Belgrade in 1912. Belgrade is where, in modern parlance, Gavrilo was radicalized.<\/p>\n He joined a nationalist movement called the Black Hand, which, when you\u2019re 19, sounds pretty<\/i> cool. If you haven\u2019t seen 1990\u2019s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles<\/i>, maybe give that a watch and then come back, because I\u2019m about to use it as an analogy for early 20th century Serbian nationalism. It\u2019s only 93 minutes. You really only need to see Act I for this, if memory serves me right. Here\u2019s a paragraph break to give you some time to give it a quick watch.<\/p>\n OK, back? How was it? I haven\u2019t watched it since I was a kid, but I\u2019ll bet it still holds up. OK, so the character Danny Pennington, he\u2019s like Gavrilo Princip. He\u2019s some who kid feels like he needs a group\u2014nay, a clan<\/i>\u2014to belong to, so he joins Shredder\u2019s Foot Clan. The Foot Clan is like the Black Hand, but they\u2019re ninjas rather than Serbian partisans.<\/p>\n Our Shredder, meanwhile, is Dragutin Dimitrijevic, chief of the Intelligence Department of the Serbian army. Through that job, he has another job: leader of the Black Hand. Just like Shredder was luring lost boys into his ninja gang, Dimitrijevic recruited some young Serbian dudes.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve paid any kind of attention over the years to how terrorism works, then you know what Dimitrijevic probably knew: it\u2019s not that hard to convince young men to throw their lives away, as long as you convince them it\u2019s for something important. It\u2019s even easier when each of the young men are already doomed: Gavrilo and some of the other assassins were sickly, sufferers of tuberculosis, and knew they weren\u2019t long for the world anyway.<\/p>\n So he sent a group of young men\u2014including Gavrilo\u2014to Sarajevo to kill the archduke, whose motorcade would be driving through the city, on his way to inspect army maneuvers. When they were finished, the assassins were instructed to kill themselves with cyanide. Dimitrijevic didn\u2019t want any loose ends leading back to him or the Serbian army. That made these sickly, disposable young men perfect cat\u2019s paws for killing Franz Ferdinand.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n The Black Hand\u2019s goal was a union between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia. The problem was that Bosnia-Herzegovina was already part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. If it was going to merge with Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina first needed to gain its independence from Austria-Hungary. The city of Sarajevo was, at the time, in Bosnia-Herzegovina.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n OK, so why would killing Franz Ferdinand, the heir for the empire\u2019s throne, result in an independent Bosnia-Herzegovina? It wouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n This is where things get very complicated in a very Balkans kind of way. The short version is that Serbia, around that time, was transitioning from military to civilian rule after the brutal Balkan Wars.<\/p>\n Dimitrijevic, the guy running the Black Hand, remember, was head of Serbian army intelligence, so he was in the military government camp. By 1914, as civilian government was taking more power, Dimitrijevic was at risk of\u2014gasp!\u2014losing his job. He knew that stirring shit up with Austria-Hungary would cause enough international trouble that Serbia would get distracted, need more military direction, and Dimitrijevic would, therefore, keep his job.<\/p>\n So that\u2019s why he got young Serbs to act as Franz Ferdinand\u2019s\u2014and his wife\u2019s\u2014assassins, before killing themselves. This scheme, which Dimitrijevic hatched to keep his cushy job, would result in more deaths than he ever could have imagine. If you follow the flow-chart of 20th century war deaths resulting from Dimitrijevic job-retention efforts, then it\u2019s something like 60 million dead. That office must have had some view.<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n As for Gavrilo\u2019s reasons, he was a young nationalist, who wanted to see Bosnia and Serbia unite. Further, Gavrilo was really f**king ticked off about how Austria-Hungary had annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina.<\/p>\n The Black Hand\u2019s stated goal, therefore, would have been appealing to Gavrilo. And, given his health issues, he knew he wasn\u2019t going to live a long time, anyway. The kid was looking for purpose, and Dimitrijevic gave him something that looked like a purpose\u2014even if that purpose was to die so Dimitrijevic could keep his job. <\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Franz Ferdinand and his wife, the duchess of Hohenberg (Sofia, to her friends), were riding through the streets of Sarajevo in their motorcade. The reason for the visit, as I touched on a bit earlier, was that Ferdinand was the Inspector General of the army, and he\u2019d been invited to Sarajevo to generally inspect said army.<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n It turned out to be a bad day, from an archduke\u2019s perspective. All told, there were around six or seven Black Hand assassins planted along Ferdinand\u2019s motorcade route. One of the assassins, Nedjelko \u010cabrinovi\u0107, was almost<\/i> the guy who did the killing that led to all the bad things during the 20th century. But, when he threw his bomb at Ferdinand\u2019s car, it bounced off, and exploded underneath the next car in the motorcade. It hurt some people, of course, but not the right people to set off a War to End All Wars. And that\u2019s why this isn\u2019t an article about Nedjelko \u010cabrinovi\u0107.<\/p>\n This failed attack did, however, lead Ferdinand to Gavrilo. Ferdinand\u2019s motorcade tour through Sarajevo, for some reason, wasn\u2019t halted for an immediate security lockdown, nor was Ferdinand rushed under the cover of bodyguards to some remote bunker.<\/p>\n Instead, the motorcade continued, and Ferdinand even extended the day\u2019s activities to include a hospital trip\u2014he wanted to visit an officer wounded at the bombing earlier in the day.<\/p>\n It was on his way to the hospital that Ferdinand\u2019s motorcade crossed paths with Gavrilo Princip. The motorcade had retraced its planned route for the added leg, and amazingly stopped for a moment, right in front of Gavrilo. The archduke had fallen right into his lap. Gavrilo raised his pistol and fired.<\/p>\n His first shot missed its intended target, according to Gavrilo. He had aimed for the military governor of Bosnia, Oskar Potiorek. Instead, his bullet found Ferdinand\u2019s wife, Sofia, striking her in the abdomen and purportedly killing her instantly\u2014along with her unborn child.<\/p>\nWho Was Gavrilo Princip?<\/h3>\n
Gavrilo Princip and The Black Hand: Why Kill Ferdinand?<\/h3>\n
Was Gavrilo Princip a good assassin?<\/h3>\n