01-07-2014, 12:48 AM
A letter in response to the Guardian's article on how the first world war started!
The shot that wrecked the past century
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/ju...st-century
The Guardian, Sunday 29 June 2014 20.11 BST
Archduke Franz Ferdinand leaves the town hall in Sarajevo moments before he was assasinated by Gavri
Archduke Franz Ferdinand leaves the town hall in Sarajevo moments before he was assasinated by Gavrilo Princip 100 years ago. Photograph: ENA
It is no great surprise that Gavrilo Princip (Report, 27 June) is viewed very differently by Serbs, Muslims and Croats.
To Serbs he was fighting to free our people from state-orchestrated persecution in our own country. Mass sackings, show trials, persecution of the Serbian Orthodox church and attempts to curtail the use of cyrillic alphabet were all daily occurrences for the Serbs of Bosnia. Muslims and Croats were very much the beneficiaries of this policy.
By ending this domination, Princip is widely considered by Muslims and Croats as a fanatic and radical. To understand 1914 it is vital to understand why he pulled the trigger. Dismissing him as a Serb nationalist, a fanatic or an unhinged maniac is shamefully ignorant.
Anthony Shelmerdine Boskovic
Saddleworth, Yorkshire
• The illegal occupation of Bosnia and Hercegovina by the Austro-Hungarian empire before the first world war was not quite as rosy as you would have it. There were repeated insurrections in the occupied territory that were brutally repressed and gave more than sufficient impetus to drive out the occupiers.
It's sad that Bosnia has now come full-circle in its history and is as split as ever. I've been to the country four times since the end of the war and personally observed the divided towns, destroyed homes, racist graffiti and destroyed churches and mosques – which, together, still provide testament to the fact that nothing is yet resolved there, and that the region may yet become a flashpoint of the kind that ignited the first world war 100 years ago.
Dr Michael Pravica
Henderson, Nevada
To me "Young Bosnia" reminds me of the "Young Turks"!
Be interesting to see how they were constructed, and whether they were compatible in any shape or form!
The Real Shots That Started WW1
June 30, 2014
by Nebojsa Malic
The Great War did not begin on June 28, 1914.
This may sound like a shocking assertion, but a simple statement of fact. It may come as a surprise to the multitudes that have read, seen and heard otherwise in the mainstream media over the weekend, but it is true nonetheless.
No “Serbian assassin” fired the deadly shots. Gavrilo Princip was a Serb, but not a Serbian. He belonged to the organization called Mlada Bosna, “Young Bosnia,” a movement of students and young intellectuals impatient to end the feudal empire keeping the Serbs (and other Slavs, whom they considered fraternal tribes) in peonage. They looked to Serbia – a constitutional monarchy, with a powerful parliament and near-universal franchise – for inspiration. Among the members of the organization, and the much smaller group of assassins, there were more than a few that would later be categorized as “Croats” or “Bosniaks” (i.e. Muslims), dedicated to the idea of South Slav freedom and unity.
Gavrilo Princip on a mural in Belgrade, with an excerpt from his poem written in prison
Gavrilo Princip on a mural in Belgrade, with an excerpt from his poem written in prison: “Our shadows shall wander Vienna, roaming the court, haunting the lords”
What of the allegations that they were run by the “Black Hand,” a secret cabal of officers run by none other than Colonel Apis? No organization by that name actually existed; the sinister-sounding “Black Hand” was the product of Viennese propaganda of the time. There was a society called “Unification or Death,” led by Colonel Dragutin “Apis” Dimitrijević; he had been involved in the May 1903 coup that deposed the last Obrenović king. As a consequence of this coup, Serbia had broken free of the 1881 Secret Convention that made it a vassal of Austria-Hungary. Between 1903 and 1913, Serbia had successfully asserted economic and political independence, winning a trade war started by Austria (the “Pig War”). In retaliation, Vienna annexed (1908) Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ottoman provinces with a Serb majority it had “administered” as colonies since 1878. When Serbia objected, Austria threatened war.
Serbia had no choice but to stand down, as it could not take on Austria-Hungary alone. Russia was unable to help, having been sidelined by a shocking defeat by Japan (1905) and the political fallout (1905-07) threatening to turn into a revolution. This failure, by the way, would loom large over Nicholas II’s decision to back Serbia in July 1914. Over the next several years, Serbia engaged in diplomatic outreach, establishing better ties with France (where King Petar I had lived in exile; he had served as a French officer in the 1870 war against Prussia) and Britain.
Serbian diplomats also concluded the Balkan Alliance, which in 1912 dealt a massive defeat to the Ottoman Empire, driving it almost entirely out of Europe. Austria-Hungary once again threatened war, and found British and Italian support in denying Serbia access to the sea by creating the state of Albania. This created a problem between Serbia and Bulgaria over the partition of Macedonia – which Vienna exploited by persuading the Bulgarians to launch a surprise attack on Serb armies in 1913. The rest of the Balkan Alliance backed Serbia, and Bulgaria was defeated in short order.
Viennese propaganda was working at full steam throughout. In 1909, some 53 members of a Serb political party (in the Hungarian province of Croatia-Slavonia) were charged with high treason for allegedly plotting South Slavic unification with Serbia; the “High Treason Trial” was a farce, with the crown witness being exposed as a police informant. As part of the propaganda surrounding the trial, the alleged Serbian “partners” of the “traitors” were described as the “Black Hand.” During the Balkans Wars, an Austrian propagandist by the name of Leo Freundlich fabricated reports of Serb atrocities against the Albanians (“Albanian Golgotha”), while Austrian sources fed similar fabricated accounts to the Carnegie commission (“International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars”) in 1913. But no matter how successfully it slandered the Serbs, Vienna had no actual pretext to invade – until one was provided on June 28, 1914, in the form of the dead Archduke and his wife.
The Archduke’s visit was a deliberate provocation. He arrived to oversee military maneuvers near the Serbian border, coinciding with a day of special importance in Serb history. The exact route of his motorcade had been published in the Sarajevo daily newspaper (Bosnische Post). As the motorcade drove along the river towards the City Hall, one of the assassins – Nedeljko Čabrinović – threw a bomb at the Archduke’s car. There are conflicting reports of the bomb either missing, or Franz Ferdinand batting it away; in any case, it injured the follow-on car. The Archduke reportedly wanted to visit the wounded men in the hospital, but somehow no one bothered to tell his driver about this change of plans; when the car turned into the side street, followed the previously published route instead, the Archduke and General Potiorek yelled at the driver to stop. He did – right in front of Gavrilo Princip.
While the murder – tyrannicide, properly – of Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand was deliberate, the death of Countess Sophie Chotek was an accident. Gavrilo Princip’s bullet was meant for General Oskar Potiorek, the hated military governor of Bosnia, who had ducked as the Archduke’s wife leaned over towards her husband.
While the actual assassins had the means, motive and opportunity, Serbia did not. It had just fought a major war against the Ottomans, and needed time to recover and replenish its military supplies. On the other hand, Austria-Hungary was eager to go to war – specifically, the faction led by Foreign Minister Leopold Graf Berchtold and Army Chief of Staff, Konrad Graf von Hötzendorf. The Archduke had kept them in check, and his death had both removed the obstacle to their long-desired war of annihilation against Serbia, and provided them with the perfect pretext.
Echoing the claims of the “High Treason Trial”, the Austro-Hungarian authorities claimed the assassins were working on orders from Belgrade, acting as proxies of the “Black Hand,” and even claimed (falsely) that Sophie had been pregnant when she died.
On July 23, Vienna’s ambassador to Belgrade handed the Serbian authorities an ultimatum designed to be rejected. Serbia’s Prime Minister was on vacation – he was hastily called back to craft a response, which conceded almost all of Austria’s demands, politely refusing the demands infringing upon Serbia’s sovereignty. It did not matter; on July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia and began bombing Belgrade.
It was those shots, not the bullets of Gavrilo Princip a month prior, that truly started the Great War.
Coda: The fate of Princip
Gavrilo Princip was imprisoned in the fortress of Teresienstadt, where he succumbed to tuberculosis in April 1918. During World War Two, the fortress was used as a torture camp for the prisoners of the Terezin concentration camp, the primary collection point for Jews destined for the death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau and others.
The plaque honoring Princip, put up in Sarajevo in 1930, was taken down by the Nazis in April 1941, and presented to Adolf Hitler as a birthday gift.
(copyright the Reiss Institute; all rights reserved)
http://www.reiss-institute.org/articles/real-start-ww1/
They always say follow the money!
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/richar...ferdinand/
Richard Preston
Richard Preston is an Assistant Editor of The Daily Telegraph. He has been the paper's features editor, news editor and comment editor.
WW1: 35 days to go – martial law and rioting in Sarajevo, the Kaiser feels 'immeasurable grief' at the loss of Franz Ferdinand
uesday June 30 1914: the Archduke and his wife have been dead 48 hours. Martial law has been declared in Sarajevo, and Croats and Muslims are reported to be turning on Serbs in the city – houses, shops, hotels and a school have been attacked and in some cases demolished:
Reports from Austria suggest that, at this point, the tone towards Serbia is not yet strident. The Viennese paper the Neue Freie Presse says that despite the provocation 'Austria-Hungary will never … follow a policy of revenge':
The Daily Telegraph prints a first picture of the new heir to the throne and his young family. Karl Franz (1887-1922) would become the last emperor of Austria and king of Hungary on his succession in 1916:
Meanwhile, the Kaiser has sent a telegram to Franz Ferdinand's daughter Princess Sophia, expressing his 'immeasurable grief' at her parents' death:
Details of the Archduke's fortune are reported from Vienna. There's plenty of property, including the Villa d'Este in Rome, but it has cost large sums to maintain:
The funeral will take place on Friday July 3. The Kaiser will attend but Emperor Franz Joseph will not ask other 'foreign princes':
Meanwhile in Britain, Wimbledon is on, Henley starts tomorrow and London is experiencing a heatwave to compare with the summer of 1911:
pjbw127 • 5 hours ago
I have often wondered how the history of the 20th century would have turned out if the Archduke had survived that day. First world war, communism, fascism, second world war, cold war...
Maybe eminent historian(s) already have?
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trace9 • 7 hours ago
I like the first para. of the Wimbledon report - in fact it could apply to the whole political & social period beginning here & across Europe. There's a long, long, road unwinding..
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Polly Fabian • 10 hours ago
Oops!
High temperatures in the first and second decades of the twentieth century.
That wasn't meant to happen, was it?
Must have been a conspiracy by those upper class English Generals.
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backstoothewall • 10 hours ago
Two dates in Austrian history that changed, shaped our modern world; 3rd July 1866, 28th June 1914, it could have been so different ... if only.
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IlikeBrits • 11 hours ago
Totally nuts that a world war starts,... a little later!
Tropical London, global warming 1914? It has really become hot the only last 100 years.
http://grayfalcon.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06...ajevo.html
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Deutschlandlied in Sarajevo
I used to enjoy the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concerts. Having been raised in an atheist society, I never stopped to wonder why a traditional concert in the capital of a staunchly Catholic thousand-year empire was held on January 1, rather than, say, Christmas Day. Then I found out the tradition was established in 1938, by none other than Josef Goebbels.
Another revelation came last year: a Bosnian-born journalist tracked down the photograph showing Adolf Hitler gazing at the marble plaque honoring Gavrilo Princip - the Bosnian Serb who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo. A modest monument, funded privately, the plaque had been put up in 1930. Within days of the Nazi occupation in 1941, the plaque was taken down and presented to Hitler as a birthday present. He had it displayed at the same museum as the railway car from Compiegne in which Germany had signed the armistice in 1918 - and where he insisted the French sign their surrender in 1940.
In 1914, warmongers in Vienna used the assassination (ironically, it was the Archduke who had kept them in check) to launch a war of extermination against Serbia, which eventually destroyed the Hapsburg empire instead. Attempts have been made to blame the Serbs and Serbia for the Great War ever since.
The latest round of revisionism came as the centenary of the war approached. On June 28, mainstream media throughout the West carried stories about the "Serbian" assassin of the Archduke and his wife (Sophie Chotek was killed accidentally; Princip was aiming at General Potiorek, the hated military governor of Bosnia) and the assassination treated as the actual cause - and beginning - of the war. This fits the current narrative of (Western) European unity - under the Atlantic Empire - fighting the "evil" Russians and "troublemaker" Serbs, but it has little to do with the truth.
Franz Ferdinand may have been set up to die; his motorcade's exact route had been published in local newspapers in advance. His visit was scheduled for Vidovdan, a day the Serbs remember - among other things - for a brave captain who killed the Ottoman sultan during the 1389 battle. The assassin who threw a bomb at the motorcade en route to the City Hall missed. When the Archduke's car returned along the same route, the young Princip was more successful.
Three weeks later, Austria handed Serbia an ultimatum designed to be rejected. On July 28, Austrian guns opened up on Belgrade, actually starting the war.
The Sarajevo City Hall was later turned into a library. In 1992, during the Bosnian War, its interior caught fire - allegedly as a result of Serb shelling. The new City Hall (another Austrian administrative building) was torched in February this year by Western-backed "democratic protesters." Perhaps some of them were the very "persons unknown" who had taken a hammer to the marble monument to Princip erected to replace Hitler's trophy.
Yesterday, on the centenary of the assassination, the Vienna Philharmonic that Goebbels helped make famous performed in same old City Hall where the angry Archduke had impatiently fidgeted through the sycophantic speech of Sarajevo's mayor. On their repertoire was the Second Movement of Joseph Haydn's String Quartet, op. 76/3 ("Emperor Quartet"), based on the Austrian imperial anthem, "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser" - and the German national anthem, the Deutschlandlied. And though modern Germany uses only the third stanza, the first stanza - used by the Nazis - remains seared into the Serbs' collective memory.
A century after that day in Sarajevo, Croats and Slovenes are back in a union with Austria and Hungary. Bosnian Muslims alternately revere the Hapsburgs and the Ottomans. The Serbs are again demonized and downtrodden, and the old Austrian-sown hatreds are setting Ukraine ablaze. The Great War is still being fought, it seems.
Before dying in his cell in Terezin - later used by the Nazis to torture Jews imprisoned in the Teresienstadt transit camp - Princip reportedly wrote: "Our shadows shall wander Vienna, roaming the court, haunting the lords."
So when I see the mocking "news" stories, read the revisionist "histories" and hear the bars of the Austrian and German anthem played in a town no longer my home, I can't help but think all that is just whistling past the graveyard of empires, a fearful - and ultimately doomed - attempt to keep the ghost of Gavrilo Princip and his comrades at bay.
http://grayfalcon.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06...ajevo.html
id my great grandfather bless Gavrilo Princip before he pulled the trigger?
June 29, 2014
Katherine Quarmby is researching her family history and asks whether you can help shed light on this fascinating rumour.
Katherine’s mother is half Bosnian-Serb and came to Britain after the Second World War. Together the pair are investigating a highly apposite chapter in their heritage. Her mother’s dedo was Kosta Božić, the Dean (or some say Archbishop of Sarajevo) around the time of the First World War and was rumoured to have blessed Gavrilo Princip before his enterprise.
Can you help?
Katherine’s mother has previously written a book about her family’s wartime experiences, under the name Louisa Rayner. It is called Women in a Village.
Katherine has also written a fictionalised account of Kosta Bozic as a short eBook called The Priest, the Assassin, and Archduke Franz Ferdinand
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Priest-Assassin-...2702031_18
http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2...-war-video
Bosnia-Herzegovina marks centenary of Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassination in Sarajevo - video
Events are held in Sarajevo and Visegrad on Saturday one hundred years after Gavrilo Princip shot and killed the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which sparked the first world war. Protesters in the Bosnian capital are angry that so much money has been spent on centenary celebrations after the country recently experienced devastating floods.
Occupied by the money lenders!
The lie that started the First World War
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world...d-War.html
The personality and motives of the young assassin, Gavrilo Princip, who fired the fatal shots at Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, were twisted by Austrian propaganda
GAVRILO PRINCIP is paraded by his Austrian captors after assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Sarajevo, Bosnia
Gavrilo Princip is paraded by his Austrian captors after assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo Photo: Alamy
By Tim Butcher, Sarajevo7:10AM BST 28 Jun 2014Comments231 Comments
This day 100 years ago dawned memorably bright over Sarajevo. After days of stormy rain, Sunday June 28,1914 began cloudless as Austria-Hungary, the imperial power that held dominion over the small Balkan province of Bosnia, prepared for a show of ostentatious pageantry in its capital.
Loyal citizens came out in their thousands, lining the route into the city centre that was to be used for a rare official visit by a top member of the Habsburg royal house, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, second only in imperial protocol to the venerable, mutton-chopped emperor himself, Franz Joseph. Witnesses remember the morning sun being fierce as the crowds gathered, eight deep in places, many of them waving the yellow imperial standard of Austria-Hungary with its double-headed black eagle, some shouting ''Long Live the Archduke’’ as the Gräf & Stift limousine drove sedately by. An imperial 21-gun salute, from the fortress high in the hills that ring Sarajevo, sent out puffs of smoke, vivid white against the blue summer sky.
But the crowd was seeded with six would-be assassins united in their loathing of Austria-Hungary. By the time the sun set, what happened in Sarajevo would plunge the world into the darkness of global war for the first time.
The details were well recorded: how the first attacker lost his nerve as the cortege passed, how the next attacker threw a grenade that struck the limousine but did not harm the Archduke, how the royal party nevertheless continued with the visit, how three would-be assassins melted away into the crowd and how one, a 19-year-old peasant, stood his ground.
Gavrilo Princip was his name and he took up station at the street corner where the royal vehicle was scheduled to turn right, according to the route flagged up for days in local newspapers, off the wide riverside boulevard that gives Sarajevo its spine, before taking the Archduke to visit a museum.
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What might be called the devil’s luck then enters the story as the decision had been taken after the grenade attack for the Archduke’s car not to turn right but to continue down the boulevard. All the senior members of the royal party were informed. But nobody told the driver.
When the driver made the turn, an imperial officer on board with the Archduke and his wife, Sophie ordered: ''Stop.’’ The driver braked immediately, presenting the assassin with his targets right in front of him in a now stationary car, the canvas roof folded helpfully back because of the sunny conditions.
Princip needed to take only half a step forward before he aimed his 9mm, semi-automatic Browning pistol and fired what amounted to the starting gun for modern history. The killing of the Archduke and his wife was the trigger for the First World War. What happened next is a bone well worried by historians. But the details of who Princip was, his motivation, his actions and his support network have been mired ever since in political bias, ethnic rivalry and sloppy homework.
We have been told that: Princip jumped on the running board of the Archduke’s limousine to take his shot, the Archduke’s wife was pregnant when she died, the shooting happened on the anniversary of their marriage, the car did not have a reverse gear, the Archduke caught the grenade thrown earlier and tossed it away safely, and Princip stopped to eat a last sandwich at the café on the corner before emerging to take his shot. It’s all myth.
Yet, given that this is the young man with perhaps the greatest impact on modern history, I have been drawn to spend the past three years researching what the historical record definitively reveals about the assassin from Bosnia.
Gavrilo Princip was born in 1894, a serf’s son from the hamlet of Obljaj in remotest western Bosnia, short and slight of build with the strong chin that is the dominant hallmark of the Princip male line. His father Petar was trapped in the grinding poverty of generations of Princips before him. Princip was the feudal subject of two local lords who effectively owned him, one called Jovic, the other Siercic. Although the Princips came from the ethnic Serb community, a hundred years ago rivalries with the Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims were not as charged as today. Instead their anger was directed against Austria-Hungary, a foreign power responsible for occupation of particular austerity. And there were plenty of grounds for anger. Six of Princip’s brothers and sisters died in childhood, a level of child mortality that appears routine.
Gavrilo Princip’s break came in 1907 when, after excelling at primary school, he left Obljaj and made the long journey to Sarajevo to take up secondary education. I found his school reports, passed over by a century’s worth of historians, and saw grades that charted the development of a slow-burn revolutionary. The reports show him as a starred-A grade student to begin with, but as the years pass his truancy goes up, his academic performance down. He had fallen in with other young radicals who dared to think the unthinkable: doing away with Austria-Hungary.
And just as with other independence movements across the world, the talk slowly turned to direct action and political violence. Again, Princip was not headstrong, watching and learning as an unsuccessful assassination attempt was made in 1910 by a slightly older Bosnian student in Sarajevo against an Austro-Hungarian target. What stands out, however, is how inclusive Princip’s nationalism was. He learnt to trust Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats, not just his ethnic kin from the Bosnian Serb community. He made contact with extreme Serb nationalists in Belgrade, capital of Serbia, to acquire the weapons used in the assassination but this appears opportunistic. There is no evidence he shared their chauvinistic agenda, not least because the attackers were planning on using trusted Bosnian Croats to spirit away the weapons, while one of the six would-be assassins was Bosnian Muslim.
Princip was caught within seconds of firing his pistol, his bid for martyrdom doomed when the dose of cyanide he stuffed down his throat failed to kill him.
Two weeks short of his 20th birthday, Princip was too young to be executed as Austro-Hungarian law said the death sentence could only be given to criminals aged 20 or more. Instead, he was jailed, sentenced to 20 years solitary confinement with the condition that one day a month he was to receive no food. He died in a prison hospital on April 28 1918, his body so badly ravaged by skeletal tuberculosis that his right arm had had to be amputated.
Over the last century his voice has rarely been heard, drowned out by more powerful forces, not least Vienna which was desperate to use the assassination as a pretext to attack its small and potentially troublesome neighbour, Serbia. For this to work, Austria-Hungary worked to represent Princip and the assassination plot as the work of the Serbian government. And this alone is perhaps the greatest misrepresentation of the truth about Gavrilo Princip, with the historical record containing no convincing evidence to support the claim.
Wilfred Owen wrote of the patriotic invocation dulce et decorum est pro patria mori as “the old lie’’, but I have come to see an even greater lie at the founding moment of the First World War. It is the lie used by Vienna in its deliberate misrepresentation of the Sarajevo assassination. On its hundredth anniversary, now is high time to straighten the record
Stevej80 • 8 hours ago
This article is a misleading whitewash. It's documented that Princip was probably a member either of the Black Hand or a similar organisation, see eg "One Morning in Sarajevo", and certainly had some extremist sympathies, eg being an admirer of "The Mountain Wreath" with its almost genocidal message. He also admitted killing the Archduke because he was "dangerous" to the extremist agenda, ie the Archduke was a known reformer who would give the Slavs greater rights within the empire, apart from being in fact a strong opponent of war with Serbia, and said he would destroy Austria completely if he could. And in fact Apis the head of Serb military intelligence and head of the Black Hand later admitted that he organized the assassination, and was executed by the Serb regime for further conspiracy, against it this time.
The lie is that Princip was NOT backed by key elements in Belgrade, and had no extremist sympathies. He was trained, equipped and smuggled across the border by Serb officials, and there was jubilation in Serbia when the news came through of the deed.
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random_observer_2011 • 11 hours ago
His motives don't really matter this much. The fixation on the purity of heart and motive in our time has gotten out of hand. He committed the assassination, as a member of an organization with ties to the Serbian government, and had accepted money and arms from the latter. That makes him an assassin and them complicit and gave the Austrians a legitimate casus belli, whether or not one considers Austrian rule in Bosnia legitimate or whether or not Princip's ideal of a future Bosnia was a just one. And whether or not that Bosnia was the same as the Greater Serbian vision favoured in Belgrade.
By the same token, it was always unjust to blame Princip for the war as a whole, presuming anyone serious actually ever did that. He could hardly have foreseen the consequences.
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Surface Agent X20 random_observer_2011 • 2 hours ago
If Austria hadn't wanted the war and weren't using the assassination as a pretext, they would have accepted Serbia's virtually unconditional acceptance of their ultimatum.
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petersandiego • a day ago
Let's also remember that the lone member of Franz Joseph's cabinet to oppose the ultimatum that led to war was the Hungarian Secretary of State Istvan Tisza. When he was outvoted, he offered his resignation to the Emperor-King -- who rejected it. Tisza's sense of duty kept him in the office, carrying out the policy he had opposed; and he paid for it with his life, assassinated (as a warmonger!) on October 31, 1918.
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luschnig • a day ago
Princip was groomed by the Serbian secret police, given a weapon by them and told how to use it to kill Franz Ferdinand. Trying to exonerate him by claiming his "heart was pure" is a futile attempt to justify terrorism.
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Herzegovina luschnig • 13 hours ago
He was shot in Sarajevo, not Vienna. The Austro-Hungarians were a particularly racist and unpleasant lot at the time.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija luschnig • a day ago
LONG LIVE FREEDOM, long live SERBIA - Serbia WON, the german/austrian death machine was buried by the fearless CHRISTIAN Serbs.
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luschnig Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
It is sad, but no matter how much you rant and how much you sputter, you will never be anything more than a Serb.
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Herzegovina luschnig • 13 hours ago
Spoken like a true Nazi.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija luschnig • a day ago
A Serb whose great grandfather defeated your Austrian/Hungarian great grandfather... a Serb whose grandfather defeated your nazi grandfather... just a Serb who is free.
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alex_neil Ranko Tutulugdzija • 16 hours ago
A Serb who is so proud to be Serbian, he lives in the UK.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija alex_neil • 9 hours ago
I am an American, not a Serb, and I don't live in the UK - isn't the UK an Islamic state now?
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ipardonyou Ranko Tutulugdzija • 16 hours ago
Thank god we managed to save Kosovo from you,
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Ranko Tutulugdzija ipardonyou • 11 hours ago
you mean thank Allah? That Kosovo is a Jihadist state, totally cleansed of its Christian population, fully Muslim and ready for the Caliphate? Great work, you did a big thing for Bin Laden and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levante.
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Strsla ipardonyou • 12 hours ago
Ridiculous.
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Herzegovina ipardonyou • 13 hours ago
Is your hero Ralph Fiennes in Schindlers list or something with that name? And you should see Kosovo today, A bit like NATO saved Iraq and Libya I guess.
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luschnig Ranko Tutulugdzija • 17 hours ago
I remember you from the 90's . . . very nasty.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija luschnig • 11 hours ago
you remember Alija Izetbegovic Bosnian Muslim president who declared, "There can be no peace or coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic societies and political institutions." Islamic Declaration - yes we know you love Jihad but you will never rule over Serbia... remember that.
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Miriana • a day ago
With due respect to all conflicting views, I find it hard to believe that a (one) 19 years old student triggered WWI.
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rogercats • a day ago
I have only the greatest of respect for Wilfred Owen. His poetry would make anyone a pacifist. But, there is something that I have come to accept as I have grown older. Yes, it is a crying shame that young people should die for their country. However, the questions which remains are simply this "Are you prepared to fight for your way of life and everything that you believe in?" and if so "Is it honourable to do so?". The fact is that Wilfred Owen tragically died for his country. So, was his death dishonourable? I think not.
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rogercats • a day ago
Sorry Butcher but you are being unfair to blame Austria for the actions of a Bosnian Serb. If you want to know where the blame really lies for WWI read "The Burden of Guilt" by Daniel Butler. To save you the trouble, the blame lies squarely on the shoulders of Kaiser Bill and in particular, his warmongering general, von Moltke.
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Stevej80 rogercats • 9 hours ago
Rubbish. The Kaiser did not want war and made numerous efforts to avert it, and Moltke was no more warmongering than Russian and French generals. Poincare was more keen on war than the Kaiser, as was the Tsar, who mobilized first, indeed even Churchill openly admitted his wish for war.
If you want to know where the "blame" really lies for WW1, read "The Sleepwalkers" by Christopher Clark, along with "The Russian Origins of the First World War" by Sean McMeekin. Ferguson's "The Pity of War" is also good.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija rogercats • a day ago
what were you Austrian/Hungarians doing in Christian Serb land - it didn't belong to you - your time of slavery over the Serbs ended that day with Gavrilo... Serbia won - you lost, deal with it.
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pontiacos Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
Then Slobodan came along...
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
Slobo was a YUGOSLAV Communist - not a Serb, he was from Montenegro... look it up.
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pontiacos Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
As you well know,Crna Gora,as a good Orthodox ethnic Serb state(and wartime ally) voluntarily absorbed itself into the Kingdom of the Serbs,Croats and Slovenes in 1918.
Regardless of his geographical origins Slobo's impassioned rhetoric at such places as Kosovo Polje in the late 80's clearly indicated he was setting out his stall as a Serb ultra-nationalist.
Many self-styled communists who sensed imminent change in the wind quite deftly changed their agendas to hang onto Power.
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Herzegovina pontiacos • 13 hours ago
No fan of Milosevic, but read the WHOLE of the speech, not just the bit that fits your tired narrative.
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Herzegovina pontiacos • 13 hours ago
Read the whole speech, you might learn something.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
Here is something you can remember your ISLAM will never rule over Serbian Christians - your Islamic Jihadists that cut the heads off Serbs in the 90s will never rule over Serbs. All yoru mujahadeen fighters from Iran, S. Arabia, Pakistan were not enough to defeat the little peasant Christian Serb... have you heard of Rep Srpksa - that is called WINNING. Give up your Islam will never defeat Christian Serbia.
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pontiacos Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
Very sincerely,I hope you are right.I probably hate radical Islam almost as much as you do.
I happen to be Protestant,as opposed to Orthodox,but married to an Orthodox wife.
Problem is that the atrocious events in Srebrenica and suchlike only reinforced Islamic nastiness-if Serbia had been more restrained we(and Serbia)might be in a different position today.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
Restrained? Serbia proper put sanctions on Serbs in Bosnia and when the Nazi Croats came slaughtering every Serb in sight, Serbia proper did nothing... what are you talking about? It was ISLAM that could not be restrained, even the Croats and Muslims fought from 1992 - 1994, so that defeats all your "weapons of mass destructions" perpetual lies. Albanians in Kosovo and Macedonia also started a war in Macedonia in 2001, and if it wasn't for NATO that war would still be going on today - you have been exposed, leave before you are totally humiliated.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
Show me one piece of evidence, one speech, anything that proves Milosevic was a Serb? Go ahead show us one piece of evidence that Milosevic said or wrote that was pro-Serbian.
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pontiacos Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
After disturbances in the autonomous region of Kosmet(provoked by the ethnic Albanian majority)Mr.M.vowed that he would never allow Albanians to"beat up Serbs again."
(Kosovo Polje-1989-as you well know the 600th anniversary of that dreadful event-mind you,you managed to kill the Sultan by way of a consolation prize)
He very quickly afterwards ensured Kosmet's autonomy was removed and absorbed it into the Serbian Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia-thereby starting to worry the other constituent republics about their own futures.
Judge the man by his actions as well as his words.
He was a blackguard,and I well understand Serbs of today distancing themselves from him.
But he did it all for"Orthodox Serbia"-Montenegrin,Martian or whatever ethnic origin he personally might have had is irrelevant-and very few there opposed him at the time.Although I did meet a Serb couple in 1990(Novi Sad)who quietly described him as a *Chetnik*!
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Herzegovina pontiacos • 13 hours ago
Yeah, he wasn't great, but Tudjman and Izetbegovic were worse.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
Chetniks are heroes, GLOBAL heroes - their leader was recepient of the "LEGION OF MERIT" award, yup thats right Draza M. received the HIGHEST MILITARY honors by the United States for his sacrifice for FREEDOM. Just because you are nazi and a jihadist and you lost that war, doesn't mean you can keep perpetuating your boring, tired fairytales...
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pontiacos Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
Michailovic was a Nazi collaborator.
I fear you are rapidly disappearing up your own rhetorical a***.
Dobro noce
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Herzegovina pontiacos • 13 hours ago
What? You must be Croatian or something.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
haha yah that is why the AMERICAN MILITARY awarded him the highest honors, there are statues of him all over the United States and there is countless books about his heroism here in the US- you are desperate - give up.
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pontiacos Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
Really-countless books about his heroism in the US?
Aaah-you're in the US-explains quite a bit.
Wow-didn't know he'd ever been to the US-let alone committed any acts of heroism there.
Any such books flooding the best seller lists in the US will assuredly be written by Serboslav Fascists such as yourself.
I am not wasting any more time on fanatical pea-brains like you. .
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Herzegovina pontiacos • 13 hours ago
You are pathetic. Crap propaganda effort. Accuse others of exactly what you are. Go back to school.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
LEGION OF MERIT for D. Mihailovic - tells the whole story of a GLOBAL hero who defeated Nazi Croatia and Nazi Muslims in Albania and Sarajevo.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
Serbian Christians defeated your fascism. Fascism is dead, Serbia lives - Serbia is free, and no matter how hard you and the Jihadis tried - you couldn't defeat the Serbs.
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pontiacos Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
Ah,sorry.
AMERICAN MILITARY decorations made him an OK guy?
Now your turn-name one,just ONE place all over the US where there is a statue to Draza.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
ILLINOIS - look it up. And READ Gen. Major James Inks book about his time with Draza as a US soldier, 1 of hundreds saved by SERBS, not Nazi Musllim Albanians or Bosniaks, not by Nazi Croats.
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pontiacos Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
Illinois-I believe you.Full of families descended from Serbian Fascists.
Any more examples?
No.Please don't bother.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
built on US soil, American Hero - Draza.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
You jihadist, Muslims in Kosovo were killing Christians all through the 1980s, they were attacking state institutions, military, police, what would the UNITED STATES do if Muslims formed their own army in Florida? And as for Slobodan, the exact words HE SAID, were "NOBODY CAN BEAT YOU" - pronoun, he did not say Serbs watch the speech on youtube... He also finished by saying "Long live Yugoslavia! Long live peace and brotherhood among peoples!" -
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pontiacos Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
"Long live peace and brotherhood among peoples"
So now I take it that you think Slobo was an OK guy-when earlier you denied any Serb connection at all(as we all know he was actually a CIA plant)
Zivile!
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
it is not about me - it is about the EVIDENCE, and the EVIDENCE will be studied for decades, the best thing that happened to the Serbian leadership was to go the HAGUE, everything is on record, everything is there... that is why they had to kill Slobodan - because there was not one piece of evidence that Slobodan was a Serb Nationalist, rather he was a communist Yugoslav - the end.
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pontiacos Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
Aaaah-*now * I understand.
Sorry I wasted so much of your time
God Bless.
WHEN SOMEONE INVESTS THIS MUCH TIME AND MONEY, IN BRINGING THEIR OWN INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY.
THEN THEY HAVE SOMETHING TO HIDE!
Its time to examine how the Young Turks in Turkey, might be conceptually related to the Young Bosnia!
Tim Butcher’s 'The Trigger – Hunting the Assassin who Brought the World to War’ is published by Chatto & Windus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Butcher
Looking at Tim Butcher background.....one would say he's an " commercial literature opportunist".....or the book came to order!
The shot that wrecked the past century
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/ju...st-century
The Guardian, Sunday 29 June 2014 20.11 BST
Archduke Franz Ferdinand leaves the town hall in Sarajevo moments before he was assasinated by Gavri
Archduke Franz Ferdinand leaves the town hall in Sarajevo moments before he was assasinated by Gavrilo Princip 100 years ago. Photograph: ENA
It is no great surprise that Gavrilo Princip (Report, 27 June) is viewed very differently by Serbs, Muslims and Croats.
To Serbs he was fighting to free our people from state-orchestrated persecution in our own country. Mass sackings, show trials, persecution of the Serbian Orthodox church and attempts to curtail the use of cyrillic alphabet were all daily occurrences for the Serbs of Bosnia. Muslims and Croats were very much the beneficiaries of this policy.
By ending this domination, Princip is widely considered by Muslims and Croats as a fanatic and radical. To understand 1914 it is vital to understand why he pulled the trigger. Dismissing him as a Serb nationalist, a fanatic or an unhinged maniac is shamefully ignorant.
Anthony Shelmerdine Boskovic
Saddleworth, Yorkshire
• The illegal occupation of Bosnia and Hercegovina by the Austro-Hungarian empire before the first world war was not quite as rosy as you would have it. There were repeated insurrections in the occupied territory that were brutally repressed and gave more than sufficient impetus to drive out the occupiers.
It's sad that Bosnia has now come full-circle in its history and is as split as ever. I've been to the country four times since the end of the war and personally observed the divided towns, destroyed homes, racist graffiti and destroyed churches and mosques – which, together, still provide testament to the fact that nothing is yet resolved there, and that the region may yet become a flashpoint of the kind that ignited the first world war 100 years ago.
Dr Michael Pravica
Henderson, Nevada
To me "Young Bosnia" reminds me of the "Young Turks"!
Be interesting to see how they were constructed, and whether they were compatible in any shape or form!
The Real Shots That Started WW1
June 30, 2014
by Nebojsa Malic
The Great War did not begin on June 28, 1914.
This may sound like a shocking assertion, but a simple statement of fact. It may come as a surprise to the multitudes that have read, seen and heard otherwise in the mainstream media over the weekend, but it is true nonetheless.
No “Serbian assassin” fired the deadly shots. Gavrilo Princip was a Serb, but not a Serbian. He belonged to the organization called Mlada Bosna, “Young Bosnia,” a movement of students and young intellectuals impatient to end the feudal empire keeping the Serbs (and other Slavs, whom they considered fraternal tribes) in peonage. They looked to Serbia – a constitutional monarchy, with a powerful parliament and near-universal franchise – for inspiration. Among the members of the organization, and the much smaller group of assassins, there were more than a few that would later be categorized as “Croats” or “Bosniaks” (i.e. Muslims), dedicated to the idea of South Slav freedom and unity.
Gavrilo Princip on a mural in Belgrade, with an excerpt from his poem written in prison
Gavrilo Princip on a mural in Belgrade, with an excerpt from his poem written in prison: “Our shadows shall wander Vienna, roaming the court, haunting the lords”
What of the allegations that they were run by the “Black Hand,” a secret cabal of officers run by none other than Colonel Apis? No organization by that name actually existed; the sinister-sounding “Black Hand” was the product of Viennese propaganda of the time. There was a society called “Unification or Death,” led by Colonel Dragutin “Apis” Dimitrijević; he had been involved in the May 1903 coup that deposed the last Obrenović king. As a consequence of this coup, Serbia had broken free of the 1881 Secret Convention that made it a vassal of Austria-Hungary. Between 1903 and 1913, Serbia had successfully asserted economic and political independence, winning a trade war started by Austria (the “Pig War”). In retaliation, Vienna annexed (1908) Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ottoman provinces with a Serb majority it had “administered” as colonies since 1878. When Serbia objected, Austria threatened war.
Serbia had no choice but to stand down, as it could not take on Austria-Hungary alone. Russia was unable to help, having been sidelined by a shocking defeat by Japan (1905) and the political fallout (1905-07) threatening to turn into a revolution. This failure, by the way, would loom large over Nicholas II’s decision to back Serbia in July 1914. Over the next several years, Serbia engaged in diplomatic outreach, establishing better ties with France (where King Petar I had lived in exile; he had served as a French officer in the 1870 war against Prussia) and Britain.
Serbian diplomats also concluded the Balkan Alliance, which in 1912 dealt a massive defeat to the Ottoman Empire, driving it almost entirely out of Europe. Austria-Hungary once again threatened war, and found British and Italian support in denying Serbia access to the sea by creating the state of Albania. This created a problem between Serbia and Bulgaria over the partition of Macedonia – which Vienna exploited by persuading the Bulgarians to launch a surprise attack on Serb armies in 1913. The rest of the Balkan Alliance backed Serbia, and Bulgaria was defeated in short order.
Viennese propaganda was working at full steam throughout. In 1909, some 53 members of a Serb political party (in the Hungarian province of Croatia-Slavonia) were charged with high treason for allegedly plotting South Slavic unification with Serbia; the “High Treason Trial” was a farce, with the crown witness being exposed as a police informant. As part of the propaganda surrounding the trial, the alleged Serbian “partners” of the “traitors” were described as the “Black Hand.” During the Balkans Wars, an Austrian propagandist by the name of Leo Freundlich fabricated reports of Serb atrocities against the Albanians (“Albanian Golgotha”), while Austrian sources fed similar fabricated accounts to the Carnegie commission (“International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars”) in 1913. But no matter how successfully it slandered the Serbs, Vienna had no actual pretext to invade – until one was provided on June 28, 1914, in the form of the dead Archduke and his wife.
The Archduke’s visit was a deliberate provocation. He arrived to oversee military maneuvers near the Serbian border, coinciding with a day of special importance in Serb history. The exact route of his motorcade had been published in the Sarajevo daily newspaper (Bosnische Post). As the motorcade drove along the river towards the City Hall, one of the assassins – Nedeljko Čabrinović – threw a bomb at the Archduke’s car. There are conflicting reports of the bomb either missing, or Franz Ferdinand batting it away; in any case, it injured the follow-on car. The Archduke reportedly wanted to visit the wounded men in the hospital, but somehow no one bothered to tell his driver about this change of plans; when the car turned into the side street, followed the previously published route instead, the Archduke and General Potiorek yelled at the driver to stop. He did – right in front of Gavrilo Princip.
While the murder – tyrannicide, properly – of Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand was deliberate, the death of Countess Sophie Chotek was an accident. Gavrilo Princip’s bullet was meant for General Oskar Potiorek, the hated military governor of Bosnia, who had ducked as the Archduke’s wife leaned over towards her husband.
While the actual assassins had the means, motive and opportunity, Serbia did not. It had just fought a major war against the Ottomans, and needed time to recover and replenish its military supplies. On the other hand, Austria-Hungary was eager to go to war – specifically, the faction led by Foreign Minister Leopold Graf Berchtold and Army Chief of Staff, Konrad Graf von Hötzendorf. The Archduke had kept them in check, and his death had both removed the obstacle to their long-desired war of annihilation against Serbia, and provided them with the perfect pretext.
Echoing the claims of the “High Treason Trial”, the Austro-Hungarian authorities claimed the assassins were working on orders from Belgrade, acting as proxies of the “Black Hand,” and even claimed (falsely) that Sophie had been pregnant when she died.
On July 23, Vienna’s ambassador to Belgrade handed the Serbian authorities an ultimatum designed to be rejected. Serbia’s Prime Minister was on vacation – he was hastily called back to craft a response, which conceded almost all of Austria’s demands, politely refusing the demands infringing upon Serbia’s sovereignty. It did not matter; on July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia and began bombing Belgrade.
It was those shots, not the bullets of Gavrilo Princip a month prior, that truly started the Great War.
Coda: The fate of Princip
Gavrilo Princip was imprisoned in the fortress of Teresienstadt, where he succumbed to tuberculosis in April 1918. During World War Two, the fortress was used as a torture camp for the prisoners of the Terezin concentration camp, the primary collection point for Jews destined for the death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau and others.
The plaque honoring Princip, put up in Sarajevo in 1930, was taken down by the Nazis in April 1941, and presented to Adolf Hitler as a birthday gift.
(copyright the Reiss Institute; all rights reserved)
http://www.reiss-institute.org/articles/real-start-ww1/
They always say follow the money!
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/richar...ferdinand/
Richard Preston
Richard Preston is an Assistant Editor of The Daily Telegraph. He has been the paper's features editor, news editor and comment editor.
WW1: 35 days to go – martial law and rioting in Sarajevo, the Kaiser feels 'immeasurable grief' at the loss of Franz Ferdinand
uesday June 30 1914: the Archduke and his wife have been dead 48 hours. Martial law has been declared in Sarajevo, and Croats and Muslims are reported to be turning on Serbs in the city – houses, shops, hotels and a school have been attacked and in some cases demolished:
Reports from Austria suggest that, at this point, the tone towards Serbia is not yet strident. The Viennese paper the Neue Freie Presse says that despite the provocation 'Austria-Hungary will never … follow a policy of revenge':
The Daily Telegraph prints a first picture of the new heir to the throne and his young family. Karl Franz (1887-1922) would become the last emperor of Austria and king of Hungary on his succession in 1916:
Meanwhile, the Kaiser has sent a telegram to Franz Ferdinand's daughter Princess Sophia, expressing his 'immeasurable grief' at her parents' death:
Details of the Archduke's fortune are reported from Vienna. There's plenty of property, including the Villa d'Este in Rome, but it has cost large sums to maintain:
The funeral will take place on Friday July 3. The Kaiser will attend but Emperor Franz Joseph will not ask other 'foreign princes':
Meanwhile in Britain, Wimbledon is on, Henley starts tomorrow and London is experiencing a heatwave to compare with the summer of 1911:
pjbw127 • 5 hours ago
I have often wondered how the history of the 20th century would have turned out if the Archduke had survived that day. First world war, communism, fascism, second world war, cold war...
Maybe eminent historian(s) already have?
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trace9 • 7 hours ago
I like the first para. of the Wimbledon report - in fact it could apply to the whole political & social period beginning here & across Europe. There's a long, long, road unwinding..
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Polly Fabian • 10 hours ago
Oops!
High temperatures in the first and second decades of the twentieth century.
That wasn't meant to happen, was it?
Must have been a conspiracy by those upper class English Generals.
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backstoothewall • 10 hours ago
Two dates in Austrian history that changed, shaped our modern world; 3rd July 1866, 28th June 1914, it could have been so different ... if only.
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IlikeBrits • 11 hours ago
Totally nuts that a world war starts,... a little later!
Tropical London, global warming 1914? It has really become hot the only last 100 years.
http://grayfalcon.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06...ajevo.html
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Deutschlandlied in Sarajevo
I used to enjoy the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concerts. Having been raised in an atheist society, I never stopped to wonder why a traditional concert in the capital of a staunchly Catholic thousand-year empire was held on January 1, rather than, say, Christmas Day. Then I found out the tradition was established in 1938, by none other than Josef Goebbels.
Another revelation came last year: a Bosnian-born journalist tracked down the photograph showing Adolf Hitler gazing at the marble plaque honoring Gavrilo Princip - the Bosnian Serb who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo. A modest monument, funded privately, the plaque had been put up in 1930. Within days of the Nazi occupation in 1941, the plaque was taken down and presented to Hitler as a birthday present. He had it displayed at the same museum as the railway car from Compiegne in which Germany had signed the armistice in 1918 - and where he insisted the French sign their surrender in 1940.
In 1914, warmongers in Vienna used the assassination (ironically, it was the Archduke who had kept them in check) to launch a war of extermination against Serbia, which eventually destroyed the Hapsburg empire instead. Attempts have been made to blame the Serbs and Serbia for the Great War ever since.
The latest round of revisionism came as the centenary of the war approached. On June 28, mainstream media throughout the West carried stories about the "Serbian" assassin of the Archduke and his wife (Sophie Chotek was killed accidentally; Princip was aiming at General Potiorek, the hated military governor of Bosnia) and the assassination treated as the actual cause - and beginning - of the war. This fits the current narrative of (Western) European unity - under the Atlantic Empire - fighting the "evil" Russians and "troublemaker" Serbs, but it has little to do with the truth.
Franz Ferdinand may have been set up to die; his motorcade's exact route had been published in local newspapers in advance. His visit was scheduled for Vidovdan, a day the Serbs remember - among other things - for a brave captain who killed the Ottoman sultan during the 1389 battle. The assassin who threw a bomb at the motorcade en route to the City Hall missed. When the Archduke's car returned along the same route, the young Princip was more successful.
Three weeks later, Austria handed Serbia an ultimatum designed to be rejected. On July 28, Austrian guns opened up on Belgrade, actually starting the war.
The Sarajevo City Hall was later turned into a library. In 1992, during the Bosnian War, its interior caught fire - allegedly as a result of Serb shelling. The new City Hall (another Austrian administrative building) was torched in February this year by Western-backed "democratic protesters." Perhaps some of them were the very "persons unknown" who had taken a hammer to the marble monument to Princip erected to replace Hitler's trophy.
Yesterday, on the centenary of the assassination, the Vienna Philharmonic that Goebbels helped make famous performed in same old City Hall where the angry Archduke had impatiently fidgeted through the sycophantic speech of Sarajevo's mayor. On their repertoire was the Second Movement of Joseph Haydn's String Quartet, op. 76/3 ("Emperor Quartet"), based on the Austrian imperial anthem, "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser" - and the German national anthem, the Deutschlandlied. And though modern Germany uses only the third stanza, the first stanza - used by the Nazis - remains seared into the Serbs' collective memory.
A century after that day in Sarajevo, Croats and Slovenes are back in a union with Austria and Hungary. Bosnian Muslims alternately revere the Hapsburgs and the Ottomans. The Serbs are again demonized and downtrodden, and the old Austrian-sown hatreds are setting Ukraine ablaze. The Great War is still being fought, it seems.
Before dying in his cell in Terezin - later used by the Nazis to torture Jews imprisoned in the Teresienstadt transit camp - Princip reportedly wrote: "Our shadows shall wander Vienna, roaming the court, haunting the lords."
So when I see the mocking "news" stories, read the revisionist "histories" and hear the bars of the Austrian and German anthem played in a town no longer my home, I can't help but think all that is just whistling past the graveyard of empires, a fearful - and ultimately doomed - attempt to keep the ghost of Gavrilo Princip and his comrades at bay.
http://grayfalcon.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06...ajevo.html
id my great grandfather bless Gavrilo Princip before he pulled the trigger?
June 29, 2014
Katherine Quarmby is researching her family history and asks whether you can help shed light on this fascinating rumour.
Katherine’s mother is half Bosnian-Serb and came to Britain after the Second World War. Together the pair are investigating a highly apposite chapter in their heritage. Her mother’s dedo was Kosta Božić, the Dean (or some say Archbishop of Sarajevo) around the time of the First World War and was rumoured to have blessed Gavrilo Princip before his enterprise.
Can you help?
Katherine’s mother has previously written a book about her family’s wartime experiences, under the name Louisa Rayner. It is called Women in a Village.
Katherine has also written a fictionalised account of Kosta Bozic as a short eBook called The Priest, the Assassin, and Archduke Franz Ferdinand
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Priest-Assassin-...2702031_18
http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2...-war-video
Bosnia-Herzegovina marks centenary of Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassination in Sarajevo - video
Events are held in Sarajevo and Visegrad on Saturday one hundred years after Gavrilo Princip shot and killed the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which sparked the first world war. Protesters in the Bosnian capital are angry that so much money has been spent on centenary celebrations after the country recently experienced devastating floods.
Occupied by the money lenders!
The lie that started the First World War
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world...d-War.html
The personality and motives of the young assassin, Gavrilo Princip, who fired the fatal shots at Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, were twisted by Austrian propaganda
GAVRILO PRINCIP is paraded by his Austrian captors after assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Sarajevo, Bosnia
Gavrilo Princip is paraded by his Austrian captors after assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo Photo: Alamy
By Tim Butcher, Sarajevo7:10AM BST 28 Jun 2014Comments231 Comments
This day 100 years ago dawned memorably bright over Sarajevo. After days of stormy rain, Sunday June 28,1914 began cloudless as Austria-Hungary, the imperial power that held dominion over the small Balkan province of Bosnia, prepared for a show of ostentatious pageantry in its capital.
Loyal citizens came out in their thousands, lining the route into the city centre that was to be used for a rare official visit by a top member of the Habsburg royal house, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, second only in imperial protocol to the venerable, mutton-chopped emperor himself, Franz Joseph. Witnesses remember the morning sun being fierce as the crowds gathered, eight deep in places, many of them waving the yellow imperial standard of Austria-Hungary with its double-headed black eagle, some shouting ''Long Live the Archduke’’ as the Gräf & Stift limousine drove sedately by. An imperial 21-gun salute, from the fortress high in the hills that ring Sarajevo, sent out puffs of smoke, vivid white against the blue summer sky.
But the crowd was seeded with six would-be assassins united in their loathing of Austria-Hungary. By the time the sun set, what happened in Sarajevo would plunge the world into the darkness of global war for the first time.
The details were well recorded: how the first attacker lost his nerve as the cortege passed, how the next attacker threw a grenade that struck the limousine but did not harm the Archduke, how the royal party nevertheless continued with the visit, how three would-be assassins melted away into the crowd and how one, a 19-year-old peasant, stood his ground.
Gavrilo Princip was his name and he took up station at the street corner where the royal vehicle was scheduled to turn right, according to the route flagged up for days in local newspapers, off the wide riverside boulevard that gives Sarajevo its spine, before taking the Archduke to visit a museum.
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What might be called the devil’s luck then enters the story as the decision had been taken after the grenade attack for the Archduke’s car not to turn right but to continue down the boulevard. All the senior members of the royal party were informed. But nobody told the driver.
When the driver made the turn, an imperial officer on board with the Archduke and his wife, Sophie ordered: ''Stop.’’ The driver braked immediately, presenting the assassin with his targets right in front of him in a now stationary car, the canvas roof folded helpfully back because of the sunny conditions.
Princip needed to take only half a step forward before he aimed his 9mm, semi-automatic Browning pistol and fired what amounted to the starting gun for modern history. The killing of the Archduke and his wife was the trigger for the First World War. What happened next is a bone well worried by historians. But the details of who Princip was, his motivation, his actions and his support network have been mired ever since in political bias, ethnic rivalry and sloppy homework.
We have been told that: Princip jumped on the running board of the Archduke’s limousine to take his shot, the Archduke’s wife was pregnant when she died, the shooting happened on the anniversary of their marriage, the car did not have a reverse gear, the Archduke caught the grenade thrown earlier and tossed it away safely, and Princip stopped to eat a last sandwich at the café on the corner before emerging to take his shot. It’s all myth.
Yet, given that this is the young man with perhaps the greatest impact on modern history, I have been drawn to spend the past three years researching what the historical record definitively reveals about the assassin from Bosnia.
Gavrilo Princip was born in 1894, a serf’s son from the hamlet of Obljaj in remotest western Bosnia, short and slight of build with the strong chin that is the dominant hallmark of the Princip male line. His father Petar was trapped in the grinding poverty of generations of Princips before him. Princip was the feudal subject of two local lords who effectively owned him, one called Jovic, the other Siercic. Although the Princips came from the ethnic Serb community, a hundred years ago rivalries with the Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims were not as charged as today. Instead their anger was directed against Austria-Hungary, a foreign power responsible for occupation of particular austerity. And there were plenty of grounds for anger. Six of Princip’s brothers and sisters died in childhood, a level of child mortality that appears routine.
Gavrilo Princip’s break came in 1907 when, after excelling at primary school, he left Obljaj and made the long journey to Sarajevo to take up secondary education. I found his school reports, passed over by a century’s worth of historians, and saw grades that charted the development of a slow-burn revolutionary. The reports show him as a starred-A grade student to begin with, but as the years pass his truancy goes up, his academic performance down. He had fallen in with other young radicals who dared to think the unthinkable: doing away with Austria-Hungary.
And just as with other independence movements across the world, the talk slowly turned to direct action and political violence. Again, Princip was not headstrong, watching and learning as an unsuccessful assassination attempt was made in 1910 by a slightly older Bosnian student in Sarajevo against an Austro-Hungarian target. What stands out, however, is how inclusive Princip’s nationalism was. He learnt to trust Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats, not just his ethnic kin from the Bosnian Serb community. He made contact with extreme Serb nationalists in Belgrade, capital of Serbia, to acquire the weapons used in the assassination but this appears opportunistic. There is no evidence he shared their chauvinistic agenda, not least because the attackers were planning on using trusted Bosnian Croats to spirit away the weapons, while one of the six would-be assassins was Bosnian Muslim.
Princip was caught within seconds of firing his pistol, his bid for martyrdom doomed when the dose of cyanide he stuffed down his throat failed to kill him.
Two weeks short of his 20th birthday, Princip was too young to be executed as Austro-Hungarian law said the death sentence could only be given to criminals aged 20 or more. Instead, he was jailed, sentenced to 20 years solitary confinement with the condition that one day a month he was to receive no food. He died in a prison hospital on April 28 1918, his body so badly ravaged by skeletal tuberculosis that his right arm had had to be amputated.
Over the last century his voice has rarely been heard, drowned out by more powerful forces, not least Vienna which was desperate to use the assassination as a pretext to attack its small and potentially troublesome neighbour, Serbia. For this to work, Austria-Hungary worked to represent Princip and the assassination plot as the work of the Serbian government. And this alone is perhaps the greatest misrepresentation of the truth about Gavrilo Princip, with the historical record containing no convincing evidence to support the claim.
Wilfred Owen wrote of the patriotic invocation dulce et decorum est pro patria mori as “the old lie’’, but I have come to see an even greater lie at the founding moment of the First World War. It is the lie used by Vienna in its deliberate misrepresentation of the Sarajevo assassination. On its hundredth anniversary, now is high time to straighten the record
Stevej80 • 8 hours ago
This article is a misleading whitewash. It's documented that Princip was probably a member either of the Black Hand or a similar organisation, see eg "One Morning in Sarajevo", and certainly had some extremist sympathies, eg being an admirer of "The Mountain Wreath" with its almost genocidal message. He also admitted killing the Archduke because he was "dangerous" to the extremist agenda, ie the Archduke was a known reformer who would give the Slavs greater rights within the empire, apart from being in fact a strong opponent of war with Serbia, and said he would destroy Austria completely if he could. And in fact Apis the head of Serb military intelligence and head of the Black Hand later admitted that he organized the assassination, and was executed by the Serb regime for further conspiracy, against it this time.
The lie is that Princip was NOT backed by key elements in Belgrade, and had no extremist sympathies. He was trained, equipped and smuggled across the border by Serb officials, and there was jubilation in Serbia when the news came through of the deed.
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random_observer_2011 • 11 hours ago
His motives don't really matter this much. The fixation on the purity of heart and motive in our time has gotten out of hand. He committed the assassination, as a member of an organization with ties to the Serbian government, and had accepted money and arms from the latter. That makes him an assassin and them complicit and gave the Austrians a legitimate casus belli, whether or not one considers Austrian rule in Bosnia legitimate or whether or not Princip's ideal of a future Bosnia was a just one. And whether or not that Bosnia was the same as the Greater Serbian vision favoured in Belgrade.
By the same token, it was always unjust to blame Princip for the war as a whole, presuming anyone serious actually ever did that. He could hardly have foreseen the consequences.
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Surface Agent X20 random_observer_2011 • 2 hours ago
If Austria hadn't wanted the war and weren't using the assassination as a pretext, they would have accepted Serbia's virtually unconditional acceptance of their ultimatum.
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petersandiego • a day ago
Let's also remember that the lone member of Franz Joseph's cabinet to oppose the ultimatum that led to war was the Hungarian Secretary of State Istvan Tisza. When he was outvoted, he offered his resignation to the Emperor-King -- who rejected it. Tisza's sense of duty kept him in the office, carrying out the policy he had opposed; and he paid for it with his life, assassinated (as a warmonger!) on October 31, 1918.
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luschnig • a day ago
Princip was groomed by the Serbian secret police, given a weapon by them and told how to use it to kill Franz Ferdinand. Trying to exonerate him by claiming his "heart was pure" is a futile attempt to justify terrorism.
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Herzegovina luschnig • 13 hours ago
He was shot in Sarajevo, not Vienna. The Austro-Hungarians were a particularly racist and unpleasant lot at the time.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija luschnig • a day ago
LONG LIVE FREEDOM, long live SERBIA - Serbia WON, the german/austrian death machine was buried by the fearless CHRISTIAN Serbs.
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luschnig Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
It is sad, but no matter how much you rant and how much you sputter, you will never be anything more than a Serb.
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Herzegovina luschnig • 13 hours ago
Spoken like a true Nazi.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija luschnig • a day ago
A Serb whose great grandfather defeated your Austrian/Hungarian great grandfather... a Serb whose grandfather defeated your nazi grandfather... just a Serb who is free.
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alex_neil Ranko Tutulugdzija • 16 hours ago
A Serb who is so proud to be Serbian, he lives in the UK.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija alex_neil • 9 hours ago
I am an American, not a Serb, and I don't live in the UK - isn't the UK an Islamic state now?
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ipardonyou Ranko Tutulugdzija • 16 hours ago
Thank god we managed to save Kosovo from you,
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Ranko Tutulugdzija ipardonyou • 11 hours ago
you mean thank Allah? That Kosovo is a Jihadist state, totally cleansed of its Christian population, fully Muslim and ready for the Caliphate? Great work, you did a big thing for Bin Laden and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levante.
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Strsla ipardonyou • 12 hours ago
Ridiculous.
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Herzegovina ipardonyou • 13 hours ago
Is your hero Ralph Fiennes in Schindlers list or something with that name? And you should see Kosovo today, A bit like NATO saved Iraq and Libya I guess.
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luschnig Ranko Tutulugdzija • 17 hours ago
I remember you from the 90's . . . very nasty.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija luschnig • 11 hours ago
you remember Alija Izetbegovic Bosnian Muslim president who declared, "There can be no peace or coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic societies and political institutions." Islamic Declaration - yes we know you love Jihad but you will never rule over Serbia... remember that.
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Miriana • a day ago
With due respect to all conflicting views, I find it hard to believe that a (one) 19 years old student triggered WWI.
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rogercats • a day ago
I have only the greatest of respect for Wilfred Owen. His poetry would make anyone a pacifist. But, there is something that I have come to accept as I have grown older. Yes, it is a crying shame that young people should die for their country. However, the questions which remains are simply this "Are you prepared to fight for your way of life and everything that you believe in?" and if so "Is it honourable to do so?". The fact is that Wilfred Owen tragically died for his country. So, was his death dishonourable? I think not.
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rogercats • a day ago
Sorry Butcher but you are being unfair to blame Austria for the actions of a Bosnian Serb. If you want to know where the blame really lies for WWI read "The Burden of Guilt" by Daniel Butler. To save you the trouble, the blame lies squarely on the shoulders of Kaiser Bill and in particular, his warmongering general, von Moltke.
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Stevej80 rogercats • 9 hours ago
Rubbish. The Kaiser did not want war and made numerous efforts to avert it, and Moltke was no more warmongering than Russian and French generals. Poincare was more keen on war than the Kaiser, as was the Tsar, who mobilized first, indeed even Churchill openly admitted his wish for war.
If you want to know where the "blame" really lies for WW1, read "The Sleepwalkers" by Christopher Clark, along with "The Russian Origins of the First World War" by Sean McMeekin. Ferguson's "The Pity of War" is also good.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija rogercats • a day ago
what were you Austrian/Hungarians doing in Christian Serb land - it didn't belong to you - your time of slavery over the Serbs ended that day with Gavrilo... Serbia won - you lost, deal with it.
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pontiacos Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
Then Slobodan came along...
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
Slobo was a YUGOSLAV Communist - not a Serb, he was from Montenegro... look it up.
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pontiacos Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
As you well know,Crna Gora,as a good Orthodox ethnic Serb state(and wartime ally) voluntarily absorbed itself into the Kingdom of the Serbs,Croats and Slovenes in 1918.
Regardless of his geographical origins Slobo's impassioned rhetoric at such places as Kosovo Polje in the late 80's clearly indicated he was setting out his stall as a Serb ultra-nationalist.
Many self-styled communists who sensed imminent change in the wind quite deftly changed their agendas to hang onto Power.
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Herzegovina pontiacos • 13 hours ago
No fan of Milosevic, but read the WHOLE of the speech, not just the bit that fits your tired narrative.
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Herzegovina pontiacos • 13 hours ago
Read the whole speech, you might learn something.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
Here is something you can remember your ISLAM will never rule over Serbian Christians - your Islamic Jihadists that cut the heads off Serbs in the 90s will never rule over Serbs. All yoru mujahadeen fighters from Iran, S. Arabia, Pakistan were not enough to defeat the little peasant Christian Serb... have you heard of Rep Srpksa - that is called WINNING. Give up your Islam will never defeat Christian Serbia.
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pontiacos Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
Very sincerely,I hope you are right.I probably hate radical Islam almost as much as you do.
I happen to be Protestant,as opposed to Orthodox,but married to an Orthodox wife.
Problem is that the atrocious events in Srebrenica and suchlike only reinforced Islamic nastiness-if Serbia had been more restrained we(and Serbia)might be in a different position today.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
Restrained? Serbia proper put sanctions on Serbs in Bosnia and when the Nazi Croats came slaughtering every Serb in sight, Serbia proper did nothing... what are you talking about? It was ISLAM that could not be restrained, even the Croats and Muslims fought from 1992 - 1994, so that defeats all your "weapons of mass destructions" perpetual lies. Albanians in Kosovo and Macedonia also started a war in Macedonia in 2001, and if it wasn't for NATO that war would still be going on today - you have been exposed, leave before you are totally humiliated.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
Show me one piece of evidence, one speech, anything that proves Milosevic was a Serb? Go ahead show us one piece of evidence that Milosevic said or wrote that was pro-Serbian.
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pontiacos Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
After disturbances in the autonomous region of Kosmet(provoked by the ethnic Albanian majority)Mr.M.vowed that he would never allow Albanians to"beat up Serbs again."
(Kosovo Polje-1989-as you well know the 600th anniversary of that dreadful event-mind you,you managed to kill the Sultan by way of a consolation prize)
He very quickly afterwards ensured Kosmet's autonomy was removed and absorbed it into the Serbian Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia-thereby starting to worry the other constituent republics about their own futures.
Judge the man by his actions as well as his words.
He was a blackguard,and I well understand Serbs of today distancing themselves from him.
But he did it all for"Orthodox Serbia"-Montenegrin,Martian or whatever ethnic origin he personally might have had is irrelevant-and very few there opposed him at the time.Although I did meet a Serb couple in 1990(Novi Sad)who quietly described him as a *Chetnik*!
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Herzegovina pontiacos • 13 hours ago
Yeah, he wasn't great, but Tudjman and Izetbegovic were worse.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
Chetniks are heroes, GLOBAL heroes - their leader was recepient of the "LEGION OF MERIT" award, yup thats right Draza M. received the HIGHEST MILITARY honors by the United States for his sacrifice for FREEDOM. Just because you are nazi and a jihadist and you lost that war, doesn't mean you can keep perpetuating your boring, tired fairytales...
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pontiacos Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
Michailovic was a Nazi collaborator.
I fear you are rapidly disappearing up your own rhetorical a***.
Dobro noce
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Herzegovina pontiacos • 13 hours ago
What? You must be Croatian or something.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
haha yah that is why the AMERICAN MILITARY awarded him the highest honors, there are statues of him all over the United States and there is countless books about his heroism here in the US- you are desperate - give up.
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pontiacos Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
Really-countless books about his heroism in the US?
Aaah-you're in the US-explains quite a bit.
Wow-didn't know he'd ever been to the US-let alone committed any acts of heroism there.
Any such books flooding the best seller lists in the US will assuredly be written by Serboslav Fascists such as yourself.
I am not wasting any more time on fanatical pea-brains like you. .
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Herzegovina pontiacos • 13 hours ago
You are pathetic. Crap propaganda effort. Accuse others of exactly what you are. Go back to school.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
LEGION OF MERIT for D. Mihailovic - tells the whole story of a GLOBAL hero who defeated Nazi Croatia and Nazi Muslims in Albania and Sarajevo.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
Serbian Christians defeated your fascism. Fascism is dead, Serbia lives - Serbia is free, and no matter how hard you and the Jihadis tried - you couldn't defeat the Serbs.
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pontiacos Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
Ah,sorry.
AMERICAN MILITARY decorations made him an OK guy?
Now your turn-name one,just ONE place all over the US where there is a statue to Draza.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
ILLINOIS - look it up. And READ Gen. Major James Inks book about his time with Draza as a US soldier, 1 of hundreds saved by SERBS, not Nazi Musllim Albanians or Bosniaks, not by Nazi Croats.
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pontiacos Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
Illinois-I believe you.Full of families descended from Serbian Fascists.
Any more examples?
No.Please don't bother.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
built on US soil, American Hero - Draza.
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
You jihadist, Muslims in Kosovo were killing Christians all through the 1980s, they were attacking state institutions, military, police, what would the UNITED STATES do if Muslims formed their own army in Florida? And as for Slobodan, the exact words HE SAID, were "NOBODY CAN BEAT YOU" - pronoun, he did not say Serbs watch the speech on youtube... He also finished by saying "Long live Yugoslavia! Long live peace and brotherhood among peoples!" -
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pontiacos Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
"Long live peace and brotherhood among peoples"
So now I take it that you think Slobo was an OK guy-when earlier you denied any Serb connection at all(as we all know he was actually a CIA plant)
Zivile!
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Ranko Tutulugdzija pontiacos • a day ago
it is not about me - it is about the EVIDENCE, and the EVIDENCE will be studied for decades, the best thing that happened to the Serbian leadership was to go the HAGUE, everything is on record, everything is there... that is why they had to kill Slobodan - because there was not one piece of evidence that Slobodan was a Serb Nationalist, rather he was a communist Yugoslav - the end.
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pontiacos Ranko Tutulugdzija • a day ago
Aaaah-*now * I understand.
Sorry I wasted so much of your time
God Bless.
WHEN SOMEONE INVESTS THIS MUCH TIME AND MONEY, IN BRINGING THEIR OWN INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY.
THEN THEY HAVE SOMETHING TO HIDE!
Its time to examine how the Young Turks in Turkey, might be conceptually related to the Young Bosnia!
Tim Butcher’s 'The Trigger – Hunting the Assassin who Brought the World to War’ is published by Chatto & Windus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Butcher
Looking at Tim Butcher background.....one would say he's an " commercial literature opportunist".....or the book came to order!
