Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the Great War

The beginning of the Great War and the tragedy that preceded it. How a group of young assassins was organized and arrested afterward. The tragedy that inflamed and changed the face of Europe forever.
A voyage in the past! The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand is considered one of the key events that led to World War I. Discovering the conspirators' backgrounds, motives, organization, home, and planning of the Sarajevo assassination. Visiting the stops of Archduke Franz Ferdinand's official visit to Sarajevo and understanding the plot behind it. Unraveling the personal and political stories of both sides, that culminated in so much death and destruction throughout Europe. This is a truly exciting journey in the difficult past with the authentic buildings, bridges, city hall (that had yet another tragic story to tell in the last war in Bosnia), and places of interest where these events took place.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were assassinated on 28 June 1914 by Bosnian Serb student Gavrilo Princip. They were shot at close range while being driven through Sarajevo, the provincial capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, formally annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1908.

Princip was part of a group of six Bosnian assassins together with Muhamed Mehmedbašić, Vaso Čubrilović, Nedeljko Čabrinović, Cvjetko Popović and Trifko Grabež coordinated by Danilo Ilić; all but one were Bosnian Serbs and members of a student revolutionary group that later became known as Young Bosnia. The political objective of the assassination was to free Bosnia and Herzegovina of Austria-Hungarian rule and establish a common South Slav ("Yugoslav") state. The assassination precipitated the July Crisis which led to Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia and the start of World War I.

The assassination team was organized by the Black Hand, a Serbian secret nationalist group; support came from Dragutin Dimitrijević, chief of the military intelligence section of the Serbian general staff, as well as from Major Vojislav Tankosić and Rade Malobabić, a Serbian intelligence agent. Tankosić provided bombs and pistols to the assassins and trained them in their use. The assassins were given access to the same clandestine network of safe houses and agents that Malobabić used for the infiltration of weapons and operatives into Austria-Hungary.

The assassins and key members of the clandestine network were tried in Sarajevo in October 1914. In total twenty-five people were indicted. All six assassins, except Mehmedbašić, were under twenty at the time of the assassination; while the group was dominated by Bosnian Serbs, four of the indictees were Bosnian Croats, and all of them were Austro-Hungarian citizens, none from Serbia. Princip was found guilty of murder and high treason; too young to be executed, he was sentenced to twenty years in jail, while the four other attackers also received jail terms. Five of the older prisoners were sentenced to be hanged. Most of the minors died in prison, including Princip, who had never lived to see the Slavic state being formed soon after WW1.

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