Assassination Of Archduke Franz Ferdinand Quotes

SOME DAMNED FOOLISH THING in the Balkans,” Bismarck had predicted, would ignite the next war. The assassination of the Austrian heir apparent, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, by Serbian nationalists on June 28, 1914, satisfied his condition.

On June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo, Serbia, the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was assassinated. He was Archduke Franz Ferdinand, an otherwise useless piece of royalty, and to this day I have never been able to understand why this event could cause Germany to invade Belgium a month later. I

The initial shooting that led to the conflict was itself a farce. The assassin in question was a Yugoslav nationalist named Gavrilo Princip. He had given up in his attempt to kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria following a failed grenade attack by Princip’s colleague, and gone to a café. It is often said that he got himself a sandwich, which would surely have been the most significant sandwich in history, but it seems more likely that he was standing outside the café without any lunch. By sheer coincidence the Archduke’s driver made a wrong turn into the same street and stalled the car in front of him. This gave a surprised Princip the opportunity to shoot Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg. Over 37 million people died in the fallout from that assassination.

On 28 June 1914 the heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia, a heartland of the South Slavs. Philosophers refer to ‘the inevitable accident’, and this was a very accidental one. Some young Serb terrorists had planned to murder him as he paid a state visit. They had bungled the job, throwing a bomb that missed, and one of them had repaired to a café in a side street to sort himself out. The Archduke drove to the headquarters of the governor-general, Potiorek (where he was met by little girls performing folklore), and berated him (the two men were old enemies, as the Archduke had prevented the neurasthenic Potiorek from succeeding an elderly admirer as Chief of the General Staff). The Archduke went off in a rage, to visit in hospital an officer wounded by the earlier bomb. His automobile moved off again, a Count Harrach standing on the running board. Its driver turned left after crossing a bridge over Sarajevo’s river. It was the wrong street, and the driver was told to stop and reverse. In reverse gear such automobiles sometimes stalled, and this one did so - Count Harrach on the wrong side, away from the café where one of the assassination team was calming his nerves. Now, slowly, his target drove up and stopped. The murderer, Gavrilo Princip, fired. He was seventeen, a romantic schooled in nationalism and terrorism, and part of a team that stretches from the Russian Nihilists of the middle of the nineteenth century, exemplified especially in Dostoyevsky’s prophetic The Possessed and Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes. Austria did not execute adolescents and Princip was young enough to survive. He was imprisoned and died in April 1918. Before he died, a prison psychiatrist asked him if he had any regrets that his deed had caused a world war and the death of millions. He answered: if I had not done it, the Germans would have found another excuse.

She had no interest in a mechanic explaining to her what the problem was with some greasy piston valve. As for Mr. Brevoort, what could the daily news possibly mean to someone occupied with eternity? Since they both lived on the outskirts of political reality, they did not immediately understand the grave implications of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination.

Her Highness has made a number of worthy visits in Sarajevo. The people can’t say we have forgotten them,’ the archduke added decisively, and that looked to be the end of the matter. He would not visit Sarajevo – in his own mind, Franz Ferdinand was already on holiday with his children. Breitner started to congratulate himself on a job well done. Then Lieutenant Colonel von Merizzi came to the fore. ‘If I may interject, Your Highness?

On June 28, 1914, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was riding in a motorcade through the city of Sarajevo when he was assassinated by a Bosnian Serb nationalist. In response to the assassination, the Austro-Hungarian Empire began mobilizing for war against Serbia. Within a month the Russian Empire began mobilizing for war in support of Serbia. Germany in turn began mobilizing for war against Russia, as did the Austro-Hungarian Empire. France in turn entered into war on the side of Russia. In an attempt to defeat France, Germany invaded Belgium. Belgium in turn appealed to Britain. Britain in turn declared war against Germany. By August 1914 the First World War had begun. “The Ottoman Empire was not openly allied with any of the European powers, though in August it had signed a secret treaty with Germany. But on October 29, 2014, Ottoman warships, acting under the orders of the newly appointed German admiral of the Ottoman navy, launched a surprise attack on Russian ports in the Black Sea. On November 2 Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire. On November 5, France did the same, as did Britain. “So the two empires, the British and the Ottoman, were drawn into the conflict on opposite sides of the war. Each was destined to play a part in the fulfillment of prophecy. By the autumn of 1914 it was all in place.” “And the Ottoman Empire,” I added, “was the possessor of the land. And if you remove any of those events . . . it doesn’t happen.

On entering into the organization, every member must know that by joining...he loses his own personality; he must not expect any glory for himself, nor any personal benefit, material or moral.

Demagogy has discredited and abused political freedoms. To let it do that any further means to prepare a political reaction; for disorder, laxity, and insecurity cannot be considered the signs of freedom and democracy.

the belligerence of newly powerful states such as Germany,

arms race,

The assassination of Tsar Alexander II of Russia in March 1881 marked the beginning of an era of political assassinations that included the murders, in quick succession, of President Sadi Carnot of France in 1894; Spanish prime minister Canovas del Castillo in 1897; Empress Elizabeth of Austria and Queen of Hungary in 1898; King Humbert I of Italy in 1900; President William McKinley in 1901; and King Carlos I of Portugal and his heir apparent in 1908. And then, on June 28, 1914, at Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbian nationalists threw a bomb into the carriage of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, nephew and heir of Austria-Hungary’s Emperor Franz Joseph II, killing him and his young wife, Sophia.11 The scene was set for a world war.

All summer long the dreadful news from Europe had troubled their family, ever since that fateful June day when Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir presumptive to the throne of Austria-Hungary, had been assassinated in Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist. Long-simmering disagreements between rivals had boiled over as friendly nations strengthened their alliances and locked arms against enemies. Marie’s beloved France was an ally of Russia, which in turn had an alliance with Serbia; thus in the steadily worsening conflict, her homeland was opposed to Austria-Hungary and its longtime ally, Germany. A few weeks after the archduke’s assassination, Austria had attacked Serbia for harboring terrorists. In response, Russia had moved troops to the border it shared with Germany to discourage Kaiser Wilhelm II from strengthening his ally’s position. Diplomats from many nations had worked frantically to restore calm ever since, but it seemed to Marie that their voices were drowned out by the accusations of treachery and threats of greater military force flying back and forth above their heads.