The Inept Terrorists Who Sparked WWI
No act of terrorism has had a greater impact than did the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo by Serbian Black Hand assassins. A comedy of errors ensued, in which various assassins tried but failed to kill Ferdinand. One threw a bomb that didn’t kill harm its target, then attempted to commit suicide by swallowing cyanide that had expired, and finally tried to drown himself in a river that was only inches deep. Fate finally intervened, however, when the royal’s convertible took a wrong turn that brought it within a few feet of Gavrilo Princep, an assassin who had given up on the affair and gone to grab a bite.
Princep stepped up to the open vehicle, and fired two shots that killed the archduke and his wife. That triggered a diplomatic dispute that morphed into a full blown crisis, and Austria eventually declared war on Serbia. Russia, as Serbia’s protector, rushed in to fight Austria. That in turn drew in Germany, Austria’s ally. So France, Russia’s ally against Germany, mobilized its army. That prompted Germany to invade France via Belgium. That in turned gave Britain a more palatable justification to join. It declared war as an outraged guarantor of Belgium’s violated sovereignty, instead of on realpolitik European balance of power considerations which would have compelled her to fight Germany anyhow.
