Awesome stuff - Its only recently I actually understood Laurence of Arabia was a real person and what the consequences of that time period is to us today. Thanks for the great write-up!
I like to think of them sitting in a nice cafe all day, sipping coffee with a Grand Marnier or three on the side, talking about pleasant novelly things.
Also, Jean Jaures. His part in all this isn’t over just yet. Keep him in mind, because he’s got a part to play, still.
As one of those relatively rare real-world Laurences I should point out that for a change his name was actually Lawrence.
I’m really enjoying this, triggercut. Your tone of voice here has a wonderful James Burke-ian quality. And as someone who is woefully uneducated about WWI, I’m learning a lot!
I was thinking the same thing. This feels like the script from a Connections episode.
Read The Sleepwalkers if you are really interested in a comprehensive (scholarly, academic) take on the origins of WWI.
I am in the middle of it now, it is very in depth. It is actually a bit hard to follow - it is a dense book, and I admit to too easily losing track of the various ministers, undersecretaries, Serbian politicians, etc. But it is exhaustive on the subject as I have seen in a still readable format.
Thanks for that, but I need like the entirety of world history in a nice, conversational, narrative form like Trigger’s. I suppose that’s asking for too much?
Here you go. I’ve read all the big doorstop books by Massie and Keegan and Liddell-Hart on WWI. I think this is the best single volume one out there, written by a guy who’s a newspaper financial reporter: Amazon.com
A lot of the stuff on Caillaux especially I got from his excellent summary of the state of France leading up to the war, for instance.
And seriously, how crazy is that assassination story? It’d be like Michelle Obama shooting Rupert Murdoch or something.
This is a great book on the causes of WW1.
One thing I always found amazing about the various countries that would end up fighting each other was how many of them were ruled by Monarchs who were in fact related to each other. Queen Victoria of England was the matriarch of half the royal families of Europe.
I agree with all the great comments, I would read more History if they were written by Triggercut.
triggercut, this might be the best thing you’ve ever contributed to the forum, and considering how much I love your seasonal mix tapes, that is very high praise indeed.
Glad to see you’re keeping the praise going for A World Undone too. I’ve lent out my copy to a friend and am itching to get it back. I remember Meyer, near the end, noting that some of the belligerent nations still have war documents that won’t be unsealed until 100 years after the end of the war. I wonder what historians will learn about WWI in 2019?
Thanks for the kind comments, I really appreciate it!
I do a lot of writing for work, and it isn’t very fun writing. I’m trying to get into the habit of putting time aside each day like I used to, to write for fun, about stuff that interests or amuses me. I hope I can keep it up!
At any rate, it’s June 26…
How about turning it into a podcast?
Today’s episode: You Say You Want A Revolution…
On June 26, 1914, The Archduke and his wife were likely enjoying their time together generally hanging out together and being a couple in Bad Ilidze.
In a few cheap rented rooms in downtown Sarajevo, however, a group of assassins were getting ready. There were 7 young men spread around the city. Most of them were teenagers. That was deliberate; should any of them be caught the maximum penalty allowed by Austro-Hungarian law for minors was 20 years in jail, even for murder. No picnic, but not execution, either. As Wee-Bey Brice would tell you, a man can do 20 years if he’s gotta.
Some of the teens were members of a group called Bosnian Youth. Don’t go thinking they were some offshoot of the boy scouts, though. They were actually Bosnian Serbs who were committed the idea of a unified Slavic state centered around the small, crap-stirring country of Serbia. In fact, they were eager to prove their worth to the big bad terrorist organization trying to make that Greater Serbia happen. One of them was Gavrilo Princip, who on June 26th was 48 hours from stepping from obscurity out onto the world stage.
The latter group mentioned–the big bad group–was called Unity Or Death originally, but became known by the more colloquial name of “The Black Hand”, presumably because “The Black Hand” looks way cooler on the bowling team shirts than “Unity Or Death”. The brains behind much of the Black Hand’s plotting was a guy named Dragutin Dimitrijevic, a huge bear of a man. He and the Black Hand had announced their influence on Serbian politics back in 1903, when the country was about the size of Rhode Island (a few wars–as you do, when you’re Balkan–had doubled Serbia’s size by 1914). Serbia at that point had a king–Alexander, and queen, Draga, and they were guilty of the sin of being on friendly terms with Austria-Hungary to the north. A young Dimitrijevic and his fellow Black Handers fought their way into King Alexander’s palace and killed him and Draga. They then stripped their bodies and hung them out the windows on display. Dimitrijevic made himself legendary by getting shot 4 or 5 times and surviving. He’d actually carry 3 bullets in his body the rest of his life after that. Presumably he walked around saying “Strong! Like bull!” a lot.
Dimitrijevic and the Black Hand had decided that Franz Ferdinand was a dangerous dude. For one thing, he was making noises about giving the Slavic population of Austria-Hungary a much more powerful voice in governing. That might prevent Bosnia (which Austria had annexed in 1908) from ever breaking away from the Austrians to help create that big Slavic Country the Black Hand envisioned. Plus, they hadn’t actually assassinated a head of state in over 10 years. Blowing up bridges and shaking down international merchants for protection money gets boring after a while.
When Dimitrijevic heard of the Archduke’s visit to Sarajevo, he and his planners set up an incredibly intricate plan, one that would be the envy of Danny Ocean. The 7 young men to carry it out were specifically recruited for particular reasons from either the Black Hand or the aforementioned Bosnian Youth. For instance, 5 of the recruited 7 assassins suffered from tuberculosis. In 1914 terms that meant they were pretty much dead men walking, since TB was usually fatal then. (Protip for Evil Geniuses: recruit assassins with terminal diseases to add that whole nihilistic “Put yr guns in the air if you don’t care” vibe to your operation.) The assassins would arrive in Sarajevo over the course of the month of May, either singly or in pairs. They’d take up temporary lodgings all across the city. Separate gun smugglers would gather weapons, grenades, cyanide suicide pills for them, and one man would distribute the weapons and offer cursory training with them. Few of the assassins knew who the others were, they just knew there were others in the operation. History doesn’t record whether any of them chafed at being called Mr. Pink, but it really was just that elaborate of a caper.
Five of the men were specifically tasked with being either trigger-men or bomb throwers to carry out the assassination. The Archduke and Sophie would travel by motorcade along a specified route on Sunday the 28th of June, 1914. The five were given the entire parade route, along with details that included timetables and the locations of the various police standing guard along the way clearly marked. With redundant, trained assassins in possession of valuable intel, Franz Ferdinand and Sophie would be almost certainly doomed the moment they started their motorcade on the Sunday coming up.
The only question is, how does a fringe-y, terrorist organization like The Black Hand get advance motorcade plans, timetables, and the position of security teams?
Tomorrow: Welcome to the wonderful world of state-sponsored terrorism!
Clarification: The Black Hand (Serbia) was no relation to The Black Hand (Sicily, with franchises throughout North America.) They might have been great with the planning, but not so original with the naming.
I just thought I’d say that I’ve never been a WW1 buff, always thought of it as interesting but obvious, in that it was a bunch of poor leaders in an arms race looking for an excuse to pull the trigger, and WW2 was much more interesting. Until freaking now! I’m ordering that book plus I’m addicted to this thread! Please keep it up!
Yep, good point.
The Black Hand–as in the Sicilian mafia–had absolutely zero connection to The Black Hand terrorist group operating out of Serbia in 1914. The Serbs had perhaps seen the name in a newspaper and thought it sounded menacing or bitchin’…but as we’ll see tomorrow, a connection between the two would be impossible. They read different comic books. One group were Elvis fans, the others were Beatlemaniacs, if you get my drift. (The Roman Catholic Sicilians and the Eastern Orthodox Serbs would’ve greatly enjoyed killing one another over religious differences, but that’s about it.)
Just outstanding work, triggercut. Very readable but still very informative.
There may perhaps have been some distant relation to the carbonari from both black hands? I think there were carbonari on both sides of the Adriatic in previous centuries.
Yes, since I didn’t say it before, these little pieces are very well done indeed, triggercut.
If you read a couple of the older veddy proper histories of World War I written by sympathetic British Sirs, Serbia comes off seeming like the plucky little can-do country that dared to face up to Hapsburg aggression.
Yeah, not so much as we know now. The march to war in August has not too many goodguys, and a whole lot of badguys. Part of that latter camp is Serbia. They were doing state condoned terrorism almost a century before anyone knew what the Taliban was.
To understand the Serbian position, you need to back even further in time. In the latter decades of its existence, the Roman Empire split itself in two. The Western Roman Empire got the Vatican, The Popes, regular sackings by surly barbarians, and the Roman Catholic Church. The Eastern Roman Empire got a little bit of stability for a few centuries before the Ottomans showed up, along with onion-dome churches, incense, those cool black hats and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Neither the Catholics or the Orthodoxers liked one another very much. The dividing line between these two religious groups ran right through the Balkan peninsula.
So…Austria and its Hapsburg family monarchs were Roman Catholics. So too were the Croatians just to the south, on the western side of the Balkans. The Serbs, however…they were Orthodox. It made for plenty of slap fights over the years. Then the Ottoman Turks invaded and took over most of the Balkans and brought Islam with them. None of the members of these three religious groups wanted to peacefully coexist very much with one another.
Serbs also considered themselves to be Slavic in ethnicity. They had the funny alphabets and spoke a slavic language that gave them a lot in common with the Russians, a fact lost on no one. When the Ottoman Empire started to fall apart like the Celtics after Bird retired, the Tsar was deathly afraid that Austria-Hungary was simply going to stick a flag in the Balkan territories and claim them for the Hapsburgs. Thus, Russia happily supported the creation of separate Balkan countries–Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Montenegro–all based on former states and principalities and whatnot. Of all the Balkan Slavic countries, Serbia was the favorite of the Tsar and his ministers. They had the best army, and looked as if they were the most capable of creating trouble for Austria, who’d become a Russian nemesis of sorts.
Here’s what the map looked like:
Being the head of Serbian government was not a particularly fun job; it was sort of like being put in charge of a mobile home neighborhood in a tornado watch. You’d be able to forgive the Prime Minister of Serbia if he gave more than a few passing thoughts to King Alexander and Queen Draga being executed and hung naked out the window. You’d have to balance keeping the radicals happy so they didn’t assassinate you, while actually governing and being as responsible as possible so the wide-eyed crazies didn’t start a war.
And–as mentioned yesterday–the wide-eyed crazies wanted a single, unified nation of slavic, Eastern Orthodox Christians. One problem was that a big province of folks fitting that criteria were in Bosnia, to the north and west and a newly annexed province of Austria. That made Austria the enemy of the crazies.
I’m guessing that a lot of you know what’s going to happen in tomorrow’s entry. Eventually, the Austrians would accuse the Serbian government of having a hand in the assassination. At the time, it probably sounded like Hapsburg war rhetoric and exaggeration.
Well, here’s the thing about that: the Austrians were right. 100%.
Our chief assassination planner in The Black Hand? Dragutin Dimitrijevic? Yeah, he had a day job besides being head of a pan-Slavic terrorist organization. In more polite company, he was head of Serbian military intelligence. Yeah, that’s right, the head of the Serbia’s equivalent of the CIA was also in a secret society working outside the government to kill the heir to a European throne. You get to be head of intel, you get your hands on security plans and placement of police along official parade and motorcade routes, for instance.
(Dragutin Dimitrijevic pictured; if you want some royalty assassinated, he’s your boy.)
Not only that, but the Serbian Prime Minister–a wily old fellow named Nikola Pasic–had some blood on his hands. He’d heard of the plot over a week before the Archduke and Sophie arrived in Sarajevo. Remember, though, he’s a guy trying to balance staying in power and not getting himself impaled on a pike. He still went to Dimitrijevic to tell him to call the plan off.
Dimitrijevic smiled. “Wish I could help you, but even if I wanted to, it’s too late.”
He wasn’t lying. Remember all that crazy, intricate planning from yesterday? Well, Dimitrijevic might be a radical, but he knew how to put together an assassination. He essentially compartmentalized EVERYTHING. By delegating to others, keeping names secret, and other tactics, he didn’t even know who the shooters were, or where they were stashed. No one person did. He built layers and layers of secrecy into the plan. Complicated? Yes. But he likely knew that word of the plot would leak out to the government, and he didn’t want it scuttled. Their elaborate measures in the plan ensured that once the go ahead had been given a few weeks earlier, it would be nearly impossible to stop the events set in motion.
(Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pasic, who was against the assassination plot…but not so much that he was willing to tell anyone who might’ve been able to prevent it.)
For Prime Minister Pasic, he also could’ve contacted the Austrian government and tipped them off. He decided doing so would be politically and personally dangerous to himself…so he decided to sit on the information (There are historians who believe that he did cable the Austrian ministry in Milan, or tried to tell the Russian foreign secretary in hopes that the message would be relayed…but hard evidence of either of those things happening is nonexistent). Most of the Serbian government would spend Sunday June 28th hoping that The Black Hand’s shooters had lousy aim. They sure as heck knew what was supposed to go down.
Meanwhile, on June 27th, 1914 two secret couriers, armed only with addresses they’d been furnished with and passwords and responses went through the seedier sections of Sarajevo and delivered hand grenades, Belgian-made FN .380 semi-automatic pistols, maps with each shooter’s spot marked on them, and a cyanide vial to drink instead of being captured. (Watch that cyanide, by the way; could be past its expiration date.)