by Alan Bardos
Gavrilo Princip, Trifko Grabez and Nedeljko Cabrinovic were each sentenced to twenty years. All three died in Terezin's Small Fortress - Nedeljko Cabrinovic and Trifko Grabez in 1916, and Gavrilo Princip in April 1918. Most accounts agree that they died of tuberculosis and malnutrition.
Cvjetko Popovic was sentenced to 13 years. He was released after the First World War and became a teacher. Vaso Cubrilovic was sentenced to 16 years; he was also released after the war and became a history professor.
Milan Ciganovic joined up with Major Tankosic's company at the outbreak of the war, but was later sent to the USA by his government. He returned to Bosnia in 1919 and died in 1927.
Major Tankosic returned to active service and was mortally wounded in October 1915.
Colonel Dragutin 'Apis' Dimitrijevic finally lost his power struggle with Pasic, the Serbian Prime Minister, in 1917. He was accused of plotting to kill the Serbian regent and after a show trial in Salonika was executed, alongside Rade Malobabic.
Mehmed Mehmedbasic escaped the Austro-Hungarian authorities after the assassination, but was put on trial with Apis and was sentenced to six years. He later returned to Sarajevo and was killed during the Second World War.
Franz Janaczek remained with Sophie and Franz Ferdinand's children until his retirement. One of Sophie's sister's, Henriette, brought the children up and did her best to help them overcome the trauma of losing both their parents and the turbulent years of the First World War and its aftermath. The two boys, Ernst and Max, opposed the Nazis and were put in concentration camps - both survived. 'The Assassination of the Archduke', by Greg King & Sue Woolmans, has a particularly good account of what happened to the children.
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the pivotal event of the twentieth century. It led to the war which formed the modern world and resulted, as the assassins had hoped, in the end of the Habsburg Monarchy and for a period the creation of a South Slav state. However, there is still a certain amount of mystery around the events that led up to the assassination. This is largely a result of the clandestine nature of the people involved in the assassination, the conspirators’ attempts to mislead the investigation and the Austro-Hungarian Government's determination to prove Serbia's involvement in the assassination, while downplaying their own negligence.
Consequently, there are a number of grey areas in the history of the assassination, so I’ve used a certain amount of artistic license to fill in the gaps while trying to remain as historically accurate as possible with regards to the actions of the conspirators and the failure of the authorities to stop them.
There are two basic schools of thought about the origins of the assassination plot. Firstly, that it was Colonel 'Apis' Dimitrijevic's idea and that he planned it and recruited the assassins, through Major Tankosic. Secondly, that the assassination was purely the idea of the assassins and that Apis gave his support on a whim. There is however, no evidence to prove either case conclusively. What's known for sure is that the assassins were supported by Apis and his associates. Whether Apis conceived of the plot or just approved it, he made it possible for Gavrilo Princip to carry out the assassination.
The version of events depicted in this novel is an amalgam of the two perspectives, with the assassination conceived by the assassins as an act of 'tyrannicide', but with them lacking the means to change it from coffee shop talk into action. At the same time, Apis was looking to recruit people through Major Tankosic in order to carry out similar operations, and agreed to help.
There is also some debate as to whether or not Apis tried to stop the assassination, either when his government found out about the plan, or when he’d had a chance to reconsider his decision. Djuro Sarac was sent to Bosnia and met Danilo Ilic in mid June 1914. It's not known for sure where they met, or what they discussed, but Ilic's doubts about the assassination seem to have increased after the meeting and he spent the second half of June 1914 trying to persuade Gavrilo Princip not to carry out the act. It is possible that if a cancellation order was sent, it could have been an act of subterfuge, to fool the Serbian Prime Minister.
Following on from this, there is also a lot of speculation as to why Apis's master spy, Rade Malobabic, went to Sarajevo during the Archduke's visit, if indeed Apis had ordered the cancellation of the assassination. Ilic's mother is reported to have said that a man with big feet came to see her son on the eve of the assassination, but the reason for his visit is unknown. Apparently, Malobabic had big feet, so it could have been him. There are many theories about Malobabic’s presence in Sarajevo, but I’ve tied it into Johnny’s story, having him there to warn Ilic of a possible attempt to foil the assassination.
No explanation has ever been put forward as to why Danilo Ilic was late meeting Misko Jovanovic to collect the weapons, putting the whole plot in danger, so it seemed fitting to me that Johnny should have kept him out drinking the night before (from the accounts I’ve read I think that the Semiz wine shop, where Gavrilo used to go, was on the opposite bank of the river to Franz Ferdinand Street, overlooking Lateiner Bridge).
The assassination itself happened as a result of a whole series of mistakes and missed opportunities. Nedjo Cabrinovic met Detective Vila on the way to Sarajevo; Vila was a friend of his father's, whom he’d recently seen. Vila saw Trifko Grabez and Gavrilo Princip sitting in the same train carriage and asked who Gavrilo was, but his suspicions were not raised. A simple request to see his papers would have revealed that he was travelling illegally.
There was no central coordinated intelligence to counter the activities of the nationalist movements in Austro-Hungary’s Balkan provinces; the conspirators’ letters were not intercepted or deciphered. The repeated warnings of a possible assassination were ignored by General Potiorek, the Archduke and the Austro-Hungarian Government. 'The Archduke and the Assassin', by Lavender Cassels, is particularly interesting on this point. If Bogdan Zerajic had been identified as a nationalist after his assassination attempt on General Varesanin, the authorities may have been more aware of the growing militancy of the Young Bosnians and reconsidered the Archduke’s visit, or at the very least increased the security around it. Viktor Ivasjuk, the Chief of Detectives, was said to have been a student of Lombroso's theory of criminology and to have kept the skull of Bogdan Zerajic on his desk, which he used as an inkpot (see Vadmire Dedijer and David James Smith).
All the accounts that I've read agree that Nedjo Cubrilovic threw his bomb at the Archduke's car from the river side of Appel Quay, just before Cumurija Bridge, but there is some inconsistency as to where exactly he, Ilic, Mehmedbasic, Cvjetko Popovic and Vaso Cubrilovic stood at the junction when this happened. Some accounts have the plotters lined up along the river side of the embankment in the open, with Nedjo. Some suggest they were on the city side, in the shade. This is largely because the assassins themselves gave varying accounts and changed positions from the ones Ilic gave them, when he led them down the Quay the day before the assassination. The lengthiest investigations of where they stood are given in, 'One Morning in Sarajevo', by David James Smith and, 'The Road To Sarajevo', by Vadmire Dedijer, which I've tried to follow in this book.
I've made an educated guess as to what the surrounding buildings were at the junction, having studied maps, old postcards and photographs of the time. The wooden picket fence where I think Mehmed Mehmedbasic stood and the place where I think the Mostar Cafe was, at the bottom of Cumurija Street, have long gone, (along with the trees). A road now goes through the place where I've depicted them. I know that there was a doctor's surgery where the injured from Nedjo's bomb were treated and a tobacconist’s where Cvjetko Popovic stood, but not exactly which buildings they were. The Girls’ High School and the bank were in the places described in the book and the Prosvjeta building is still there and is now a hostel. Gavrilo Princip worked for Prosvjeta prior to the assassination, so I'm assuming it was in this building. Popovic also hid his weapons in its basement after Nedjo threw his bomb.
There was
a great deal of confusion in the City Hall after Nedjo's attempt and the decision to change the route added to the complications. Dr Grade, Sarajevo's Chief of Police, who was riding in the first car of the motorcade, was apparently told to repeat the instruction that the route had changed, but whether he understood what he was being asked to repeat as he hurried to join the motorcade, or that he was supposed to inform the drivers, doesn't appear to have ever been fully established. If the Archduke's motorcade had carried on down Appel Quay after leaving the reception in the City Hall then the whole catastrophe would have been prevented. No one investigated the reason why the car went the wrong way and followed the original route, probably either to save face or because the authorities didn't want to be distracted from the real issue of blaming Serbia for the assassination.
Lastly and perhaps most poignantly, the Archduke's car stopped in front of Gavrilo Princip after it had made the wrong turning. A policeman saw Gavrilo Princip point his gun at the Archduke’s car and ran to intercept him, but a spectator stopped him with a kick. Many people have attributed this action to Mihajlo Pusara, the actor who worked as a clerk in Sarajevo’s City Hall and who had sent Nedjo the newspaper cutting announcing the Archduke's visit. However, there is another account of a policeman trying to stop Princip after he'd fired the first shot, but it states that he was punched in the stomach by someone in the crowd.
If you would like to read more about the assassins and what motivated them I'd strongly recommend David James Smith's, 'One Morning in Sarajevo', Vadmire Dedijer's, 'The Road To Sarajevo', or, 'The Desperate Act', by Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht. If you're more interested in Franz Ferdinand and Sophie's story I'd suggest, 'Archduke of Sarajevo: The Romance & Tragedy of Franz Ferdinand of Austria', by Gordon Brook-Shepherd and, 'The Assassination of the Archduke', by Greg King & Sue Woolmans. 'The Archduke and the Assassin', by Lavender Cassels, covers both sides of the story fairly equally.
Other books I found useful in trying to understand the assassination and the history of Bosnia were, 'Sarajevo', by Joachim Remak, 'Black Lamb and Grey Falcon', by Rebecca West, ‘The Secret of Sarajevo, the story of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie’, by Hertha Pauli, 'Sarajevo, A Biography', by Robert J. Donia, 'The Bridge over the Drina', by Ivo Andric, Borivoje Jevtic quoted in, ‘We Were There: An Eyewitness History of the Twentieth Century’, by Robert Fox, ‘The Balkan Wars: Conquest, Revolution, and Retribution from the Ottoman Era to the Twentieth Century and Beyond’, by Andre a Gerolymatos and 'Bosnia: A Short History', by Noel Malcolm.
I found the following books useful for the history of diplomacy, and the background and events that led to the outbreak of the First World War: 'Thirteen Days: The Road to the First World War', by Clive Ponting, 'August Guns', by Barbara Tuchman, 'The Sleepwalkers, How Europe went to war in 1914', by Christopher Clark, ‘The War that Ended Peace: How Europe abandoned peace for the First World War’, by Margaret MacMillan, 'The Three Emperors: Three Cousins, Three Empires and the Road to World War One', by Miranda Carter, ‘The British Diplomatic Service 1815-1914’, by Raymond A. Jones and 'The Origins of the War of 1914 (Vol. 2)', by Luigi Albertini.
Books I enjoyed with reference to Vienna and the Habsburgs were, 'Emperor Francis Joseph, Life Death and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire', by John Van der Kiste, 'The Dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1867-1918', by John W. Mason, 'The Radetzky March', by Joseph Roth, ‘Last Waltz in Vienna’, by George Clare and Count Miklós Bánffy's wonderful, 'Transylvania Trilogy'. Also, 'Thunder at Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914', by Frederic Morton, which in addition has a good account of the death of Colonel Redl, as has, 'The Second Oldest Profession: Spies and Spying in the Twentieth Century', by Phillip Knightley.
I'd also strongly recommend a trip to Sarajevo. It is an amazing place, still rich with the fusion of Western and Eastern cultures of a bygone age, with the addition of communist era tower blocks. It isn't hard to imagine how it would have felt to be there in 1914, despite the traffic and the damage caused by the siege of the 1990s. The 103 trolley bus from the airport drops you off at the gardens where Gavrilo Princip sat on the morning of the assassination. These gardens are opposite Appel Quay (now called Obala Kulina Bana), Lateiner Bridge and the corner of Franz Josef Street (now called Zelenih Beretki) where the assassination took place. There is a plaque on Schiller’s delicatessen commemorating the assassination. The building is now the Museum of the History of Sarajevo 1878-1918, and contains a small display about the assassination. (Directions to the 103 bus stop can be found in Lonely Planet's guide to the Western Balkans).
The Museum of Military History in Vienna, has the Graf & Stift car in which Franz Ferdinand and Sophie were travelling when they were shot, as part of an exhibit about the assassination which includes three of the assassins’ guns, some of the bombs recovered after their arrest, the chaise longue Franz Ferdinand died on and his blood-stained uniform.
Artstetten Castle where Sophie and Franz Ferdinand are buried, is an incredible place to see. It has a museum established by Sophie and Franz Ferdinand's great-granddaughter, Princess Anita of Hohenberg, and has the feel of walking through a family scrapbook. It has a very good display on the assassination, including the all important official programme of events for the Archduke's visit to Sarajevo and many photographs that I hadn't seen before.
Sophie and Franz Ferdinand's favourite country seat, Konopiste Castle, is also a beguiling place to visit. All three tours of the castle are very good, but tour three is the best, as it takes in Sophie and Franz Ferdinand's private apartments. I tried to identify which bathroom gave the best view of the rose gardens (see Cassels and King & Woolmans), however the trees now obscure everything. Tour three also features a few artefacts from the assassination including the ermine stole and bodice that Sophie was wearing on the 28th June 1914. The bullet that killed Sophie is also displayed.