July 1914: Countdown to War

by Sean McMeekin

  4 August 1914

  German troops enter Belgium; Britain issues ultimatum to Germany; it expires at eleven PM London time; Britain and Germany at war

  PROLOGUE: SARAJEVO, SUNDAY, 28 JUNE 1914

  ON SUNDAY MORNING, 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand awoke in the Hotel Bosnia with a sense of relief that he would soon depart. His suite, located in the spa town of Ilidža ten kilometers (about six miles) west of Sarajevo, had a certain garish charm, adorned with Persian carpets, Arabesque lamp figurines, and Turkish scimitars. But three days of Oriental-Muslim kitsch had been plenty for this proper Catholic archduke. After arriving Thursday afternoon, the heir to the Habsburg throne had attended two full days of Austrian military maneuvers. On Friday evening, Ferdinand had accompanied his wife, Sophie, on what was intended to be an informal shopping expedition in the bazaars of Sarajevo. The Muslim mayor, Fehim Effendi, had instructed his multifaith constituents to show these illustrious guests their best “Slavic hospitality,” and they did not disappoint, mobbing Ferdinand and Sophie everywhere they went. The archduke had then repaid this cumbersome hospitality by hosting the mayor, along with Bosnian officials and religious leaders (Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim), at his Ilidža hotel for a “sumptuous banquet” on Saturday night. The menu was mostly French, but, in a nod to the locals, the aperitifs included žilavka, a white wine from the Mostar region in Herzegovina.

  “Thank God,” Ferdinand was heard to remark as his guests at last began returning to Sarajevo, “this Bosnian trip is over.” Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, who, as chief of the General Staff, had presided over the military exercises, slipped off quietly at nine PM, following the last toasts. Ferdinand would have liked to leave with Conrad, and nearly did—only to be warned by advisers that breaking off the Sunday program would damage Austrian prestige in Bosnia. Still, it would all be over in several hours. All that remained on the Sunday program was a town hall photo op, a brief museum visit, and lunch at Konak, the governor’s mansion. After dressing and attending an early Mass “in a room specially converted to a chapel” in the hotel, Ferdinand dashed off a telegram to his children, telling them that “Papi” and “Mami” could not wait to see them on Tuesday.1

  Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, with his wife, Sophie, and their three children. Source: Bain News Service, Library of Congress.

  That final day of the visit, 28 June, was an anniversary of painful significance for the archducal couple. On this date in 1900, the heir to the Austrian throne had been forced by his uncle, Emperor Franz Josef I, to sign an Oath of Renunciation, stipulating that any children issuing from his morganatic marriage to Sophie be excluded from the imperial succession. Although hardly a commoner, Sophie Chotek came from a Czech noble family far too obscure and impoverished for the grand Habsburgs. Adding to the scandalous impropriety of the match, Sophie had been lady-in-waiting to the Habsburg archduchess, Marie Christine, whom Ferdinand had been expected to marry. One day, the story went, Franz Ferdinand changed clothes to play tennis, leaving his locket behind in the dressing room. The mother of the presumed heiress opened the locket, expecting to find a picture of her daughter—only to see instead the likeness of her lady-in-waiting.

  Rather than renounce his passion in the name of family dignity, Ferdinand had married his secret love. Most of the Habsburgs had never forgiven him this humiliation. Nor was Sophie allowed to forget it. Although she was created Duchess of Hohenberg, Ferdinand’s wife was subjected to endless humiliations at imperial banquets, where she was forced to enter each room last, after much younger, unmarried archduchesses, “alone and without escort,” being then seated at the foot of the table, nowhere near her husband. Even at the Saturday dinner banquet in Ilidža, far from the court in Vienna, Sophie had been forced to sit between two archbishops and to endure her husband’s painfully “wifeless toast” (Franz Ferdinand was not allowed to mention her in public on official occasions).2

  A legend claims that Ferdinand’s entire Bosnian trip was conceived as a sop to Sophie, who did not often get to enjoy the elaborate ceremonies most Habsburg duchesses expected as a matter of course. In fact the visit was eminently political, which is why he was so keen to get it over with. Ferdinand had fervently opposed the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by the dual monarchy in 1908 as a needless provocation of the South Slavs, especially the Orthodox Serbs, who comprised more than 40 percent of the 1.9 million residents of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1914 (as against Muslims at 30 percent, Roman Catholic Croats at 20 percent, and a smattering of Jews, Protestants, and gypsies). It was not that the archduke cared for Serbs, whom he regarded as a “pack of thieves and murderers and scoundrels.”3 He did, however, care to maintain Austria’s precarious relations with Serbophile Russia, and he therefore viewed the whole Bosnian business with distaste.

  The annexation, as Ferdinand knew, had wounded Russian pride deeply, not least because Austria’s then foreign minister, Baron Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal, had famously tricked his Russian counterpart, Alexander Izvolsky, into supporting it in a cynical quid pro quo, in exchange for Austrian endorsement of Russian naval access to the Ottoman Straits, before reneging on his phony promise. Izvolsky had then reneged in turn, only for his hand to be forced by an implied German threat to go to war with Russia in March 1909. Aehrenthal’s humiliation of Izvolsky in this First Bosnian Crisis was severe enough that the latter was forced to resign (only to reemerge in Paris as Russian ambassador to France, from which post he plotted his revenge). Austria’s annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the teeth of Serbian hatred and Russian resentment was a ticking diplomatic time bomb that could go off at any time. The archduke could only hope that it would not detonate during his visit.

  In 1910, Franz Josef I had made a royal progress in Bosnia-Herzegovina to win over the loyalty of his reluctant new subjects—although, in a not-so-subtle nod to Serbian opposition, his advance team had made sure to blanket Sarajevo with a thick police presence. Having experienced a similarly stiff setup on a state visit to Romania, Franz Ferdinand had demanded a less suffocating cordon for his own progress in 1914. He had also demanded that he be allowed to bring to Bosnia his beloved wife, who kept his spirits up during tedious official occasions (when, that is, she was allowed to speak to him). Still, security was taken seriously, with planning handled by the archduke’s own military staff, with assistance from Conrad; Leon von Biliński, the minister for Bosnia-Herzegovina; and Oskar Potiorek, the province’s military governor. Contrary to claims by Serbian critics, the maneuvers by the XV and XVI Army Corps that were the point of Ferdinand’s trip were held not along the Bosnian-Serbian border but in the area of southwestern Herzegovina facing the Adriatic, as far from Serbia as possible.

  Aside from sensibly avoiding a provocation near the Serbian border, these men had not, alas, distinguished themselves in planning the trip, which had begun with a series of ill omens. The luxurious rail car Ferdinand usually traveled in, built to order for him by the Ringhoffer firm in Prague, had sprung an axle loose en route from the Czech-Austrian resort town Chlumetz bei Wittengau (where Ferdinand and Sophie had left their children, until their expected return on Tuesday). The archduke had then been deposited in an ordinary first-class wagon as far as Vienna, where he was to be transferred to a backup royal rail car for the long journey to Trieste—only for its electric lights to fail while he was still in the station. As there was not enough time to repair the wiring without disturbing the trip’s itinerary, the archduke and his staff continued all the way to the Adriatic coast in a wagon lit by candlelight. It was, Ferdinand remarked, like traveling “in a tomb.”4

  The worst omen of all, however, was the choice of date for the final royal progress in Sarajevo. For Ferdinand and Sophie, 28 June brought a painful reminder of the exclusion of their children from the Habsburg succession. For Serbs, this date brought the even more painful reminder of their terrible defeat at Kosovo Polje in 1389, when the Turks had wiped out independent Serbia. For Serbs, however, 28
June was not only a day of mourning. Because a Serbian knight, Miloš Obilić, had slain Ottoman sultan Murad I on the battlefield, the anniversary had been turned into a celebration of national resistance, a feast day in honor of the Slavic deity of war and fertility: St. Vitus’s Day, or Vidov Dan. Even as Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the throne, would be (reluctantly) consecrating Habsburg rule over Serbs with an official visit to Sarajevo, Serbs at Kosovo would be feasting to honor the patriot who had slain their Turkish conqueror on this day 525 years before. Considering the recent history of Serbian regicidal terrorism—in 1903 a clique of hypernationalist military officers led by the future head of Serbian army intelligence, Dragutin Dimitrijevitch (“Apis”), had murdered Serbia’s own king and queen* to protest their insufficient devotion to the Serbian cause—staging a royal progress in Sarajevo on Vidov Dan was provocative, if not downright foolhardy.

  Making the Sunday tour still more risky, news of the visit had been made public months in advance, such that any Serb with a grudge against the dual monarchy had plenty of time to plan for it. A Zaghreb newspaper, Srbobran, had divulged the principal details of the archduke’s upcoming trip to Bosnia-Herzegovina in March 1914. Although the exact date of the Sarajevo tour was not then known, Srbobran announced as definite that Archduke Ferdinand would come to Bosnia in early summer to observe military maneuvers.

  Intrigued by the news report, which had reached him in Sarajevo, a Bosnian Serb activist of the irredentist group Young Bosnia clipped the announcement and mailed it to his friend Nedjelko Chabrinovitch in Belgrade, addressed—in the bohemian style of the Serbian underground—via the coffeehouse Eichelkranz. Chabrinovitch, in turn, showed the clipping to his friend Gavrilo Princip, a radical Serb nationalist from Bosnia, over lunch. After spending the afternoon brooding over the news, Princip sought out Chabrinovitch that night in another Belgrade café, the Grüner Kranz, to propose that the two travel to Sarajevo to assassinate the heir to the Habsburg throne. The nineteen-year-old Chabrinovitch, more of an anarchist by temperament than Princip, would rather have gone after Governor Potiorek, who symbolized what he called the “Mameluke” or Muslim slave-caste class of government officials sent down by Vienna to make Bosnian Serbs suffer. But Princip won over Chabrinovitch by force of conviction.5

  Princip’s suggestion was not an idle one. Although neither he nor Chabrinovitch possessed weapons of his own, they both were in touch with Serbia’s network of semi-official terrorist groups. Princip was a former recruit of the Narodna Odbrana (National Defense), an organization launched in 1908 to oppose Austria’s annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by training underground comitaji warriors in “bomb-throwing, the blowing up of railways and bridges,” and other sundry arts of guerrilla warfare. Princip had been trained by Narodna Odbrana in 1912 under Major Voja Tankositch (who had personally murdered the Serbian queen’s brothers in 1903), the intention being to smuggle him across the Turkish border prior to the First Balkan War, launched by the Balkan League of Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Montenegro against Ottoman Turkey that October. Then just eighteen, thin, and in poor health, Princip had washed out of training, but he maintained contacts in both the Narodna Odbrana and its more radical spin-off organization, Ujedinjenje ili Smrt (Union or Death), known as the Black Hand.

  The Black Hand, run by many of the same people who had founded Narodna Odbrana—including Apis and Major Tankositch—was enveloped in layers of secrecy. New members would be led into “a darkened room, lighted only by wax candles,” where they would swear an oath “by the blood of my ancestors . . . that I will from this moment till my death . . . be ready to make any sacrifice for [Serbia].” The organization’s seal suggested what sacrifice was meant: it displayed an unfurled flag, the skull and bones sign, a dagger, a bomb, and, last, a bottle of poison meant for the member himself, after he had committed his murderous deed.6

  Princip and Chabrinovitch were not active members of the Black Hand, but they knew men who were. Milan Ciganovitch, for one, was a fellow Bosnian Serb who had trained with Princip under Major Tankositch in 1912, only more successfully. Ciganovitch had pilfered a personal arsenal of six handheld bombs during the Balkan Wars. Learning of Princip’s idea, Ciganovitch offered the use of his stash of explosives but also suggested that the two would-be assassins try to obtain pistols, in case the bombs failed. Major Tankositch, almost certainly on orders from Apis, duly provided them with four Browning revolvers plus ammunition, 150 dinars in cash, and, not least, cyanide of potassium, with which the assassin was to commit suicide after killing the archduke. Finally, Tankositch instructed Ciganovitch, a veteran, to give Princip and Chabrinovitch shooting practice so that they would not miss their target.7

  The Black Hand provided more to the would-be assassins than weapons and training. Over the years, the organization had built a sort of underground railroad, or tunnel, of terrorism. It was not hard to smuggle individuals with fake papers onto Austrian territory, but smuggling weapons required a deft touch. On 26 May 1914, when Princip, Chabrinovitch, and a third conspirator, Trifko Grabezh, arrived at Šabac, near the border, a Serbian army officer, Major Popovitch, was waiting with instructions he had received from Major Tankositch. Chabrinovitch, with papers provided by Popovitch, was to cross the border en route for Zvornik, on the Bosnian side; from there another confidence man would drive him to Tuzla, a town connected by railway to Sarajevo. Princip and Grabezh, carrying the weapons, crossed the Drina River into Bosnia near Lješnica, being carefully ferried by a Serbian customs official from one island to another and then passed on by friendly Serbian peasant guides as far as Priboj. There they met their next handler, Veljko Chubrilovitch, the town’s schoolmaster, a secret member of Narodna Odbrana.

  To make their rendezvous with Chabrinovitch at Tuzla, they would have to pass a checkpoint of Austrian gendarmes at Lopare. In a clever bit of derring-do, Princip and Grabezh left their stash of bombs, pistols, and poison in the cart of a peasant they were traveling with for cover, circled the village on foot and then rejoined him on the other side. Finally, in Tuzla, the three terrorists, having been reunited, turned over their deadly cargo to another confidence man, Mishko Jovanovitch, who, like Chubrilovitch, was both an upstanding local citizen (he owned a bank and a movie theater) and a member of Narodna Odbrana. Jovanovitch hid the weapons in his attic, while the terrorists proceeded on to Sarajevo. Showing a mastery of underground tradecraft, the four men agreed that a fifth man would return from Sarajevo to retrieve the weapons, identifying himself “by offering a package of Stephanie cigarettes.”8

  While Princip, Chabrinovitch, and Grabezh bided their time in the Bosnian capital, their handlers swung into action. Danilo Ilitch, a former schoolmaster and bank clerk turned full-time activist ne’er do well, who now lived with his mother in Sarajevo, took in Princip and Chabrinovitch (Grabezh’s own family lived nearby). Ilitch knew the terrorists well from previous visits to Belgrade. Princip had written him back in April, speaking vaguely of his plans to assassinate Franz Ferdinand and suggesting that Ilitch recruit local assassins in Sarajevo as well. Ilitch was thus already knee-deep in the conspiracy even before the terrorist trio arrived; he would now go deeper still. After presenting the package of Stephanie cigarettes in Tuzla, Ilitch asked Jovanovitch to carry the weapons on to Doboj, fearing that he would be arrested in Tuzla, where he was not known.

  Jovanovitch duly took the weapons and, with panache, hid them in a box of sugar, which he wrapped in white paper and bound with twine. While looking for Ilitch in Doboj, Jovanovitch at one point left the box hidden underneath his raincoat in the rail station waiting room; he later left it unattended, for a time, in a friend’s workshop. Ilitch, after finally taking the dangerous cargo to Sarajevo, placed it “in a small chest, which I locked, under a couch” in his mother’s bedroom. Fittingly, on the morning of 28 June 1914, Ilitch at last returned the “sugar” to Princip, Chabrinovitch, and Grabezh in the Vlajinitch pastry shop (minus several revolvers turned over to his own local recruits). Princip too
k a pistol, Chabrinovitch a bomb, and Grabezh one of each. The assassins were ready.9

  There was no great mystery about the route the archduke’s motorcade would follow that morning. Sarajevo was a small enough city, with obvious enough features, that one could have guessed at it without inside knowledge of the itinerary. Sarajevo is a low-lying valley town, split in the middle by the Miljăcke River (although “river” is a misnomer during the summer months, when it dries to a trickle) and surrounded by high hills that frame the town’s dramatic skyline. Any royal progress would likely proceed down the Appelquai, the main avenue running parallel to the Miljăcke.

  As if to confirm what everyone suspected already, in the same decree in which he had exhorted Sarajevo’s subjects to show the Habsburg heir their best Slavic hospitality, Mayor Fehim Effendi had also informed them of the itinerary of the archduke’s Sunday visit, including the Appelquai (to be traveled both to and from town hall), the idea being that residents and shop owners along the route should bedeck the streets with imperial flags and flowers. Many Sarajevans had gone the mayor one better, displaying large portraits of the archduke on their walls and windows. Judging from the ubiquitous displays of hospitality blanketing the city all weekend, and the overwhelming warmth with which the locals had greeted him during his impromptu Friday night tour of the bazaar, Franz Ferdinand had no reason to expect anything different on Sunday.

  But Sunday was different, because the travel itinerary—including both the route and the timing of the visit—had been published beforehand. The archduke’s private secretary, Paul Nikitsch-Boulles, later wrote that during the spontaneous Friday tour “any would-be murderer would have had a thousand chances to assault Franz Ferdinand, undefended.” And yet, although accessing the victim would have been easy, none of the assassins had made a move on Friday because they did not have their weapons. On Sunday, they did.10