On Sunday, 28 June 1914, six armed young men waited along the Appel Quay in Sarajevo for Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and four of them never did a thing. Nedeljko Čabrinović threw a bomb that bounced off the folded roof of the car. Gavrilo Princip fired twice with his head turned away, at a car that had stopped a few paces from him because nobody had told its driver where to go.
Most of what gets repeated about that morning is wrong or gentler than what happened, so this goes day by day, from the axle box that overheated at Chlumetz on 23 June to the bullet hole still in the car in Vienna. That evening's candlelit carriage, he says, is just like a grave. His wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, ranks behind the youngest archduchess at court, and a military tour is the one place she can stand beside him.
Princip, Čabrinović and Trifko Grabež leave Belgrade with four Browning pistols and six bombs from the Kragujevac arsenal, plus cyanide too old to kill anyone. Čabrinović's own father reports him to the police. The Serbian minister Jovan Jovanović warns Leon Biliński in Vienna, and Biliński tells nobody. Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević, known as Apis, promises the Black Hand's committee that he will call it off.
The route is printed in the papers weeks ahead. The detectives are left behind with Sophie's jewel boxes. After the bomb, Governor Oskar Potiorek turns down two companies of soldiers because they are not in parade uniform, the route changes, and nobody tells the chauffeur, Leopold Lojka. Count Franz Harrach stands guard on the left running board, and the shots come from the right. One bullet cuts the Archduke's jugular, the other goes into Sophie's abdomen, and he says it is nothing six or seven times, fainter each time. At the Konak nobody can open the clasp of his sash.
We also throw out the junk. There was no sandwich at Moritz Schiller's delicatessen, nobody who was there mentions a stalled engine, and the famous arrest photograph shows Ferdinand Behr. Then comes the bill: two coffins on a station floor at Pöchlarn while firemen eat sausages, Friedrich von Wiesner's telegram, an ultimatum that names the wrong secret society, and a priest's pencil that keeps Princip from the gallows while the men who helped him hang. He dies at Terezín on 28 April 1918.
The reconstructions are our own 3D work with plaster figures. The archive pictures are real.
📍 TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Six Armed Men on One Road
1:20 Just Like in a Grave: The Omens of June 1914
2:22 The Heir Nobody Wanted
3:54 The Marriage the Habsburg Court Never Forgave
6:39 Gavrilo Princip and the Black Hand
9:17 Assassins on a Government Discount
10:42 The Police Who Knew Everything
13:56 The Last Dinner at the Hotel Bosna
14:57 A Skull Used as an Inkwell
15:49 Sunday, 28 June 1914: No Cordon on the Route
17:30 The Bomb on the Appel Quay
20:18 Nobody Told the Driver
21:49 The Sandwich Myth and the Stalled Engine
23:03 Five Paces: Princip Fires
23:50 It Is Nothing: The Death of Franz Ferdinand
25:05 Seven Amulets and a Cut Sash at the Konak
28:23 Two Coffins on a Station Floor
31:08 The Ultimatum Names the Wrong Secret Society
32:11 The Trial and the Freemason Lie
34:07 The Priest's Pencil That Saved Princip
36:01 What Became of Apis, Potiorek and Lojka
37:23 The Death Car Curse
📚 SOURCES & FURTHER READING:
https://web.archive.org/web/2017/http://firstworldwar.com/source/harrachmemoir.htmhttps://archive.org/details/originsofworldwa01sidnhttps://archive.org/details/originsofworldwa02sidnhttps://mikedashhistory.com/2011/09/15/gavrilo-princips-sandwich/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/curses-archduke-franz-ferdinand-and-his-astounding-death-car-27381052/📋 ABOUT THIS VIDEO:
This video is about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on 28 June 1914 (June 28, 1914), the murder that dragged Europe into the First World War. It covers the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia in October 1908, Young Bosnia, the Black Hand (Union or Death), Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević known as Apis, Major Vojislav Tankosić, Milan Ciganović, Gavrilo Princip, Nedeljko Čabrinović, Trifko Grabež, Danilo Ilić, Muhamed Mehmedbašić, Vaso Čubrilović and Cvijetko Popović, Governor Oskar Potiorek, Count Franz Harrach, the chauffeur Leopold Lojka, the Gräf & Stift car A III 118, the Appel Quay, the Latin Bridge, Moritz Schiller's delicatessen, Vidovdan, the ultimatum of 23 July 1914, the trial in the Philipović barracks in October 1914, the execution of Apis at Salonika in 1917 and Princip's death at Terezín in April 1918. Habsburg monarchy, Austria-Hungary, Serbia, early 20th century, World War I history.
#FranzFerdinand #Sarajevo #GavriloPrincip #Habsburg #AustriaHungary #BlackHand #WorldWar1 #History