Tiny Histories

by Dixe Wills

  Two other American-registered ships, the freighter City of Memphis and the tanker Illinois, were sunk on 17 and 18 March, respectively. However, in their cases there was no loss of life, so although these sinkings added to an emerging picture of German aggression against America in the Atlantic, neither would have proved a casus belli – an act justifying a declaration of war.

  The Vigilancia, with its six American casualties, was a different matter altogether. Wilson hastily called a cabinet meeting for 20 March, and although the deaths of those on the merchant ship were not mentioned specifically, it was telling that those members who had been straining to keep the US out of the war now conceded with heavy hearts that such a course was not only inevitable but necessary for the nation’s self-defence. The following day the president convened Congress for 2 April, the earliest practicable date.

  Prior to the vote, news of three further losses of American ships had reached Congress. One was to a mine, another was thought to have been caused by a mine (only much later was it correctly attributed to a U-boat), and the third, a freighter called the Missourian, had not resulted in any deaths.

  In his address to Congress, Wilson couched his appeal for a declaration of war on Germany in broad idealistic terms, citing the defence of moral principles and the right of neutral nations to resist autocratic states. However, early on in his speech he also alluded to the events that had led him to the conclusion that a declaration of war was justified. These included the lives lost on the Vigilancia – at the time, the only known American casualties:

  American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how we will meet it.

  There followed four days of debates before a vote was taken on 6 June 1917. The resolution to declare war was carried, though eight senators and fifty congressmen voted against it.

  America’s entry into the Great War tipped the scales in favour of the Allies. The latter emerged victorious – if such a word can properly be used in relation to so ghastly and needless a conflict – the following year. However, President Wilson had brought his nation into the conflagration only with the greatest reluctance, fearing that the war would change the face of his nation regardless of the outcome. On the eve of the declaration, he told Frank I. Cobb, editor of the New York World and close confidant, ‘Once lead this people into war and they’ll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of our national life.’

  He had a point. Although far from being a peace-loving nation in the 141 years of its existence up to 1917, the United States has taken military action against more than fifty countries since heading into World War I. Furthermore, from 1950 onwards, barely a year has gone by in which the superpower hasn’t been bombing someone somewhere. Perhaps the new-found American enthusiasm for building walls instead is actually a step forward.

  Leopold Lojka makes a wrong turn

  It was the West Midlands philosopher Kevin Rowland who, in his seminal 1980 work ‘There, There, My Dear’, opined, ‘The only way to change things is to shoot men who arrange things.’ Never was this viewpoint more convincingly borne out than when Gavrilo Princip gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand on a Sarajevo street in June 1914, single-handedly triggering World War I.

  And yet it might all have been so different. Had it not been for a lack of communication between a chauffeur and an official regarding the route the archduke’s car should take, the assassination would almost certainly not have happened and the planet might thus have been spared not only World War I but World War II as well. Despite the fact that it occurred 1,000 miles away, no other slip-up in communications has had such a drastic effect on the history of the British Isles.

  It must be admitted that Europe was something of a tinderbox at the time. A network of alliances had been struck to bolster the continent’s competing powers, and tensions were running high on a number of fronts. In the two Balkan Wars of 1912–13, Serbia had wrested control of Kosovo and Macedonia from the Ottoman Empire. A few years beforehand, the little Balkan state of Bosnia had been annexed by the mighty (but creaking) Austro-Hungarian empire. This latter move had been particularly badly received by Bosnia’s Serb population, who were adamant that their country should become part of the Serbian kingdom instead.

  In the spring of 1914, a small group of young Bosnian Serbs based in Sarajevo discussed how they might bring about this drastic change in the political landscape. One of the members of the band was Gavrilo Princip, a small and rather puny 19-year-old from an obscure and isolated hamlet called Obljaj in the northwest of the country. His father, a peasant farmer who adhered to a strict Christian moral code, had fought against the Ottoman Empire as a young man. Gavrilo started school at the grand old age of nine and was found to be very adept at his studies. He moved to Sarajevo four years later to complete his education.

  There he secretly joined Mlada Bosna (Young Bosnia), a student organisation dedicated to integrating Bosnia into a Greater Serbia. He became a fan of Bogdan Žerajić, a 24-year-old Bosnian Serb who had committed suicide after making a failed attempt on the life of an Austro-Hungarian governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The adolescent would even spend whole nights at Žerajić’s grave and it is there that, in his own words, ‘I made up my mind sooner or later to perpetrate an outrage.’ Expelled from school in 1912 for having taken part in an anti-Austro-Hungarian demonstration, Princip walked roughly 170 miles to the Serbian capital Belgrade with the aim of enlisting to fight against the Ottoman Empire, as his father had done before him.

  Rejected because of his diminutive build, he eventually managed to get himself initiated into the arts of war by joining the Serbian Chetnik Organisation, who sent him to a training camp. Returning to Sarajevo, he experienced the 1913 Austro-Hungarian imposition of martial law – an attempt to clamp down on those with pro-Serbian sympathies.

  Bridling at this further indignation, Princip and his friends decamped to Belgrade and debated the most effective ways in which they could fight back. A golden opportunity would not be long in coming. The following year it was announced that Archduke Ferdinand – the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne – would visit Sarajevo to oversee military manœuvres and open a museum. The order had come from Emperor Franz Joseph, the archduke’s uncle. Ferdinand knew it was a risky endeavour, since assassination attempts by Serbs on high-ranking officials of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were not uncommon, and Sarajevo was likely to be home to plenty of citizens who wished to see the emperor’s heir dead. His wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, was only too aware of the danger and insisted on accompanying her husband.

  Danilo Ilić, a member of the suitably Machiavellian-sounding secret society Black Hand, recruited two Serbians and one young man from Herzegovina for the assassination. When Princip and two of his friends contacted Serbian military intelligence, they were added to the team. Pistols, bombs, maps, cyanide and further training were supplied by the military intelligence top brass: Dragutin Dimitrijević (commonly known as Apis) and Vojislav Tankosić. These two were cold-blooded killers who had carried out the 1903 assassinations of the Serbian King Alexander I Obrenović and his wife, Queen Draga, in order to place the more nationalistic Peter I on the throne. It was Apis who later admitted to having made the decision to assassinate Franz Ferdinand. Princip, his two friends and their weapons entered Bosnia on 1 June.

  On the morning of the fatal day – 28 June 1914 – Ilić places his assassins along the route that the archduke’s motorcade would take. They are Muhamed Mehmedbašić and Vaso Čubrilović, who are both in their late twenties; and Cvjetko Popović, Trifko Grabež, Nedeljko Čabrinović and Gavrilo Princip, all of whom are either 18 or 19.

  Cele
brating their fourteenth wedding anniversary, Archduke Ferdinand and Duchess Sophie arrive at Sarajevo railway station. They are met by a line-up of six cars. The couple is to ride in the third, an open-top Gräf & Stift 28/32 PS Double Phaeto. Aside from a specially-assigned security officer, who takes the leading car, security is left to the local police, who are rather thinly resourced. A suggestion that troops should line the route has been turned down on the grounds that their presence might offend those citizens of Sarajevo who are loyal to the Austro-Hungarian regime.

  Following a cursory inspection of a military barracks, the archduke and his retinue head for a reception at the town hall by way of the Appel Quay along the north bank of the River Miljacka. The cars pass Mehmedbašić and Čubrilović but neither react. However, when the motorcade reaches Nedeljko Čabrinović, he throws his bomb. It bounces off the back of the Archduke’s car. The bomb’s 10-second delay means that it doesn’t explode until after the following car is passing over it. Its occupants are badly injured, as are a dozen or more members of the public. Čabrinović downs his cyanide and, just to ensure that he kills himself, jumps into the river. However, his belt-and-braces approach comes to nought. The cyanide has gone beyond its expiry date and has no effect, and the River Miljacka is only a few inches deep, so fails to drown him. He is immediately arrested, receiving a thorough kicking from the crowd for good measure. After a delay to give aid to the wounded, the five undamaged cars continue on their way to the town hall, unmolested by the final three would-be assassins waiting along Appel Quay.

  At the town hall, Franz Ferdinand is understandably vexed and chastises the Sarajevo mayor, Fehim Curčić, for the less-than-congenial welcome he has just received. In the meantime, the five undetected conspirators disperse. Princip takes himself off a short way to Moritz Schiller’s delicatessen, near a bridge over the Miljacka. This is on the route the motorcade should take later that morning if there is no change in plan. It is difficult to believe, however, that Princip harbours much hope that the archduke’s party will stick to its itinerary.

  Here we must pull away from the drama for a moment to deal with a 21st-century urban myth that surrounds the climax of the day’s events. It is widely believed that Princip had gone into Moritz Schiller’s delicatessen to purchase a sandwich. ‘If only Princip had not felt peckish that day, and thus had not decided to go and buy a sandwich,’ the commonly accepted story goes, ‘he would not have been in the right place to shoot the archduke and World War I would have been averted.’ It’s a compelling story but, unfortunately, there is no contemporary evidence whatsoever that supports it, and plenty that makes it highly unlikely. Furthermore, no one ate sandwiches in Sarajevo in 1914.

  By dint of some detective work, historian Mike Dash appears to have discovered the origin of this popular misconception. A novel written by Brazilian television host Jô Soares and titled Twelve Fingers (in its English translation of 2001) stars a protagonist called Dimitri who magically appears at major flashpoints of the 20th century. When he turns up in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, he notices Gavrilo Princip emerging from a market, sandwich in hand. Dimitri engages briefly him in conversation, during which Princip bats away an enquiry about his presence there by claiming he’s simply eating a sandwich. The two men part and a little while later Princip carries out the assassination.

  The ‘sandwich’ element to the story was inadvertently popularised by a documentary called Days That Shook the World, which was broadcast by the BBC in 2003. It has since become one of the great ‘strange but true’ events of our times, despite being ‘strange but false’.

  Anyway, back at the town hall, the mayor and Archduke having both given speeches, there is a debate as to what the party should do next. The archduke’s chamberlain favours holing up there and waiting for troops to arrive to protect them. However, the governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina, General Oskar Potiorek, who had been in the archduke’s car during the attack, pooh-poohs the idea, allegedly snapping, ‘Do you think that Sarajevo is full of assassins?’ Ferdinand expresses a desire to go to the hospital, where the injured members of his entourage have been taken and the motorcade duly sets off on its final calamitous journey.

  It is at this point that the fateful miscommunication occurs. Potiorek has decided that the cars should head back along Appel Quay to get to the hospital. Unfortunately, in the turmoil, he does not pass this information to Leopold Lojka, who is at the wheel of the Archduke’s car, or any of the other drivers. As a result, Lojka turns off Appel Quay onto Franz Joseph Street. He is following the driver in front of him, who is himself following the route to the museum that the Archduke had been intending to open before the plans were thrown into chaos by Čabrinović’s bomb.

  The disaster might have been averted even then, if Lojka had carried on driving. Instead, Potiorek shouts at him that he has taken a wrong turn and the chauffeur duly pulls to a halt. By chance, the car has stopped directly in front of Moritz Schiller’s delicatessen. Hardly able to believe his luck, Gavrilo Princip draws his Browning pistol. He steps out into the road and begins loosing off into the open-topped car. The first bullet slices the archduke’s jugular vein. Sophie throws herself in front of her husband to protect him. The second shot, though intended for Potiorek, hits the duchess in the stomach. (Some versions of the event have the first shot hitting Sophie and the second hitting her husband but the result is the same.) Lojka drives off, desperately making for Potiorek’s residence so that the couple can receive medical attention. However, they fade together. Sophie succumbs en route, with Franz dying shortly afterwards.

  Like Čabrinović, Princip takes his cyanide and meets with the same result. His attempt to shoot himself is foiled by a man named Smail Spahovic. He is beaten up by bystanders, arrested by the police and hauled off to custody.

  The chain of events that took place as a result of Leopold Lojka’s seemingly innocuous right turn – and the sheer speed of those events – is staggering. Naturally, Serbia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell out, all but instantly. The former refused to open an investigation into the killings. Austria-Hungary, with backing from its German ally, sought to exploit the situation by delivering a list of demands to Serbia on 23 July. This became known as the July Ultimatum. The Serbian authorities were given 48 hours to arrest those involved in the plot and take other specified steps to ensure the nation remained on a friendly footing with the empire.

  Serbia, backed by Russia, gave a somewhat ambiguous response, agreeing to a couple of points but giving obfuscatory responses to many of the others. The Austro-Hungarian Empire duly cut off diplomatic relations. The following day, Serbian troops crossed the Danube into Austro-Hungarian territory, but were repulsed by soldiers firing above their heads. The next day, on 28 July, the empire declared war on Serbia. This immediately drew Russia and France into the conflict. They were signatories with Serbia to a secret Triple Alliance treaty of 1892, in which all the parties agreed to back each other militarily if attacked. This in turn triggered the mobilisation of the German army in support of Austria-Hungary. The first shots of what would become known as The Great War were fired barely a month after the shots from Gavrilo Princip’s Browning. The German attack on neutral Belgium on the night of 3–4 August gave Britain a reason for getting involved. In the Treaty of London, signed in 1839, Britain had pledged to defend Belgium if she were attacked.

  It’s arguable that no single act committed on British soil has had the same dramatic effect on the nation as the shooting of Archduke Ferdinand in faraway Sarajevo. Certainly, no single slaying, before or since, has had such a disastrous outcome in terms of loss of life. The ‘war to end all wars’ killed an estimated 15–18 million people, of which around a million were from the United Kingdom (which included the whole of Ireland at the time). The Treaty of Versailles – signed after the war’s conclusion – impoverished and emasculated Germany, a state of affairs that was instrumental in paving the way for Adolf Hitler to come to power. He rapidly plunged the planet into a second
conflagration, bringing about another 50–70 million violent deaths and speeding up the development and first use of the atom bomb.

  Gavrilo Princip was not executed, as might be expected, because at 19 he was too young to receive the death penalty (he fell short by a mere 27 days). Instead he was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment in the Terezín fortress (also known as Theresienstadt) in Bohemia. The other teenagers in the plot received between 13 and 20 years. Five older members were sentenced to death by hanging.

  Princip was not destined to serve a great deal of his term. Kept permanently in chains and in solitary confinement, in the insanitary and spartan conditions prevalent in the fortress his health deteriorated (as did that of Čabrinović and Grabež, who both died of tuberculosis in the early months of 1916). In a famous photograph taken of him at the prison, a sunken-eyed and diminished Princip is almost unrecognisable as the bold, handsome figure pictured outside the courthouse during the trial of the conspirators. He either came down with skeletal tuberculosis in prison or had already contracted it before he arrived. Whichever it was, the conditions of his confinement allowed the wasting disease to flourish, and doctors were forced to amputate his left arm. Princip died on 28 April 1918 at the age of 23, with the war he had brought about still raging beyond his prison walls.

  A British soldier shows mercy to a future German Chancellor

  It has become something of a cliché that anyone with the power to travel back in time has some sort of bounden duty to attempt to kill Adolf Hitler before 3 September 1939 and thus avert World War II. Leaving aside the difficulties of changing the course of history once it has already occurred, it’s curious that such a fatwa is rarely declared on Joseph Stalin (killer of at least 20 million and possibly as many as 60 million of his fellow humans), Mao Tse Tung (at least 45 million) or Jim Davidson.