The Sarajevo Security Fiasco That Led to WWI

A teenager with a pistol is the famous face of Sarajevo 1914, but we can’t stop there. We rewind to the Balkans at the turn of the century, where the Ottoman Empire is fading, Austria-Hungary is tightening its grip, and Serbian nationalism is burning hot under the weight of long memory, faith, and identity. The result is a region primed for a spark, especially after the 1908 annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the rising belief that someone has to strike first.

We trace Gavrilo Princip’s journey from a poor rural childhood into the churn of modern ideas, café politics, and secret societies like the Black Hand. We also zoom in on Franz Ferdinand, a conservative royal who still understands his empire is brittle, plus the love story with Sophie that makes their Sarajevo trip unusually meaningful. Then Oskar Potiorek enters the frame, the governor tasked with protecting them, whose decisions set up a disaster that feels equal parts tragic and absurd.

A bomb that injures bystanders. Cyanide that doesn’t work. A dry river meant for an escape. And finally, the infamous route confusion that puts the royal car right where Princip is waiting. We walk through how miscommunication and overconfidence turn a tense visit into the assassination that helps trigger World War I, and we close by looking forward, from Yugoslavia’s creation to its later breakup and Shawn’s memories of performing in Bosnia amid the long shadow of conflict.

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Transcript

Cold Open And Host Banter

Craig 0:03

You're listening to Basket Traffic. Hi everyone. Join us while we go back over a century to the Balkans. Many people have historically given credit to Gavrillo Princep for sparking World War I. And maybe it's true. But couldn't it also be true that a man named Oscar Potiorek was so incompetent in protecting Franz Ferdinand that he may in fact deserve the title of holy cow, you idiot? Look what you just did. Let's get to it. Let's go find out.

Shawn 1:05

Wow, it's like we were here yesterday.

Susie 1:09

Two minutes ago.

Shawn 1:11

It's good to see you guys. It is.

Susie 1:13

We got new socks on today. Got brand.

Shawn 1:15

That's what's different about you.

Susie 1:17

It is fucking happy.

Shawn 1:18

I thought you were a little taller. That's feeling. So last night we were in here, it was quite crowded. We had a lot of people in here. Yeah. That's right. And that was because we had your daughters in here.

Susie 1:30

Yeah, they came from Fussama.

Shawn 1:32

They were trying to take the room back, I think. It was like storming the room.

Susie 1:37

Little takeover.

Craig 1:38

They had a great time. They loved it.

Shawn 1:39

Yeah.

Craig 1:40

And we might have them come back again.

Shawn 1:42

No, they're very, very smart young ladies, but I felt outnumbered by your family. I felt outnumbered. There was too many of you. Well, yeah. And then you can see like, you know, your daughter's turning into Craig here with the literal analysis of they're like, yeah, well, that rock wasn't uh it wasn't the right rock.

Craig 2:03

I know.

Shawn 2:03

And Craig's like, well, in the mountain range. Or it was not correct with the geography of the um. And I'm like, yeah, you know, also the lions were singing Broadway show tunes. So that didn't link up either.

Susie 2:16

You didn't we didn't have our third daughter here because she and I, when they go all off on their analytics, um, she and I are like, I mean, yeah. Like, I want to go in the other room over there. We're gonna go talk about something else.

Craig 2:31

Well, if it makes you feel any better, there are no Broadway songs in the story that I'm about to tell you. Okay.

Shawn 2:36

Oh, but I can write some Broadway songs about this.

Susie 2:39

Write it

The Balkan Powder Keg Explained

Susie 2:40

in. Yeah.

Craig 2:40

Well, if you can, I'm listening. The story that I want to talk about is a complicated one. It's fascinating, it's lots of twists and turns. I want to take you to the Balkans, and we're gonna go back to the turn of the century, the turn of the 19th century.

Susie 2:54

Oh, my favorite time.

Craig 2:55

Oh, yes, I love that too.

Susie 2:57

I love the turn of the century.

Craig 2:59

So, this is a story about religious conflict and ethnic tensions, and it's about empires that are dying, but fighting to the last breath. It's also a story about fascinating and eccentric people, and a story about a world rapidly and fundamentally changing.

Shawn 3:13

Okay, so the just for my own sake, the Balkans is uh Croatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, what do we say? Macedonia, Serbia, and say Bulgaria? I didn't say Bulgaria. Bulgaria.

Craig 3:27

We are going to explore this part of the world through the eyes of a few people, but mostly through the eyes of a man named Oskar Potiorek, a man known as the person who failed to protect the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz Ferdinand.

Shawn 3:41

Now, as most people likely know, great name for a band, by the way, Franz Ferdinand. Yeah, that is one of the best names.

Craig 3:48

Most people likely know. This leads to a sequence of events leading to the outbreak of the Great War, which was from the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. And the Great War will be so catastrophic that millions will die, and so will the empires that are so desperately trying to hold on.

Shawn 4:01

Oh, so a nice light story. Yeah, exactly.

Craig 4:04

The war will put a nail into the coffin of monarchy and give birth to a new era of capitalism and constitutions and rights and democracy, but we're not going to get into that because we don't have time.

Shawn 4:13

I got 20 minutes, I'm double parked out front.

Craig 4:16

Exactly, and that's what we're trying to talk really fast.

Shawn 4:18

So we should probably get out of here, actually.

Craig 4:20

So let's focus instead on Potiorek and his endlessly stupid decisions. If I was a betting man, I'd might conspire to say that he was actually trying to get Ferdinand killed, but I don't think it's just true. It's just not true. So Potiorek was born in 1853 in what is now Austria. He ends up uh joining the Austro-Hungarian army. Home of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Oh, yes, and rose through the ranks as an officer, and he ended up gaining a reputation as a strict and loyal imperial officer. And by 1911, he was appointed governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which Austria-Hungary annexed in 1908. And that is a very important point to remember.

Shawn 5:02

So they annexed it from it was the Ottoman Empire before that. For like 400 years, right? That was a big Ottoman. They were huge there.

Craig 5:11

Yeah, so this is a story where you have Can you say Herzegovina again? Oh, geez. Okay.

Shawn 5:16

Herzegovina.

Susie 5:18

I like it.

Craig 5:19

Now let's set the stage here. The Balkans. So after World War One, a new country called Yugoslavia was born. Uh its intention was to kind of unite all these South Slavs. Yugoslavia quite literally translates into South Slavs. Now, geographically, as you mentioned, there are Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, Slovenians, Montenegrins, and uh Macedonians, Bulgarians. And so South Slavs share linguistic, cultural, and historical ties. There's also what are called West Slavs, and they're Poles, Czech, Slovaks, and East Slavs, which are Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians. But this story is about focusing on South Slavs. However, it gets a little bit more complicated when you factor in religion. The region includes Orthodox Christians, it includes Catholic Christians and Bosniaks who are Islamic.

Susie 6:07

It's a very definition of a melting pot in that part of the world for hundreds of years.

Craig 6:12

So the Ottoman Empire ruled the Balkans between the 1300s and 1800s and basically ruled much of the South Slav region, influencing the culture and the politics. So this is a story about Slavs rising up against the Ottomans, and now they're having to deal with a new influence from the north, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was a dual monarchy. The Hungarians were not really happy with Austrian rule, but in the end, in 1867, the same year Canada became a country, kind of came to a compromise. Franz Joseph the Emperor would become Emperor of Austria and the King of Hungary. And so it would be the dual monarchy where they would have joint army control and foreign policy, but basically they would be independent of each other. Now the Ottoman Empire that had ruled for hundreds of years was now becoming known as the Sick Man of Europe, and its control in the Balkan region was waning, and Serbians began taking advantage of this weakness by going to battle. And having never forgotten about their defeat at the hands of the Ottomans in 1389 on June 28th.

Shawn 7:14

Still bothers them. Yes. A long time ago. No. Don't bring that up if you're there, dude.

Susie 7:21

Not at dinner. It is not at dinner at convo.

Craig 7:24

It's called the Battle of Kosovo. It was considered a national tragedy. As a result, June 28th, a very important date to remember. We're going to come back to this. It's known as St. Vidus Day. It's that Orthodox holiday during which Serbs pause to commemorate their 1389 defeat by the Ottoman Turks at Kosovo. And it's particularly important because they remember this one particular dude called Milos Obelec, who following the battle crept into the Sultan's tent. The Sultan of Turkey stabbed him to death before being himself hacked to bits by the Ottoman guards.

Shawn 8:01

Yeah, not easy to uh put a lock on a tent. Uh, you really got to safeguard that thing.

Susie 8:07

Go in. Yeah.

Shawn 8:09

Yeah. I mean, what are you going to do?

Craig 8:10

Yeah.

Susie 8:11

Guards on the outside.

Craig 8:12

So, Sean, as you mentioned, with these long memories, it's not surprising to learn that Serbians by the early 1900s had kind of whipped themselves up into a nationalistic frenzy to free themselves from their Muslim overlords. But they also had a new threat from the north, and that was the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And that is because they had annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908. And so Serbia next door felt that they were next. So let's just quickly recap.

Shawn 8:40

Tents are not good if you're going to be murdered. You probably don't want to stay in a tent. There's the first recap.

Craig 8:46

That's that's actually a good recap.

Susie 8:47

Lots of religious conflict.

Shawn 8:49

Yeah, they uh they hold a grudge in that part of the world. They do not forget things. No, no.

Craig 8:54

Okay.

Susie 8:55

For that.

Craig 8:57

So you got the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in the north, ruled by Franz Joseph, who is Franz Ferdinand's uncle, and it's a little bit more fragile than they want people to know. You got the Ottoman Empire that's waning in power, and you have this rising, growing Serbian-Slavic national identity. So feeling vulnerable, Austria-Hungary needed to make sure that Serbians wouldn't become a direct threat to its rule. And so there's this tension that takes place in this region.

Gavrilo Princip And Youth Radicalization

Craig 9:26

Now let's change direction and introduce a different individual. His name is Gavrilo Princip. Princep grew up in a very poor peasant household. He was essentially a serf in the ports of Gavinia. And he was an Orthodox.

Shawn 9:47

Somebody get Susie a napkin over her face. A cocktail napkin, preferably.

Craig 9:54

Not sure what's going on here. As an Orthodox Christian, he was uh I don't know if he was really meant to be a peasant. He was kind of a frail boy, but he was bright and showed great potential. Now, Sarajevo at this time, the capital of Bosnia, is being increasingly occupied and controlled by Austria-Hungary, and they're bringing in this infrastructure and also education. And so they were offering education, and so they find out that this is a case, and they're like, okay, let's give our boy an opportunity.

Susie 10:25

Is anyone meant to be a serf or a peasant?

Craig 10:27

Well, that's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. So dad's not really into this idea of his son leaving uh the farm, but mom is. Mom seems to be keen, and so father and son quite literally walk to Sarajevo. I mean, they quite literally crossing a large chunk of their country, not by tram, not by bus or anything.

Shawn 10:45

No Uber, no Uber, yeah.

Susie 10:47

That nails your peasantom when you're only a walker.

Craig 10:50

Uh walker, yeah.

Susie 10:51

You're all you got.

Craig 10:52

And they arrive at Sarajevo, dad drops them off. Princep's 13 years old.

Shawn 10:58

Can imagine he goes to the arcade or something like that. That's a coffee, plays Pac-Man for eight hours.

Craig 11:08

Sarajevo was must have been a culture shock for Princep. I mean, the city naturally had a heavy Islamic fluence and feel, but it was also Catholic and Orthodox Christian. Interestingly, the city was also becoming increasingly more Catholic as the Austrians began taking more and more control. And Princep found this threatening, but he also found the for him this kind of peculiar dress, the turbans of the Islamic culture and style. And so seeing all these mosques in the city as well.

Shawn 11:35

So a lot of people refer Sarajevo to like a Jerusalem type of a city because it is so has so much diversity in terms of the different neighborhoods, yeah. I mean, it sounds like very much like that.

Susie 11:48

How long were you over there?

Shawn 11:50

I can't talk about it. I was it was in the army, so it's all classified.

Susie 11:54

Later. It's classified separate.

Craig 11:56

We'll get out of you later, okay? So ends up doing quite well in school when he's there. Yeah, you can imagine. I mean, you're 13 years old, you you don't have uh the ability to call, you know, your cell phone and call dad and reach out and he got the high score on the Pac-Man game, too.

Susie 12:12

So no FaceTiming, Daddy.

Craig 12:15

This success in school didn't last very long. Uh as the months turn into years, he's becoming increasingly um, I guess, disillusioned or frustrated or something. Who knows what's going on in this little young man's life, but his grades start dropping. And let's just just take a quick little stop here just to understand the importance of grades. Well, yeah, I mean that too. But let's just let's take uh account the kind of shifting that's taking place from the 1800s to the 1900s. The feudal system is coming to an end, monarchies are dying, uh, and being replaced by a liberal capitalist society. Uh, we're seeing people calling for constitutions and civil rights and representative government and union and working classes are challenging the old order.

Shawn 13:05

And Seacrest replaced um Sajak on Wheel of Fortune. That was devastating for a lot of people. Oh, sorry, wrong era. Wrong era. Sorry, different sorry.

Craig 13:14

We got progress in science, industry, education. I mean, people are migrating, and this is kind of the new globalization. And people are producing food for cheaper. Uh, medicines is also keeping people from dying. And so you got this massive population growth. Universal education is fundamentally changing societies. And so people are also identifying themselves as these nations are forming. They're no longer identifying themselves as this you know, person from this peasant town or village, but they're now identifying themselves as you know, Italian or German or Austrian or Serbian. And so you can imagine that psychology and sociology are just kind of gaining ground. Sigmund Freud, for example.

Shawn 14:00

Everybody wants to sleep with their mother. Oh, sorry, it's another episode.

Craig 14:06

You can imagine also, even though the nuke was first used in 1945, but people are starting to figure out radioactive material near the end of the 1800s. And this is really, really messing with people's minds because before you would not understand things beyond what you can see. And so molecules and atoms are becoming a thing and and the building blocks of life, and they're totally transforming people's understanding of how the world operates. Life's moving fast now. You know, it's no longer slow peasant life, it's the hustle bustle of city life. And so Gavrilo Princeap, he's getting influenced because cities are also a place where ideas spread, and so he's getting influenced by anarchism and socialism and nationalism. And he's a really big reader. He's voracious. And so he's he represents this kind of like new generation of kids who come from the peasant world, but they're now getting educated, they're literate, they're reading, and they're just kind of like consuming an insane amount of information, and that's gonna have a sh shape their ideas. And he was also apparently quite a boastful individual, boastful of his intellect.

Shawn 15:21

Is this not tying into our conversation about adolescence and about incel culture with young men? Absolutely. So we're just repeating and going into this.

Susie 15:30

Well, I feel like cycle so much of this is cyclical. Like the change in the world now and the change in technology and how fast everyone's progressing, like all of those things. It's just a repeat in history at a different level.

Shawn 15:45

Absolutely. 100%.

Susie 15:46

Yeah.

Craig 15:53

So I think what happens to Princip gets really quite disillusioned and he ends up leaving Sarajevo and goes to Belgrade, Serbia, expecting to see things just as good as they were in Serjevo, but things aren't as good economically. Serbia has freed itself from Ottoman rule in 1878, and now the effects from that withdrawal of their Muslim landowners is now they never quite really recovered from it. So it's here though that when he really experiences radicalization, he gets caught up in this kind of Serbian nationalism of Orthodox Christians. And it's it's also where he crosses paths with one of the many secret societies that exist. And the most infamous one, of course, is the black hand. The black hand.

Shawn 16:35

I I voted for the orange hand. But no, nobody liked that. Nobody liked it. That's good.

Craig 16:44

So it's here where he gets he gets training to use weapons, and it must have been quite an experience for him. He's just kind of surrounded by these guys who are a few years older. He really idolizes them. And so you have these kind of young men who are very impressionable. And as you guys said, it's just kind of like it could be very well a version of incels. You know, uh Princep didn't drink, they had difficulty uh attracting girls. Uh apparently Prince a bit entitled. Well, and apparently Princep himself was rejected by a woman the night before the assassination. Oh, that's rough. Yeah. Yeah.

Shawn 17:24

That is rough. I have been there, man. Trust me. Night before an assassination. Um, I was broken up with. And it is devastating.

Craig 17:35

So these young Bosnians, of whom Princep basically was its leader, they didn't hold steady jobs instead of relied on their families for handouts. They slept on each other's floors and spent hours sipping coffee in cafes while discussing.

Shawn 17:48

It's all they do there is drink coffee for five hours and talk about life and smoke cigarettes and hookah. Hookah's with the flavored tobacco. Right. A lot of that stuff going on. Anyways, I digress.

Craig 17:59

Yeah, no, that's good. And so I I want you to understand that just preceding this, there were the Balkan Wars of 1912, 1913, where it kind of gave not to confuse with the Vulcan wars.

Shawn 18:09

Oh, uh, which were much later.

Craig 18:12

That's right.

Shawn 18:12

Yeah. But just as good.

Craig 18:13

These Balkan Wars basically gave Serbia a shot in the arm. And so Princep and his fellow young Bosnians kind of see their role in applying the final blow against the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The question is, what when would their chance be? Now, the Serbian government was not necessarily directly involved, but there were apparently parts of members of the Serbian government who were actually offering support, help, weapons to the secret societies, including the Black Hand, and this is where they managed to get armed and they got the training there in Belgrade. And now they just needed to find out when their opportunity would arise. Well, it turns out that the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz Ferdinand, was to visit Serievo, and this was highly publicized.

Shawn 18:59

It was like a big tour. He was doing a worldwide tour.

Craig 19:02

Yeah, in a sense,

Franz Ferdinand And Imperial Tensions

Craig 19:03

yeah, I guess he could live. So Franz Ferdinand. So June, I'd be there in June of 1914, and this their whole trip would be publicized as the route, and so people could be there and and and witness and and and and shoot at him.

Shawn 19:19

Basically. Come on down, bring your weapons, folks.

Craig 19:23

So Prince of and his gang now had their chance. Armed with pistols, crude hand grenades, and cyanide. They from Serbia, they sneak back into the city.

Susie 19:32

Cyanide, what a hit.

Craig 19:34

They sneak back into the city.

Shawn 19:35

You know, kids do ecstasy now, but back then they were doing cyanide.

Craig 19:39

Let's just talk about Ferdinand a bit. He's an interesting dude. Uh as expected from someone who was part of the monarchy, he was just very conservative figure. He was also part of a younger generation of royals who saw the world a little bit differently. They were kind of with the changing of the times. Unlike his uncle Franz Joseph, who was just old and just trying to hold the empire together. However, Ferdinand traveled quite extensively. You know, he saw the world, he saw how the world was changing, and like America that had just kind of started recovering from the Civil War. It it kind of extinguished any indigenous resistance, and its capitalist economy was growing, and then so was its population. And so it was a new, you could see a new power.

Susie 20:20

It wasn't a ton of super world travel. Like it took you six months to get to America, didn't it? That's like you're going for a year to go check it out.

Shawn 20:28

Yeah, and if you were on the Titanic, it took you even longer to get there.

Susie 20:31

Yep.

Shawn 20:35

I'm just saying. Nope. No, it's true. It's a fact.

Craig 20:40

That's good. So yeah, so here's this Ferdinand, and he's like, he's recognizing that within his own borders of his own empire, there's some of this kind of enormous internal ethnic challenges. And he knew, and I want to emphasize his point, he could not go to war with even with Serbs to the south.

Susie 20:57

This is where it's a financial thing, do you think, or was it just strictly religious?

Craig 21:02

Well, uh things are financial, but you know, there were so many different ethnicities within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I mean, you're just sort of like trying to hold them together, and it's just you're not going to fracture them with a war and make them choose. And that's the thing. You just do one wrong thing and it could lead to a catastrophic response. So you kind of get worried about these things.

Susie 21:19

So go travel to America for a year and then you're out.

Craig 21:23

So this is where I would love to have a time machine. And I would love to bring Gabriela Princip and France Ferdinand together. I'd like to kind of hijack them, right?

Shawn 21:32

You and I are so different. Because if I had a time machine, that's the last thing I would be doing.

Craig 21:39

Okay. But anyway. Fair point. So, because what I would like to do is bring these two guys together and make them realize that they're actually on the same page. You see, Princep thinks that Franz Ferdinand, when he was to become the emperor, he was going to basically had this expansionist plan, and Serbia was on its, you know, would. To be on the chopping block. But in fact, the opposite was true. Franz Ferdinand kept holding at bay many people like Count Franz Konrad von Holtzendorff, who was the chief of staff of the military, who kept pushing for war. And this is a guy who Offendorf who believed in this idea that if you don't destroy those around you, you will be destroyed. And so, but the reality is that they were both on the same page, but they don't know this. And so this is going to lead to this kind of this tragedy. Now, this is where Patioric comes in. He was given the position of governor of Bosnia-Herzegovina and was ultimately the man responsible for the safety of Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, during their visit. Let's set the stage here. This was a very special occasion for Ferdinand and Sophie. They were able to be together publicly. You see, Sophie came from an ancient aristocratic family, but her rank was viewed as a commoner, according to Habsburg family law. So you can't really marry the Archduke and a commoner. Obviously, Franz Joseph said no way. But love. Love persists.

Susie 23:07

Love prevailed.

Shawn 23:08

And so And Sophie made a choice. She made a choice to love. That's right.

Susie 23:16

To follow her love. To follow her heart.

Craig 23:18

And Ferdinand wasn't going to give up on it.

Shawn 23:20

So it was Sophie's choice, is what you're getting at.

Craig 23:26

So what does this mean? They don't give up. Ferdinand loves Sophie. And so he persists, pushes his uncle. His uncle eventually gives in, but it's a compromise, and it's a it's a harsh compromise. She will never be treated as an equal. Her rank will never be equal to the archdukes. And so what that would look like is that their children would never be able to take the throne. Anytime they would be in public, public ceremonies, uh, she would not be able to sit beside him. She would be back, way, way back.

Shawn 23:59

Nosebleeds.

Craig 24:00

Nosebleeds, yeah. Way at the top. Hello. She could also never become empress, but love prevailed. They accepted those terms.

Shawn 24:08

Okay, no more love prevailed comments. All right. All right, all right. But news is this.

Susie 24:14

Always the big butt. Yeah.

Craig 24:17

Franz liked the big butts. Jeez. These rules did not apply on occasions such as his trip to Sarajevo, where he was invited in his official capacity as inspector general of the army. So it was Potiorek who gave him the invite to inspect the army. And so this was an opportunity where they can relish their freedom. So he got to have a Sophie time, Sophie got her France time, and they both got to be treated the way they believed they were deserved, and they would be sitting in their car side by side. After having spent some lovely time in a small resort town west of Sarievo, they finally arrived to the city. They were apparently having the time of their lives. Two days before the infamous day of June 28th, the Archduke went to witness the army maneuvers in the mountains south of Sarajevo. He was incredibly pleased with what he saw. And so you can imagine Ferdinand, you kind of had if if we were to use today's parlance, would be probably described as a bit described as a bit anal retentive.

Shawn 25:20

Oh, wow. So there's something you got in common with him. No wonder you're doing the story. Yeah. Uh-huh. Wow. It's a personal hero of his. God, if I had a time machine, I'd go back. Dude.

Craig 25:36

Oh, I expected that. Fernand is this kind of guy who kind of relishes in the order of things. His uniform was always immaculate and everything polished and positioned exactly as it should be. He would have these perfectly winged mustaches, which his servants greased to perfection every day, to really demonstrate this kind of eccentricity of his character. He was a an avid hunter. He obsessively catalogued every one of his kills and the manner in which it happened.

Shawn 26:09

Oh well, that's not creepy at all.

Craig 26:11

No, no. Up towards something about 300,000 kills. And he recorded about animals or no, humans.

Susie 26:18

Humans. Well, fuck, you never know. It's only the turn of the century.

Craig 26:23

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm thinking more like deer, boar, pheasants, spares, tigers, other exotics. But he did meticulously keep records, apparently about 272,000 of them. So that kind of goes to show you the kind of character that France Ferdinand is. So let's talk about the assassination.

The Assassination Plan Unravels

Craig 26:42

So the day of June 28th was all planned out. This was the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, so it was a very important day for Serbs. And so for the from the train, the motorcade was to drive along the main boulevard, the past the book depository and around the grassy knoll.

Shawn 27:00

Yes? Oh, sorry, wrong assassination.

Susie 27:02

Wrong assassin. Okay.

Craig 27:03

We can do that one another time. So he's they're on the main boulevard, the Apple Key, which paralleled the muddy river, the Miliaka. Their destination was ultimately the city hall, where Ferdinand was to give a speech. Now of the six cars in the motorcade, Sophie and Ferdinand were in the third. Potiorek is part of this motorcade, and he explicitly gave the orders for the army not to enter the city in case of sending the message of Austria-Hungary of being kind of an occupying force. He only had at his disposal about 120 police officers to offer protection.

Shawn 27:35

So the B team. Yeah, no, we're not expecting anything. You guys just take it easy, relax.

Craig 27:42

Yeah.

Susie 27:42

We've got backup just in case you fail.

Craig 27:45

So while the motorcade advanced along the boulevard, unbeknownst to most everyone, imagine the scene here. You've got this main boulevard, very, very beautiful. You got probably hundreds, and if not thousands, of people lined up wanting to see a lot of pomp and circumstance. And there's six assassins, and one of them is named Trebrinovich. He had with him apparently a pistol, a hand grenade, and a vial of cyanide. Now these guys are young men. They're not necessarily trained killers, although they did practice shooting, but they're not really well-trained kids or idealistic young men who have plans. Zealots? Yeah. Zealots would the good term, yeah. Good term, Sheesh. Thanks. And now Chabrinovich has his moment. Uh he sees the yellow and black flag daffs of Ferdinand's car as part of the training. The plan was to kill, then down the cyanide while jumping into the river Milyakka.

Shawn 28:47

Because you don't want to do it the other way. Because if you have the cyanide first, then you know it doesn't quite work out.

Craig 28:53

So the idea was that you would then bite down on the vial of cyanide, jump into the river, and the river would kind of wash you away, and there would be no way to link the assassins to secret societies, and particularly the Serbian government. But the river, it was June, apparently it was dry, summer, summer.

Shawn 29:11

There's no water in that river. There's no robber. Yeah, you might want to think about some of these things. Not the best planning. Yeah. It's a dry river bed.

Craig 29:20

There was an element of comedy there.

Shawn 29:21

Can you see the conversation? Uh hey, boss, yeah, just so you know, uh, there's no water in that river.

Craig 29:26

So exactly what Tribinovich does. He he he jumps, leaps out into the river, falls into basically, you know, a few inches.

Shawn 29:36

Oh, how embarrassing.

Craig 29:37

Yeah. And it's a muddy river. So he's now like awkwardly trying to, he's stuck in the mud. He's and and it doesn't take long for his clothes are dirty.

Shawn 29:46

Yeah. I'm just saying, you I mean, they don't have tide like we do now. That's a hell of a lot of mud to get out of those clothes are ruined. Forget about it.

Craig 29:55

So the authorities capture him. And it is at that point where well, I haven't even told you what Chabrinovich did. There he is, he's standing at the edge of the road, and he can see the the third vehicle, and he can see France Ferdinand and Sophie. At this point, he decides to use the grenade. And now it's not the grenade that you're thinking of. It's a grenade that's kind of rectangular shaped, small enough to put in your jacket and or pocket. You have to snap the the lid off it, and then you have about 10, 12 seconds, something like that. Um they're very basic kind of weapons at the time.

Susie 30:34

Sounds like a lot of pressure to get that.

Craig 30:36

Tribrinovich decides to use the grenade. He throws it, but I guess the driver sees this and speeds up, which then causes the grenade to come down and hit the back of the vehicle. Hits the ground and then rolls underneath the following one. Boom. It ends up killing or causing 20 casualties. In that moment, Franz Ferdinand hears this naturally, it's a big boom and then turns back and sees this calamity unfold in front of his eyes, but quite amazingly, he doesn't decide, hey, let's cut it. He instead says, Oh, well, let's carry on. Because that makes sense.

Shawn 31:24

Yeah.

Craig 31:25

And not let's get the hell out of here. So meanwhile, Princip hears the explosion, figures the opportunity was lost, and now sees the Archduke's vehicle whiz past him as they make their way to City Hall. Tribinovich then immediately, as I said, bites down on the cyanide, jumps into the river, he's now caught. But the cyanide didn't kill him. That's because the cyanide, I guess, was an old batch. All it had ended up doing was burning his throat.

Shawn 31:55

Cyanide light. It was like a uh it was a hybrid cyanide thing. They test marketed it, never really worked out.

Craig 32:03

Cyanide light. That's a good one, dude. So at this point, Prince Sepp uh decides, okay, he's not giving up on this idea. He goes to an intersection uh right in front of an Austrian cafe in Delikatessen. Uh, he is hoping that they will return along this route.

Shawn 32:21

And he can get a Danish at the same time.

Craig 32:25

And so Ferdinand's and Sophie's feathers are quite literally ruffled. They're on their hats. Uh, they basically arrive at City Hall, where the mayor is now apparently waiting, and he's quite nervous, being totally aware of what's just happened, and he decides to just read off from his speech and not change it. And he says this.

Shawn 32:46

So he pretends nothing happened.

Craig 32:48

The mayor says, Our hearts are full of happiness on the occasion of the most gracious visit with which your highnesses have deemed to honor the capital of our land. At this point, I guess uh Fernand's just kind of he's apoplectic. He's he he says, interjects, and it says, Herr Burgermeister, what is the good of your speeches? I come to Sarajevo on a friendly visit, and someone throws a bomb at me. This is outrageous at this point. You know, Sophie puts out our arm on his and says, like basically, it's okay. Calm down. Calm down. And his anger should really have been indirected at uh Potiorek um instead of the mayor. You know, it's not the mayor's fault. Afterwards, having spent some time at City Hall, Potiorek then devises a return strategy. Head back the same way, but not exactly. So instead of turning right into the Turkish quarter, they'll stay on the main boulevard where they won't be slowed. The Turkish quarter is quite busy.

Shawn 33:57

It's a big bazaar there. It's uh a lot of people, it's busy, a lot of intersections.

Craig 34:02

But the problem is someone forgot to tell the driver of the route change.

Shawn 34:05

Yeah, not a lot of think tanking going on here. Real brainiacs, uh, these guys.

Craig 34:11

And apparently, some believe that was uh Potiorek's negligence. He is the one who forgot to say to the chauffeur. So on their return along the road, an officer stood along the running boards of Ferdinand's car, but as we'll soon hear, he's on the wrong side.

Shawn 34:31

He's on the kind of Yeah, just so the river without water in it.

Craig 34:34

Well, he is on the river's side.

Susie 34:37

Wrong side. Yeah, yeah, wrong river, no water. Yeah.

Craig 34:40

So because the chauffeur wasn't told, as they start to enter that intersection, he slows and turns right, which happened to be exactly where Gavrlo Princip was waiting. And making matters worse, Patiorak, noticing that the driver had made a wrong turn, basically yells stop and orders him to back up, at which beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. That would be going on. Yes. Okay. All right.

Susie 35:10

It's a thing.

Craig 35:11

Princip, of course, can't believe his luck. He pulls out his 38 caliber Browning pistol and starts rushing forward towards the car. He fired two shots. The first was apparently meant for Potioric, but instead it tore through the car, the car's side, and punctures Sophie's corset. The second, now so she starts bleeding out of belly.

Susie 35:42

It's not a bulletproof corset. No, but you got some extra minutes because you are so tight in the keeps all the skin together. You are you got a few extra minutes. Few extra minutes.

Shawn 35:54

So am I am I right in saying that this is the the the next shot is the shot hurt around the world?

Craig 36:00

Correct.

Susie 36:01

Oh.

Craig 36:01

So Sophie falls forward. She's bleeding to death. The second shot pierces his neck. France Ferdinand's tunic hits the jugular vein. The Count Haraker, I think his name was. He was on the running boards. He is great job, by the way. He did blocking nobody. Way to go.

Susie 36:25

Doing nothing. Well done.

Craig 36:27

Ends up apparently asking Fernand if he's okay.

Shawn 36:29

Can you see him after? Well, I was on the running boards. No. I at least I tried. I was on the running boards.

Craig 36:36

So it's likely that Sophie ends up dying first. There is apparently this kind of really kind of beautiful interaction between the two, showing their love, showing their concern for each other, even though they're both shot and both dying.

Susie 36:52

Of course, it's only lasts so long. That's true.

Craig 36:55

Of course, they have three children. They will be orphaned in a few minutes because after Sophie, who likely dies first, Ferdinand will die shortly afterwards, apparently around 11 a.m., which is when the guns fall silent in 1918 after the Great War. Princip at that moment attempts to bite down on the Viola Cyanide and tries to put his pistol to his head, but the crowd pounces on him and prevents that from happening. He is like all the other guys, apparently a number of them are rounded up and they will be tried. But because he's nineteen, capital punishment, you know, the death sentence only applies to twenty and older, so they can't sentence him to death. Instead, he's given twenty years in prison and hard labor. So in the end, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie, who weren't the first royals or individuals of importance to be assassinated, but this one would be different because in the end it will lead to the First World War and have such massive consequences, which makes this story so important.

Aftermath And The Long Shockwave

Craig 38:08

The sad part is the indifference from his uncle was so great that when they were brought back in caskets, they the family wasn't really even there. And the funeral service, so sadly, was quick. And apparently the children who did not who weren't considered to be members of the family, oh, they're not royal. They weren't even invited.

Susie 38:29

Oh.

Craig 38:30

And so it is really such an interesting end and a sad end to this kind of story of love, which then ultimately leads to this catastrophe of the first world war, which then leads to such significant change in the world. Now, after World War I, Yugoslavia is born like as we mentioned earlier, and then it breaks up again. It breaks up, it's held together under the communist regime.

Shawn 38:57

Of Tito. I know that because I went to Tito's caves where we were in Bosnia. Oh, very cool. There's a lot of stuff on Tito. And I love his vodka.

Susie 39:05

Yeah.

Shawn 39:06

Good vodka, Tito's vodka.

Craig 39:08

And then uh after the collapse of communism, which really held it together, then these ethnic tensions really, really started to rear their ugly head again, which would then lead to the conflict.

Shawn 39:22

Power struggles, everybody wanted to control of the 1990s.

Craig 39:25

Yeah.

Bosnia Memories And Closing Thoughts

Craig 39:26

And we will save a story for another time of your experience when you went to Bosnia. And maybe you could just give us a quick one-minute or you know intro on what happened there.

Shawn 39:36

Uh yeah. I mean, I went to do a show for the UN and the Canadian military, which, yes, Craig, means that I am a hero. And uh I do outrank you. And yes, you do have to salute me.

Craig 39:51

Okay.

Shawn 39:52

Joking aside, we we got to go do shows for the all sorts of people down there that were doing incredible things, building bridges. You know, Bosnia is like the seventh worst landmined country in the world at the time. So the Canadian military, as well as you know, the UN, everybody was down there building bridges so people, kids could go to school and and uh delandmining like that that place and trying to get some semblance of you know normalcy back, which is like impossible. Right. But it was uh one of the most beautiful countries I've ever been in. I mean, talk about lush green mountainside, switchbacks, medieval castles. Wow. I mean, you know, there was a king of Bosnia for years, right? In the medieval times, they built all these incredible places. Sarajevo, you know, once uh an incredibly beautiful city. Of course, now it was when we were there, it was just bullet riddled to everything. And then you got all the old Olympic stadium, which is deserted that they built for the Winter Olympics there in 1984, I think. I mean, there's so much to talk about with that trip. But, you know, I was young, I was when when that conflict happened in the siege of Sarajevo, I was in my early 20s, right? So I don't think that I was really paying attention to it, which sounds horrible. But, you know, when I got to go there, I was in my early 30s and real honor to to perform for for the Canadian military in the UN and all these great people that were down there doing incredible things. It made me really proud to be Canadian. And uh there's so much, there's so many stories around that trip. And, you know, we went to all these really iconic little towns that, you know, were destroyed, but like Bihat Dravar, Banu Luca, all these uh places that had these, you know, horrible things happen. But it's just a beautiful, beautiful country, and the and the people are amazing too. They're just incredibly generous and loving people. So yeah, um, hopefully we'll have time somewhere uh somewhere down the road to to talk about that. And we can get our good one of our good friends, Mr. Bobby Bruce, perhaps in here too. Because he was uh he was the key Bobby and Leanne put that whole that tour together show uh with the Canadian military. So let's make an episode and uh yeah, we'll talk. Or uh my agent will call your agent, we'll see what happens. Most of this is classified anyway, so we could tell you, but I'd have to kill you after.

Susie 42:10

Anyways, an updated grenade.

Shawn 42:13

Yeah, no, we have no cyanide, uh real cyanide uh updated grenade, a chauffeur that knows where he's going. Yeah, it was an interesting time in the world, wasn't it?

Susie 42:26

Yeah.

Shawn 42:27

Yeah. God, I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and geek out.

Craig 42:34

Yeah, what would you do? I mean, you said that you wouldn't do that if you had a time machine.

Shawn 42:39

Yeah, I'd probably go back in time and tell them not to make Howard the Duck. Not important enough. I love that movie.

Susie 42:50

Uh I don't know. I loved Howard.

Shawn 42:52

Tuesday fellowsleave during that one.

Susie 42:53

I didn't see it. I didn't see it.

Craig 42:55

Well, now that you just ruined my Howard the Duck movie.

Susie 43:01

Childhood.

Craig 43:02

I have to go eat pizza. I'm hungry.

Susie 43:05

All right.

Craig 43:05

Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Oh damn, your best.