Right of the first bullet
“So they killed our Ferdinand” - this is how the funniest book about the First World War by Yaroslav Hasek begins.
In Soviet school textbooks, the Sarajevo murder was also stated very clearly: the bad heir to the Austrian throne, Franz Ferdinand, arrived in Sarajevo, where he was shot by the good guy Gavrila Princip, a member of the secret organizations Mlada Bosna and the Black Hand.
What was the fault of the archduke before the Serbs is not specified anywhere, but, as a representative of tsarism, he clearly did not have the right to life. And yet, every attentive person, when studying the documents of that era, will be able to see a lot of inconsistencies in this history, which is too simple at first glance.
Gavrila served as a terrorist
The main discrepancy is that the Sarajevo assassination at the end of June 1914 was very unprofitable for the Serbian leadership. Just two weeks before the assassination attempt, another palace coup took place in Belgrade and the international authority of the state dropped to almost zero. Two Balkan wars have just ended, completely devastating the state treasury, stocks of shells and cartridges. Not so long ago, Bulgarians and Albanians who were friendly (by Balkan standards) towards Serbs became their worst enemies, and a civil war was raging in the annexed Macedonia. And establishing good relations with Austria-Hungary was a serious task for the state.
After the so-called pig war between Austria and Serbia - a trade conflict over the too high quality of Serbian pork, which was much more readily bought over the Danube than Hungarian - both sides suffered losses. And just by the beginning of 1914, attempts began on both sides to increase the once solid exchange of goods and, which is extremely important, began to discuss the construction of the Vienna-Thessaloniki railway, which was supposed to pass through Serbian territory.
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The need for peace was understood even in the Black Hand alliance of senior officers of the Serbian army. Its governing body on June 15 voted against the assassination attempt on Franz Ferdinand. The pretext was the following: first, you must kill the Archduke's namesake, Ferdinand of Bulgaria (who was actually the worst enemy of Serbia, as well as Russia).
It is difficult to say how this decision was implemented. But the involvement of the "Black Hand" in the assassination attempt on the Archduke has never been proven. The transfer of a revolver and a bomb to the boys from Mlada Bosna also remained unproven. And to engage in secret ferrying of the Austrian citizens of Princip with their comrades to their native empire, where they could absolutely safely go at any time, the "Black Hand" was definitely not in control.
Nevertheless, "Mlada Bosna" quite solidly prepared for the assassination attempt on its own. The main combat unit was, oddly enough, the Muslim Mohammed Mehmedbasic. If he had not been frightened, but threw a bomb lying in his pocket at the Archduke, it would not have been easy to accuse the Serbs of the assassination attempt. But the next terrorist came forward - Nedelko Gabrinovich. The middle-aged Archduke was able to neutralize this threat by repelling the flying bomb with an umbrella.
And now the backup option came into effect. The Archduke was taken directly to the cafe, where Princip, who heard the explosion, noted the success of the assassination attempt. Gavrila interrupted the meal, grabbed a Browning (not a revolver, as the newspapers wrote) and killed the Archduke and his wife, the Czech Countess Sophia Hoytek, with two shots at point-blank range. At the same time, one of the bullets hit exactly in the eye of the dragon tattooed on Ferdinand's neck.
And even if the Archduke's car had not turned into Franz Joseph Lane, but had gone somewhere else, 4 more terrorists were waiting for her … So the fatal shot (or explosion) would have sounded then. And all the same, the war would start.
Enemies all around
Historians of diplomacy also know more serious reasons for the start of the war (for example, the Moroccan crisis), which ended peacefully. No, those who "ordered" Franz Ferdinand pursued very specific goals: the elimination of this man from European politics. He wanted and could change a lot in her.
1914, May - the aged Emperor Franz Joseph, the uncle of the Archduke, fell ill with severe pneumonia. And the ascension to the throne of Austria of the heir, a man of quite definite and in a certain sense revolutionary political views, becomes quite real. Franz Ferdinand finally made public his plan for the state reorganization of Austria-Hungary, which "should put an end to the centuries-old humiliation of the Slavs in a two-pronged monarchy."
The state was to become a federation of most of its peoples, not just Austrians and Hungarians. Ideas such as loyalty to the Habsburgs, Catholicism and opposing ourselves to competing neighbors - Germany and Russia - were put forward as cementing ones. Moreover, relations with the historical monarchies of Europe should have been rather friendly, but even.
The archduke could not find allies in the implementation of this plan. The overwhelming majority of the mighty of this world wholeheartedly wished him failures. The list of his ill-wishers is so great that it can be compared, perhaps, only with a similar list in relation to Saddam Hussein.
The Archduke met the most active opposition in his native Vienna. The peculiarity of the Habsburg monarchy is the discrepancy between the political center of the empire of Vienna and its economic center - the capital of Bohemia, Prague. The antagonism between the Viennese and Prague elites was very strong. Producing 70% of the industrial production of the empire, almost all of its steel and weapons, the Bohemians, quite in the spirit of the archduke's reforms, demanded greater participation in the government of the country.
The Viennese, of course, did not want this and were afraid that the Archduke, who had intermarried with prominent Czech aristocrats, would redistribute the warm places of the Austrian civil service between his relatives and fellow countrymen: Konopiste Castle, where the Archduke usually lived, was located not far from Prague. And Stefan Zweig, for example, recalled that the crowns took the news of the death of the Archduke completely indifferent.
Even more fiercely, Franz Ferdinand was hated by the Hungarian nobles, whom he intended to make equal members of the new federation. The man who was going to take away from the Magyars the right to oppress the Romanians, Slovaks and Serbs, won during the revolution of 1848, was a uniform persona non grata in Budapest.
However, the Czech elite also split in relation to the idea of a strong Austria-Hungary. Its liberal part no longer spoke out for strengthening its positions within this empire, but for leaving it. Speaking about the times of the Bohemian king Otokar Přemysl, who ruled both Bohemia and Austria immediately before the first Habsburg Rudolf, the best friend of the Entente Tomáš Massarik remarked meaningfully: “We were before Austria, and we will be after it”.
In fact, the prospect of separating from the underdeveloped agrarian empire the territory that produced 70% of all its industrial products, 90% of coal, 90% of steel, 100% of heavy weapons, could not but turn the heads of the young Czech bourgeoisie.
Therefore, the Bohemian Germans, who, after all, constituted 38% of the population of the province and were panicked by Czech nationalism, hoped not for Franz Ferdinand and not even Franz Joseph, but for the German Empire. It was in Bohemia that the Pan-Germanist party acted, with a pro-Berlinian and anti-Catholic attitude.
The Archduke had even more enemies abroad. Almost as already decided, after his coming to power, they talked about the invasion of Italy in order to restore the secular power of the Pope. It is possible that it was for this operation that Franz Ferdinand asked the consent of the main member of the Triple Alliance, Kaiser Wilhelm, at a meeting in early June 1914 in Konopiste. So the Italian ambassador to Vienna, Aldrovani, in his memoirs called the archduke an open enemy of Italy, quite deservedly. In fact, a victorious war against Italy, and even under such a plausible pretext, could be the solution to many problems at once.
While instructing his subordinate, the chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff Konrad von Goetzendorff, Franz Ferdinand unequivocally warned: “If we do something against Serbia, Russia will take its side, and then we will have to fight the Russians. War with Russia should be avoided. But Italy, twice - first in alliance with France, and then with Prussia - stabbing in the back of the Austrian Empire, was a remarkable target for attack.
The Austrian generals "would let off steam", the Entente and Russia would not get into the conflict between the allies, and there was no doubt about the victory of Austria over Italy in a one-on-one war. By the way, if in Belgrade, after the news of the murder of Franz Ferdinand, they declared mourning, then in Rome, almost folk festivities began.
However, the Serbian elite also did not feel sympathy for the Archduke. His obvious preference for Catholicism, coupled with rather aggressive aspirations in the Balkans, did not inspire the slightest optimism in the Orthodox Serbs. And the prospect of the broadest autonomy of the South Slavs within the Austrian Empire sharply lowered the chances of the voluntary entry of Croats and Bosnians into the future Great Serbia.
Moreover, unlike the crowned uncle, who at one time refused to buy Serbia from Prince Milan, they say, there was nowhere to go for his Serbs, the Archduke's extra Slavic subjects were very helpful. Again, complete financial dependence on French capital, the military alliance with Russia concluded in January 1914 and the omnipotence of the Black Hand terrorists in the country greatly limited the freedom of action of the Serbian elite. Nevertheless, Prime Minister Nikola Pasic honestly tried to warn Franz Ferdinand against traveling to Sarajevo through diplomatic channels, but was not heard.
They were extremely hostile to the ideas of the Archduke in St. Petersburg. The orientation of Russia towards an alliance with France and the constant struggle for influence in the Balkans did not give the two states a chance for more or less good-neighborly relations. And although Franz Ferdinand maintained good relations with Alexander III, he could not find a common language with his son Nikolai.
In general, the Archduke disliked Russia. But shortly before his death, he came to St. Petersburg and tried to personally explain to Nicholas II that "the war between Austria and Russia would have ended either with the overthrow of the Romanovs, or the overthrow of the Habsburgs, or the overthrow of both dynasties." Nikolai, naturally, kept silent. But Russian diplomats and military men were not silent. Foreign Minister Izvolsky, who is in fact in the French service, did everything to provoke the Austro-Russian war. The same was done in the War Ministry, in particular Artamonov, the military attaché in Belgrade.
The leaders of the other powers neighboring with Austria-Hungary - Turkey and Romania - were quite wary of Franz Ferdinand's plans and himself. The Istanbul Young Turks have not forgotten the recent offense inflicted on them by the Archduke: Austria's annexation of the Ottoman province of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And in Bucharest, they were already looking at Transylvania, populated by ethnic Romanians, whose annexation with a living heir was certainly impossible. The assassination of the bishop of the Uniate (that is, subordinate to Rome) church by the Romanian Qataru at the beginning of 1914 added fuel to the fire.
Even more powerful enemies of Franz Ferdinand were in the supposedly most friendly place in Europe for him - Berlin. The powerful movement of Pan-Germanism, which determined the entire foreign policy of Emperor Wilhelm II, was absolutely not interested in strengthening (and in fact in the existence) of the Austrian monarchy, and even more so completely devoid of German content.
The future incarnator of Pan-German ideas, Adolf Hitler, in Mein Kampf spoke evilly and unfairly about the “deliberate Czechization” of his native Austria-Hungary: “The guiding idea of this new Habsburg, whose family spoke only Czech, was that in the center of Europe it is necessary to create a Slavic state built on a Catholic basis. " He further wrote: "After the news of the assassination of the Archduke, I was seized with anxiety if he was killed by German students who would want to free the German people from this internal enemy." By the way, the son of Franz Ferdinand, Maximilian, until the end of his days (in the Nazi concentration camp at Mauthausen) adhered to the Pan-German version of the death of his parents.
He will die on the steps of the throne
Alas, the list of the Archduke's ill-wishers was not exhausted by officials. The Italian terrorists, anarchists, who had already killed Franz Ferdinand's aunt, Franz Joseph's wife, and his colleague, his own King Umberto, also had a pronounced antipathy towards the heir to the Austrian throne. They prepared for the assassination attempt themselves and helped their Serbian friends.
Lev Trotsky, a Balkan correspondent for the Kievskaya Mysl newspaper, noted the "Carbonary" character of the Bosnian terrorist underground: the Black Hand's organ was called Piedmont, and the name Mlada Bosna was simply borrowed from the "grandfather of European terror" Giuseppe Mazzini, whose "Young Italy "fought against Austrian interests for many years.
It's funny, but when Mazzini created a secret republican organization "Sacred Phalanx", he proclaimed its official slogan "Down with Austria", after which the Italian authorities stopped persecuting the underground.
But the militants from Mlada Bosna killed the archduke. And who, in fact, were they such that the orders of the seemingly superior "Black Hand" could simply not be noticed? The main ideologist of Mlada Bosna, Vladimir Gachinovich, was a fairly convinced socialist, he read Bakunin, Kropotkin and Nechaev, and more than once met with prominent members of the RSDLP Karl Radek, Lev Trotsky, and Yuli Martov.
And the order for the assassination of the Archduke could well have come to Mlada Bosna and, in addition to the Black Hand, through social democratic channels. After all, Lenin literally dreamed that "Nikolasha and Franz Joseph would give us (the Bolsheviks - 'Money') such pleasure as the war between Austria and Russia." So it is possible that the social democratic gurus pushed the Young Bosnians to accelerate the conflagration of the world revolution. In gratitude for his help in this necessary matter, Ilyich not very reasonably noted the war of liberation in Serbia in the general unsightly background of the bloody imperialist massacre.
And in 1937 Radek tried to tell something about the Sarajevo murder, but chose a very inappropriate place for this - the courtroom on himself. Stalin's lawyers reasonably reasoned that the "Trotskyist dog" simply wanted to drag out the process, and, unfortunately, did not allow him to deviate from the topic of sabotage and espionage.
Both the Austrian and Serbian investigators of the Sarajevo murder did everything to hide the slightest glimmer of truth. By 1918, all the direct participants in the events went to the grave for various reasons: Principle, Gabrinovich (died in prison), Dmitrievich (shot by the French), Gachinovich (died of an unknown disease). And a year later, a boat that was transporting archival documents related to the Sarajevo murder from Vienna to Belgrade along the Danube disappeared without a trace.
And scary stories about the train of Franz Ferdinand, who drove him to Sarajevo by candlelight, about his car, which killed 8 of its subsequent owners, about the predictions in an unknown Masonic magazine, that “he was sentenced and will die on the steps of the throne . In fact, the Archduke, who has so many serious enemies, did not have the slightest chance of surviving in that Europe, where political assassinations were the most common occurrence throughout the entire space from the Atlantic to the Urals.
A. Borisov