BS: Sarajevo 28th June 1914

Subject: BS: Sarajevo 28th June 1914
From: The Walrus
Date: 28 Jun 08 - 09:42 AM

Today, 28th June, marks the 94th anniversary of the 'Shot heard Around the World" - The assasination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand Austria-Este, Prince Imperial of Austria and Royal Prince of Hungary and Bohemia, and hid wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg and Princess of Hohenberg, by the Serbian terrorist Gavrilo Princip.
This was the act which lit the fuse for the Great War.

I just thought worth of a mention.

W

Subject: RE: BS: Sarajevo 28th June 1914
From: pdq
Date: 28 Jun 08 - 12:32 PM

It seems odd that Franz Ferdinand was chosen by the Serbian nationalists to be the victim of their "statement", by the date is extremely important. It was the aniversary of the slaughter of Europeans by a massive force of invading Moslems, perhaps 30-40 thousand armed thugs.

"...Turks slaughtered tens of thousands of Serbs in the Battle of Kosovo.

On June 28, 1389, Serbian Prince Lazar took to the fields a few miles from Gracanica Monastery, leading his forces to defend Christianity against the Ottoman Turks. Among those killed that day, Lazar became both a nationalist hero and a martyr to the Serbian Christian cause.

Serbia gained independence from Turkey in the late 19th century, and reclaimed Kosovo in 1912. But the province's population, by that time, had had a Muslim majority for more than 300 years."

Subject: RE: BS: Sarajevo 28th June 1914
From: Ebbie
Date: 28 Jun 08 - 01:03 PM

"Americans think that 100 years is a long time; Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way."

Subject: RE: BS: Sarajevo 28th June 1914
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 28 Jun 08 - 01:24 PM

Franz Ferdinand was fully aware of the date's significance when he chose it for a tour calculated to flaunt the supremacy of the Austro-Hungarian empire (which had been more-or-less gifted Bosnia & Hercegovina by the Ottomans). Bosnia's Serbs would have been happy to have had a go at any Austro-Hungarian royalty foolhardy enough to show their faces in Sarajevo that day. It later emerged that there had been several would-be assassins along the route.

The Dual Monarchy, itching to get Serbia under its thumb too, seized on the assassinations as a chance to declare war (notwithstanding that the atrocity took place in Bosnia). They were taken aback by the strength of the Serb resistance, which would have succeeded but for a catastrophic outbreak of typhoid in their trenches.

Then, as in WW2, the Serbs were allied with Russia and the UK. It is a curious paradox that by the 1990s these allies of two earlier conflicts had become public enemy number one - even worse than muslims, whom the US raced to side with against them. The answer lies in US-admin paranoia about socialism, and the malign influence of the Vatican.

Subject: RE: BS: Sarajevo 28th June 1914
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 28 Jun 08 - 01:32 PM

Interesting how much power and influence The Vatican has, and how rarely it gets a mention.
The mark of true influence?

G

Subject: RE: BS: Sarajevo 28th June 1914
From: artbrooks
Date: 28 Jun 08 - 01:41 PM

An interesting thing about the first battle of Kosovo is that "Prince" Lazar's army apparently included Albanians, Bosnians, Turks and Hungarians and the Turkish army included Serbs, Albanians, Greeks and Italians. The turning point of the battle, at least according to some commentaries, came when Lazar's son-in-law ("Prince" Vuc Branković) turned his forces on Lazar. After the battle, in which the opposing generals were both killed and which the few semi-neutral commentators agree was pretty much a draw, Lazar's widow agreed to Ottoman vassalage in order to get military protection from a Hungarian invasion. Lazar's daughter later married the Ottoman sultan and his son Stefan managed to both lead Ottoman forces against Romanians and Hungarians and lead Hungarian forces against the Turks. The Balkans don't change much.

Subject: RE: BS: Sarajevo 28th June 1914
From: pdq
Date: 28 Jun 08 - 02:58 PM

This is fascinating day in history, for sure.

There were indeed multiple assasins placed all along the route. One actually lobbed a hand gernade that hurt several guards, before Princep's successful ambush. About 22 Serb nationalists were likely ready to do the deed.

Subject: RE: BS: Sarajevo 28th June 1914
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Jun 08 - 05:05 PM

It makes you wonder how the young Austro-Hungarian royals could have been so stupid as to go there and expose themselves to that kind of danger.

My Grandmother was a young woman in Vienna (the capital) when that war began. She said that the whole city was out on the streets delirious with joy, celebration, and excitement as the magnificently uniformed young soldiers marched off to war...everyone cheering and throwing flowers. Four years later they were eating horses, dogs, cats, rats, and potato peelings to stay alive...and even the rats were becoming few and hard to come by.

Subject: RE: BS: Sarajevo 28th June 1914
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 28 Jun 08 - 05:52 PM

If anyone cares to know how we got from Sarajevo to today I recommend two books, Barbara Tuchman's, "The Guns of August" the commencement, and "Paris 1919" by Margaret MacMillan. Both are highly readable. The first shows how the war started in spite of the fact no country really wanted it; the latter discusses the the machinations of hammering out the Treaty of Versailles which was the underlying cause, ultimately, for WWII.

Subject: RE: BS: Sarajevo 28th June 1914
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 28 Jun 08 - 09:32 PM

Murad I of the Turks was killed at Sarajevo. Artbrooks mentioned the mixed forces on both sides.
The Ottoman Empire was in the ascendency and, although there were a couple of reverses, his successors built the Empire. Murad II married a Serbian princess and re-established dominance in Bulgaria. In 1453 te Ottomans take Constantinople, and after the traditional three days of looting, establish a city where many races lived in peace, including many Greeks and Jews. The Greek Orthodox Patriarch was not removed and continued to minister to his flock.

A most interesting part of the world, and in parts such as Kosovo, perhaps would have fared better if it had remained under Turk rule.

Subject: RE: BS: Sarajevo 28th June 1914
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 07:14 AM

The fickleness/ransience/opportunism of west-Balkan alliances was well illustrated in the 1990s turmoil. In the course of four stupefyingly violent years the three main ethnic groups - Serbs, Croats and Muslims - battled it out with each other in every perumatation:

Serbsv Muslims
Serbs

Subject: RE: BS: Sarajevo 28th June 1914
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 07:45 AM

I was trying to say.....

Serbs    v Croats and Muslims
Serbs    v Muslims
Serbs    v Croats
Muslims   v Serbs and Croats
Mulims    v Croats
Croats    v Muslims and Serbs

To pick up Q's point, Turkey was losing its grip in Europe long before WW1 - hence the ceding of BiH to the Dual Monarchy in 1878. In any case the mis-match between national boundaries, ethnic demographics and geography was calculated to foment instability whoever was in charge.

Tito gave the region its best shot with 45 years of stability and economic growth. He ruled with an iron fist for sure, but only in the interests of "brotherhood and unity," and unlike most other communist rulers he allowed religious freedoms.

It was the hiving off of the "profitable" bits of Yugoslavia (Slovenia and Croatia) that left Kosovo high and dry, as such secessions would do to any country. It also left the rump of Yugoslavia with an unmanageably dominant Ssrb majority - and thrust independence on BiH which, with a narrow Muslim majority, was plainly unsustainable as a sovereign state. (What other country in which 40-odd percent of the polulation was actively Christian, would settle amicably for majority Muslim government?)

Subject: RE: BS: Sarajevo 28th June 1914
From: Jack Campin
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 08:45 AM

The "Muslim" government of Bosnia was, and is, about as secular in practice as the Communists had been. If it were simply an issue of religious toleration the Christians had no reason to start a fight.

The civil war was a landgrab by the business elutes of Croatia and Serbia - religion didn't come into it as a basic motive.

There is *now* an element of Muslim fundamentalism in Bosnia - under US tutelage, the Saudis have been trying to extend their influence. The Saudis have actually been responsible for demolishing more mosques than the Serbians did, since said mosques were acting as foci for varieties of Islam opposed to their own. The majority Islamic tendency in the Ottoman Balkans was the Bektashi dervish order, which has traditionally been associated with both socialism and the separation of religion and state.

As far as I know, the US/Saudi/Wahhabi element haven't extended their control very far yet.