Posted on 09/09/2013 2:08:36 PM PDT by Ravnagora
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife descend the steps of the City Hall, Sarajevo, and innocent bystander Ferdinand Behr, inset Photo: © IWM
History has not been kind to the teenager who triggered the First World War by assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand on a sunny Sunday morning in Sarajevo.
So colossal was the impact of his actions and so modest his backwoodsman background that the story of Gavrilo Princip has often been overlooked, misrepresented and misunderstood.
Muddled theories, often as batty as they are unverifiable, have circulated ever since Princip fired his Browning 9mm pistol on June 28, 1914: he was working for the Freemasons, an agent of the Russian secret service, a diehard Serbian nationalist, an unwitting puppet of German warmongers.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Islamic terrorist version 1.0.
Gavrilo Princip... if Zero had a great-grandfather...
100 years ago next year, and while this was the fuse strike, by that time so much tinder had been built up, that hindsight would say that something somewhere would have started “The Guns of August or September or October ...” The leaders of Europe, bith sides, were all convinced that it would be THEIR show of strength that would FORCE the other side to back down. THEY WERE WRONG and it took 2 World Wars to settle it.
The Kaiser, in my opinion.
The linked article says, “The Slav community that Princip’s family belonged to followed eastern Orthodox Christianity....”
My Sister and Brother-in-Law are visiting in Serbia right now.
They have actually been in Europe for six months and will have to stay until November because they both had emergency dental surgery in Budapest, Hungary.
I thought my Sister’s description of the countries and people were interesting. She said that Hungary is much more advanced but the people do not offer assistance. On the other hand she said they are very good if you actually ask them for help. They have some sort of Euro pass for elderly people and she said they never even check it in Hungary.
She describes the Serbians as very friendly. They got on a bus and 3 young men stood up and gave them their seats. They do check for your pass tho. She also said the food is great in Serbia tho they have problems until their teeth get fixed permanently.
I often believed that Gavrilo Princip should have been the Man of the 20th Century. Just look at all what started from there and World War I.
***Princip fired his Browning 9mm pistol***
Browning .32 auto pistol. I used to have one just like it.
AFAIK, he was definitely a diehard Serbian nationalist and a member of a secret society but it may not have mattered anyway because the facts of the assassination were manipulated by Austria and Germany for the purposes of power politics and ultimately embarking on a war.
Princip did not act alone. Clark provides exquisite detail about how he was recruited and supported by the Serbian Black Hand, and what happened to his co-assassins. The Archduke's wife was shot because she was trying to cover her husband with her body. And the Archduke was not Serbia's enemy.
Eastern Orthodox.
In the book “John Browning, American Gunmaker” It mentions that one of his FN .32 autos was used in the assassination. No one remembers his commenting on that fact.
Interestingly, the little .32 was his favorite pistol despite the fact that he designed some of the most famous pistols ever.
Arrested moments after the shooting in Sarajevo, he was under the 20-year age limit required by Habsburg law for the death sentence. Instead, he was sentenced to 20 years in jail, to be denied food once a day each month. He died in 1918, shortly before the end of the war. Aged 23, his body had become racked by skeletal tuberculosis that ate away his bones so badly that his right arm had had to be amputated.
Princip fired his Browning 9mm pistol
Brits and journalists. Probably don't know any better.
It was an FN, Browning designed. In .380 (aka 9mm Browning, Short, Kurtz or Korto) not the modern 9x19.
***Eastern Orthodox.***
The Orthodox feared a German-Austrian reperssion of them after this so they appealed to the Czar if Russia for help.
Russia mobilized their armies, Germany and allies (Turkey) saw this as a provocation and declared WAR! In came Britain and France against Germany.
Interesting that the Kaiser, Czar and King of England were cousins, all grandsons of Queen Victoria.
I believe you are right.
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