The Great War, chapter 1: Sarajevo and the July Crisis, an investigation from 28 June to 4 August 1914

A note on method. This is the first chapter of a series on the First World War. The period is one of the most studied in history, with thousands of documents, memoirs and interpretations that often conflict. I cite sources where possible and flag the points on which historians disagree. It is a vast piece of research: I may return to some details in the future and correct myself if better evidence emerges.

On 28 June 1914, shortly before eleven in the morning, two pistol shots killed the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary and his wife in a street in Sarajevo. Thirty-seven days later, five great European powers were at war.

How do you get from two pistol shots to a world war? The question has been asked millions of times. Here I try to approach it as I would a case: reconstruct the scene, identify the people, follow the weapons and the communications, and read the documents asking who wrote them and why. And, as always, test the conspiracy theories surrounding these days against the sources.

Part one: the crime scene

The victims

Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este (1863-1914) had become heir to the throne after the death of Crown Prince Rudolf at Mayerling (1889) and of his own father Karl Ludwig (1896). A man of difficult character, he was far from popular at court. He held ideas for reforming the Empire that worried the Hungarian elite in particular, because they would have reduced Budapest's weight in favour of other nationalities, including the South Slavs.

His wife, Sophie Chotek, Duchess of Hohenberg, belonged to the Bohemian nobility but not to a reigning house. By Habsburg etiquette she was not of sufficient rank: the marriage was only possible as a morganatic marriage. On 28 June 1900 Franz Ferdinand swore that any children of the union would have no rights of succession; the wedding took place a few days later, on 1 July.

A detail worth checking. Many texts state that 28 June 1914 was the couple's wedding anniversary. The dates show instead that the wedding took place on 1 July 1900: 28 June is the anniversary of the oath of renunciation. A small example of how an error, repeated often enough, becomes "fact".

In Vienna Sophie suffered constant humiliations of protocol: at official ceremonies she could not sit beside her husband. In Bosnia, where Franz Ferdinand was travelling as inspector general of the armed forces, protocol was less rigid. This too, according to many biographers, explains why the couple wanted to make the Sarajevo visit together.

The date and the place

The trip had an official purpose: to attend military manoeuvres in Bosnia on 26 and 27 June. The visit to Sarajevo on 28 June was its conclusion.

But 28 June is also Vidovdan, St Vitus' Day, the anniversary of the battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389, the most symbolic date in Serbian nationalism. Bosnia-Herzegovina, occupied by Austria-Hungary in 1878, had been formally annexed in 1908, provoking a serious international crisis and outrage in Serbia, which saw those territories as part of a future homeland of the South Slavs. A visit by the heir to the throne on that date was seen by many as a provocation.

The conspirators

Almost all were very young, poor, steeped in revolutionary literature and ideals of Yugoslav unity. They belonged to the milieu known as Young Bosnia (Mlada Bosna). At his trial Princip described himself as "a Yugoslav nationalist".

The weapons: following the trail

For an investigator, weapons are often the most concrete lead. Here is what the sources document:

The "tunnel": the journey from Belgrade to Sarajevo

Princip, Grabež and Čabrinović left Belgrade at the end of May. The route, reconstructed by historians, is an example of a well-organised clandestine network:

The investigator's lesson. This is not the act of a lone fanatic. It is an operation with logistics, funding, weapons from a state arsenal and a protected route across a border. The question is not "whether" there was an organisation, but how high up it went.

Sarajevo, 28 June 1914: the timeline

Princip tries to shoot himself and swallow the cyanide, but is overpowered and arrested.

Part two: the investigator's questions

Question 1: did the Serbian government know?

This is the central question, because Austria-Hungary built its decision to go to war upon it.

What is documented:

• Tankosić, who supplied the weapons, was a Serbian army officer. Ciganović was a state employee. The bombs, according to the inquiry, came from a Serbian military arsenal.
• Both were linked to the secret society Unification or Death (Ujedinjenje ili smrt), known as the Black Hand, founded in 1911 by nationalist officers. Its leader, Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević, known as "Apis", was head of Serbian military intelligence. Apis was also one of the organisers of the bloody 1903 coup in which King Alexander Obrenović and Queen Draga were killed.
• Prime Minister Nikola Pašić received information in early June about armed men crossing clandestinely into Bosnia; according to historical reconstructions, his notes include the names of Grabež and Tankosić. He ordered an inquiry into the border guards.
• On 21 June the Serbian envoy in Vienna, Jovan Jovanović, spoke to the Austro-Hungarian finance minister Leon Biliński, responsible for the administration of Bosnia, about the risks of the visit. The warning was vague, and Jovanović later said he had acted on his own initiative.

What is not documented:

• There is no evidence that the Pašić government ordered the assassination. Relations between Pašić and Apis were in fact marked by fierce rivalry: the Black Hand was a state within the state, in conflict with the civilian government.

The conclusion of the Austrian inquiry. On 13 July 1914 Foreign Ministry official Friedrich von Wiesner, sent to Sarajevo to examine the files, telegraphed Vienna. His report acknowledged the role of Ciganović and Tankosić and the Serbian origin of the bombs, but stated that nothing proved, or even gave grounds to suspect, the complicity of the Serbian government in preparing the attack. The report did not change Vienna's decision.

Assessment. Involvement of elements of the Serbian state: established. An order from the Serbian government: not proven. Partial knowledge and an inadequate response by Pašić: probable. These are three different statements, which the propaganda of the time, and many texts today, tend to blur.

Question 2: why was security so poor?

The failures are striking:

• the route was published in advance in the newspapers;
• open cars moving slowly;
• a few dozen police for an entire city, without the troops present for the manoeuvres being lined along the streets;
• no change to the programme after the first bomb, apart from the hospital visit;
• drivers not informed of the new route.

Governor Potiorek was responsible for security. After the assassination he was not punished: on the contrary, he was given command of the Austro-Hungarian forces against Serbia in 1914, where he suffered heavy defeats and was removed in December.

Question 3: is the man arrested in the photo Princip?

One of the most famous images of 28 June shows a young man being dragged away by gendarmes and civilians, often published with the caption "the arrest of Gavrilo Princip". According to several historians, the man in the photograph is actually Ferdinand Behr, a bystander arrested by mistake in the confusion. It is a perfect example of what in OSINT analysis I call image verification: an authentic photo can carry a wrong caption, and the wrong caption spreads for a century. I described this kind of verification in the article on what an OSINT analyst does.

Question 4: were the conspirators tried?

The trial took place in Sarajevo from 12 to 23 October 1914, with the verdict on 28 October:

Princip died of tuberculosis in the fortress of Theresienstadt (now Terezín) on 28 April 1918, weighing about 40 kilos. Čabrinović and Grabež also died in captivity before the end of the war.

Apis was tried by Serbia itself in 1917, in Salonika, on charges of plotting against the Regent Alexander: he was shot on 26 June 1917. In a written statement he claimed responsibility for organising the Sarajevo assassination and said that the Russian military attaché in Belgrade, Viktor Artamonov, had promised Russia's protection. Artamonov always denied it.

Part three: the July Crisis, day by day

The assassination did not automatically lead to war. In the first days Europe reacted with relative calm. The war was born of a series of decisions taken in the following weeks.

The alliances at stake

Key dates

Why Russian mobilisation was decisive

To understand the step from local war to European war, you need to know the German war plan, known as the Schlieffen Plan in the form reworked by Moltke. In short: in a war with Russia and France, Germany would first attack France through Belgium to defeat it quickly, then turn against Russia, which was slower to mobilise.

This meant that, for the German General Staff, mobilisation meant war, and every day of delay after Russian mobilisation was a risk. The plan made the invasion of Belgium almost automatic, and with it Britain's entry into the war.

The "scrap of paper"

On 4 August the British ambassador in Berlin, Edward Goschen, had a final meeting with Bethmann Hollweg. According to Goschen's report, the Chancellor complained that Britain was going to war over a "scrap of paper", the 1839 treaty on Belgian neutrality. The phrase became a formidable tool of Allied propaganda.

The day before, on 3 August, Edward Grey is said to have told a friend that the lamps were going out all over Europe and that they would not see them lit again in their lifetime. The remark is reported in his memoirs, published in 1925.

Part four: false reports, manipulated documents and mysteries

The fake Temes-Kubin skirmish

To obtain Emperor Franz Joseph's signature on the declaration of war, Berchtold included a reference to an alleged Serbian attack on Austro-Hungarian troops at Temes-Kubin, on the Danube. The skirmish never happened: historians have found no trace of the telegram reporting it in the Vienna military archives, and the report came from a command that was not even in the area. After the signature, the passage was removed from the text sent to Serbia.

The investigator's lesson. An unverified report, used at a decisive moment, can have irreversible effects even if it is withdrawn immediately afterwards. The damage is done once the signature is on the page.

The phantom French aircraft over Nuremberg

On 2 August 1914 the German press reported that French aircraft had bombed railway lines near Nuremberg. The unverified report was cited in Germany's declaration of war on France on 3 August. In reality no bombing had taken place. The then mayor of Nuremberg, Otto Gessler, later explained that it was the result of mistaken observations by reservists, who had taken cloud shadows for enemy aircraft. A telegram casting doubt on the report left Munich on the very evening of 2 August, but an official denial never came.

The "coloured books": a war of documents

Immediately after war broke out, each government published a collection of diplomatic documents to prove its innocence: the German White Book, the Russian Orange Book, the British Blue Book, the French Yellow Book and others. Later studies showed that these collections were selective and in some cases altered, with omissions and changes designed to hide awkward passages, such as the timing of Russian mobilisation.

It is a fundamental lesson: an official document published by an interested party is a source, but also an act of self-defence. It must be compared with the archival originals where they are accessible.

Conspiracy theories put to the test

Coincidences, prophecies and legends

Part five: Italy and Switzerland in August 1914

Italy: an ally, but neutral

Italy was formally a member of the Triple Alliance, but was not consulted by Vienna before the ultimatum, even though the treaty provided for consultation and compensation in the event of changes in the Balkans. Antonio Salandra's government, with Foreign Minister Antonino di San Giuliano, decided on neutrality on 2 August, arguing that the alliance was defensive and that Austria-Hungary had acted as the aggressor. Italy would only enter the war in May 1915, on the other side: the subject of a future chapter.

Italian historian Luigi Albertini, former editor of the Corriere della Sera, devoted a monumental work to the July Crisis, The Origins of the War of 1914 (1942-1943), based partly on interviews with many protagonists who were still alive. It remains one of the fundamental references on the subject.

Switzerland: mobilisation and neutrality

The choice of Wille immediately revealed a rift that would mark the whole war: German-speaking Switzerland sympathised with Germany, French-speaking Switzerland with France. Italian neutrality, at least until 1915, kept Ticino's southern border calmer.

In short: what we know and what remains open

What strikes me, rereading the documents of those five weeks, is not so much malice as the combination of overconfidence, miscalculation, unverified information and military machinery that, once set in motion, nobody knew how to stop. Intelligent, well-informed men took decisions that were rational from their own point of view, and together they produced a catastrophe that none of them had imagined in its true scale.

In the next chapter: the first weeks of war, the invasion of Belgium, the Battle of the Frontiers and the collapse of the illusion of a short war. And later, the fate of the soldiers who came back from the front with invisible wounds, including Italy's so-called war fools.

Main sources: records of the Sarajevo trial (October 1914), as reported in historical studies; telegram by F. von Wiesner (13 July 1914); L. Albertini, Le origini della guerra del 1914 (1942-1943); V. Dedijer, The Road to Sarajevo (1966); F. Fischer, Griff nach der Weltmacht (1961); C. Clark, The Sleepwalkers (2012); M. Rauchensteiner, The First World War and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy (2014), on the Temes-Kubin case and the Wiesner inquiry; Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, entries on the 1914 mobilisation and Ulrich Wille; M. Dash, research on "Princip's sandwich" (2011); reconstructions of the false Nuremberg bombing based on O. Gessler's memoirs; E. Grey, Twenty-Five Years (1925).