Gavrilo Princip and his co-conspirators didnt know they were starting World War I. But they did. All the major powers in Europe had allied themselves right, left and sideways with if you go to war, well join you pacts, so something was bound to set off the chain reaction. It was a remarkably incompetent assassination attempt, which failed multiple times that morning 100 years ago today; but the security around of the Archduke Ferdinand and Sophie was even more incompetent, and when Ferdinands and Sophies car took a wrong turn, backed up and stalled, Princip was given a golden opportunity. The suicide pills, self-drowning and self-inflicted gun wounds on the part of the conspirators failed, and Princip died, minus one arm, in miserable conditions in the fearsome Terezin prison (through which every Czech Jew would pass during WWII on their way to death or the concentration camps.)
Posted on: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 04:52:18 +0000