WEBVTT

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On the 28th of July 1914 the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia

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and history will remember the name of one Serb from Bosnia.

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Gavrilo Princip was born on July 13, 1894 in Obljaj near Bosansko Grahovo and died on April 28, 1918 in a Czech prison Teresienstadt.

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As a member of a secret organization Young Bosnia he assassinated the Austro-Hungarian Crown Price Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie on June 28th, 1914.

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Franz Ferdinand arrived to Sarajevo leading military forces that were executing maneuvers around the city.

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The Serbian population of the city viewed his appearance as the head of the military command as provocation, since all this took place on St. Vitus Day.

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During the investigation, Austro-Hungarian authorities came to the conclusion that the weapons used in the attack came from Serbia.

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Although the official government of Serbia was not connected with this incident, but some people in high places, members of the organization Unity or Death—Black Hand—

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the Austrian authorities had taken advantage of the current situation to deliver an ultimatum to Serbia.

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Serbian authorities responded positively on all points of the ultimatum, except for one, which required sending the Austro-Hungarian investigative authorities into the territory of the Kingdom of Serbia.

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The government of Austria-Hungary used this to declare war to Serbia, which soon escalated into the First World War.

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According to the original plan of the assassination, there were six perpetrators.

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Of these six, four did not do anything during the first pass of the imperial procession, when Nedeljko Čabrinović’s bomb missed the car with Ferdinand,

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but lightly wounded Colonel Eric von Merizzi and Count Boos-Waldeck.

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During the return of the imperial procession, Gavrilo Princip successfully assassinated the Archduke.

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At the trial it was established that the assassins had no intention of killing Sophie Chotek.

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The weapon that Princip used was a Belgian-made 7,65 ×17mm Fabrique Nationale model 1910 semi-automatic pistol

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and apparently it was given to the members of Young Bosnia by Dragutin Dimitrijević - Apis.

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At the time of the assassination, Gavrilo Princip was considered too young for the death penalty and so he was sentenced to 20 years of prison where he was tortured.

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Today, Gavrilo Princip's grave is in the Heroes of St. Vitus Day chapel in Sarajevo.

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The car, Gavrilo's gun and Franz Ferdinand's bloody uniform are in the Military Museum in Vienna.

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The bullet that killed Ferdinand is displayed in the Konopište castle in the Czech Republic.

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Gavrilo's prison sentence was served in the Czech Terezin, where he died of tuberculosis on April 28th, 1918, just a little before the end of WWI.

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At the end, he was weakened by poor prison conditions and weighed only 40 kilograms (88lbs).

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The assassination of Austrian Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand was an historical event of tremendous consequence resulting in WWI,

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the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire followed by the creation of new states –Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia,

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and the reclaiming of significant territories by neighboring countries that Austria-Hungary and Turkey had occupied and annexed.

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It would be an understatement to say that the only reason for the Great War was the killing of Ferdinand, as there were a number of other reasons and plans for war by the great powers.

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Germany, for example, wanted to win back its lost colonies; there was a rivalry between France and England for supremacy in Europe

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and both had a hostile attitude towards German demands for reclaiming its colonies; the desire for independence by small nations;

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unresolved border issues of Germany, Italy, and Turkey with neighboring countries, etc. .

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The killing of Ferdinand was just the spark that ignited the flame of war.

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Gavrilo Princip was, no doubt, a conspirator and member of the secret organization Young Bosnia, a Serbian nationalist youth organization in occupied Bosnia.

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This organization was protected and supplied by the Serbian Black Hand secret organization with the slogan "unite or die,"

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which was common for similar radical organizations in the Balkans whose members aspired to the unification of the South Slavic peoples.

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A former officer of the Serbian army who led the conspirators that killed King Aleksandar Obrenović and Queen Draga—

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Dragutin Dimitrijević nicknamed Apis—had been the head of the organization since its founding in 1903

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together with officers Ciganović and Tankosić.

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Despite a lot of evidence and information about preparations for the assassination,

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the Austro-Hungarian government took no serious action to prevent it.

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And the Archduke Franz Ferdinand himself, raised in a very militaristic manner,

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an excellent athlete and fencer in his youth and a passionate hunter, otherwise a brutal and crude man,

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did not pay much attention to the information about the possible assassination.

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A year earlier, there had also been an attempted assassination in Paris without consequences,

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but his unpopularity and the serious threats did not phase him much.

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Regarding his political attitudes, Ferdinand was one of the bigger Serb-haters in the dual monarchy.

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Participation in the upcoming military exercises, which were organized by General Potiorek on the banks of the Drina river,

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was a great opportunity to provoke the Serbian "peasants", as he called them in translation.

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For him, Serbia was a country of bandits, and the only thing in it that was worthwhile

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in his opinion, was the wild boar hunting grounds, about which people told him.

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To liquidate this person for patriotic reasons, two days before the assassination

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the group of conspirators in Sarajevo grew by three men who were supposed to give support to the main assassins.

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On St. Vitus' day, June 28, 1914, on the way across the center of Sarajevo

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from the hotel to the location of the formal troop review and beginning of the military exercises,

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the assassins tried to approach the procession of cars,

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but due to a big crowd only Nedeljko Čabrinović was able to throw two bombs.

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They only lightly wounded Colonel Eric Von Merizzi and Count Von Boos-Waldeck,

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but missed Ferdinand, who did not want to miss the rest of the parade.

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A little later, due to the driver's mistake of taking the wrong route,

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Gavrilo Princip was able to approach the car, pull the trigger, and fire three bullets,

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one of which fatally wounded Ferdinand, and another by chance wounded his wife Sophie, which was not planned.

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Ferdinand died within a few minutes on the way to the hospital

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and his wife Sophie during an attempted operation in the hospital.

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Gavrilo Princip was immediately arrested and within a few days all six assassins were arrested.

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Not a single one of them died, although they all took cyanide pills,

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which were given to them in the event of their arrest.

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It is assumed that by standing too long, or in some other way, the pills lost their properties.

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They all admitted to participation in the conspiracy but denied that they had intentions to kill Arch-Duchess Sophie.

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When the assassination was carried out, Gavrilo Princip was 19 years old.

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In the monarchy, the legal age of adulthood was 21. Princip was too young for the death penalty,

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and so he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, where he was exposed to heavy torture.

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He served his sentence in a Czech prison in the Terezin fortress, where he died at age 25 of tuberculosis on

NOTE Paragraph

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April 28, 1918, a little before the end of WWI.