How not to write History

Today is the anniversary of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife at Sarajevo in 1914.


The other month, and quite by accident, I came across the following article from the Daily Mail website. Published in 2013 it is by Sir Max Hastings and is an extract from his book Catastrophe published later that year to mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War I.


The title of the article rather gives away the style of the rest: "Royal love birds whose blind arrogance cost 15 million lives: How the lavish lifestyle enjoyed by the Archduke and his commoner wife triggered the First World War"....


It does not get any better. The rest of this particular catastrophe of an article can be viewed
here

It all gives the impression that it was entirely the fault of Archduke and Duchess that they were assassinated in the first place and that they were somehow responsible for the outbreak of the War....not the ghastly Princip...

Sir Max is on this basis a graduate of the Glenda Slag School of Journalism.

His article is full of slick, inaccurate or facile assumptions with its references to the couples lavish lifestyle, to Sophie Chotek being "middle class", inevitably to the "Crackpot Kaiser" and to the
"supposed injustice and folly of the Versailles peace treaty"

There is also the rather jingoistic attitude that we were right because we were right because we are British. Sir Max appears to accept the fear that Germany might in 1914 have been about to become "top nation " - he should wake up and smell the coffee and look who is top nation now in Europe despite two defeats in cataclysmic world wars and having its economy destroyed twice together with the loss of a third of its territory ...

The whole piece emanates a nasty popularism, and I was somewhat surprised in the light of this to find upon researching the point that in another of his articles that Sir Max stated that he was not a Brexiteer but intended to vote Remain.

For an alternative view of the outbreak of the war there is a somewhat tendentious but refreshingly different piece available under the title of Austria Hungary and the start of WW1 here

The Franz Ferdinand that many historians don't want you to see: Smiling, laughing, and getting along famously with Romanian farm families in the Carpathian Mountains, 1912

Image and label:www.kukww1.com/

Sarajevo assassination centenary

Today has been the centenary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife at Sarajevo in 1914. There is a good online account and discussion about the shadowy forces in the background here.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand greets dignitaries in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, shortly before his assassination by Gavrilo Princip.

Image:smh.com.au

The BBC has a report about various commemorations of the events of the day here. I do find it shocking that looking back over all that has flowed from Princip's action that day there are still Serb Nationalists who feel able to honour him with new statues. Given the appalling loss of life in two world wars, horrendous political repression of nations and traditions under evil regimes of the radical left and right, not to mention the more specific sufferings of the southern Slavs in more recent years, surely repentance and reflection not adulation is called for. Frankly it seems to me to be depraved to honour Princip, who has so much blood on his hands

There are reports in several newspapers about the divided mood in Sarajevo which can be seen online at Villain or hero? Sarajevo is split on archduke's assassin Gavrilo Princip - The Guardian,
100 years since the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand: A divided Sarajevo marks the event that triggered the ... - The Independent, and Bosnian Serbs in their half of Sarajevo erect statue of 'hero' assassin who triggered WWI as divided city marks 100th ... - Daily Mail . This last one has a good series of photographs of surviving relics from the events of 1914.

The Guardian also has an online article about how it covered the assassination in its page sin the summer of 1914 and this can be viewed here. There is another account of contemporay reaction in the post here from the blog To Find the Principles.

My previous posts about the events of that terrible day can be read at Sarajevo remembered
from 2010,  Sarajevo assassination from 2011 and Assassination in Sarajevo from 2012.

One thing one could do today was to pray for the souls of the Archduke and his Duchess, and for teh countless souls of those who died as a result, or whose lives were maimed by the consequences of that day. As I have opined before, ultimately, we are all victims of Sarajevo.

 

The Great European Civil War

Perusing the newspapers earlier I saw that the Daily Mail was not only critical of the Bishop of London for his comments about the "baby-boomer" generation - he being a member should not criticise it etc being the argument - but also for saying that the Great War was a European civil war and that church leaders should reflect seriously on how their predecessors on all sides had endorsed men going off to fight. The Bishop's comments were apparently all the worse for being in line with an EU approach that the war had been such a civil conflict and in line with the Government apparently wanting not to blame the Germans when it came to commemorating the outbreak of hostilities next year.

Well now, the European civil war argument is not new - it was certainly used by F. Scott Fitzgerald in writing about the '20s, and strikes me as an excellent way to understand the dreadful disaster that was the 1914-18 war. You do not have to be an obsessive devotee of the modern EU to think that. One can be very Eurosceptic indeed about the structures of the Union without wanting to ignore the fact that the UK is inextricably bound up with what happens on the continental mainland of Europe - that is, after all, why we were drawn in in 1914.

As to blaming the Germans - well what actually started the war was not the Deutches Reich, but an act of terrorism against the established order in Sarajevo. That set off a tragic and disastrous series of political chain reactions that drew in most of Europe, due to mutual suspicion and the failure on all sides to look at the wider scene. It would be less than historically accurate to think that the war started when Germany invaded Belgium - that is of the "Fog in Channel, Continent cut off" school of thought.

 

 

 

 

Commemorating the Great War

I saw in yesterday's Sunday Times a report about discussions in Whitehall about events overthe coming years to commemorate the Great War. The planning committee were reported as anxious to avoid opening old wounds and to play down any note of triumphalism. That seems right to me. Given that the centenary is approaching and given the number of lives lost and blighted by the War it is, of course, appropriate to recall those terrible losses. I do rather worry that some may try to appropriate such solemn anniversaries to a modern agenda regarding Europe.

What worries me more is that commemoration here will begin with the British entry into the War on August 4th. That was not the beginningof the conflict, nor even the Austrian shelling of Belgrade on July 28th. The crisis began with the Sarajevo assassinations on June 28th. Now whatever the blindness of politicians, the influence and impact of the military industrial complex, and the draft plans of military men it should be remembered that the whole crisis was triggered off by an attack on the traditional order by the forces of violence and revolution in the person of Princip. War may well have been a real danger in 1914, but it was not inevitable. Even after the deaths of the Archduke and his wife it might have been possible to prevent or contain the conflict. The tragedy of 1914 is that it was not - and that fact is what really needs commemorating next year.

 

Assassination in Sarajevo

Today is the 98th anniversary of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdiand and his wife in Sarajevo in 1914. My posts from previous years can be read at Sarajevo remembered  and at  Sarajevo anniversary.  There is an online account of the background to the murder and the events of the day and the aftermath at Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria ...

The Archduke and Duchess set out on their last journey


Image:edtech2,boisestate.edu

Image: news.ca.msn.com

Image: mrgiovanello.wikispaces.com

Doubtless plans are already being made to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War in two years time, but i do wonder how much attention will be paid to the the sarajevo assassination rather than the experience of war as visited upon the peoples of Europe and beyond. Not to do so would be to miss acrucial point - the assault by revolutionary nationalism upon the established order, and the unprecedented disaster that was unleashed. None of us today is unaffected by the actions of that morning in Sarajevo. Princip and his fellow students and other conspirators, blinded by their narrow nationalist prejudices, engaged in the ultimate in gesture politics - this could not be excused as dealing with a direct personal grievance or insult, but a naive, warped idealism that thought the assassination the Heir would  be a gesture for their cause.  We are still paying the price.

Next time someone says that we are not bound to beleive anyone is actually in Hell, just remind them of Gavrilo Princip - because, in my humble opinion, for what it's worth, if anyone is in, or bound for, Hell it must be Princip. The Last Judgement is deferred until the end of time so that the full consequences of individual's actions can be assessed - and i don't see the odious figure of Gavrilo Princip wriggling out of what he did, even with the forgiveness of his victim's children.

Sarajevo anniversary

Today is the anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife at Sarajevo in 1914. Please remeber them in your prayers, and pray for the peace of the world and deliverance from radical, purblind, extremists. My post for this day last year can be read at Sarajevo remembered.

The assassination and the circumstances and possibilities - the "what ifs", or to be smart, the "counterfactuals" - and its continuing impact exert a fascination on my mind, and should, I believe, on those of others. For all the work of historians in, quite correctly, discerning trends and patterns there are specific moments when change occurs, events which do, literally, change the world. The Sarajevo assassination is one of them.

Looking at whatI wrote last year the only change I would really make would be to be firmer in my repugnance at the fate of the Archduke and his wife, and the consequent fate of us all - we all live in a world that came into being that sunny summer morning.

Dedijer's book remains the classic account, although it can be supplemented by later books. It was inevitably constrained by its author's background and the times in which he wrote, but it is agreat piece of work. One question I would have asked him, had I the possibility, was how many Bosnians were so taken up with violent revolutionary nationalism. Dedijer writes of all these groups - Pan-Slavs, South Slavs and Pan-Serbs - with precision and knowledge, but I do wonder to what extent they and their more passive supporters were a minority. They appear to share the same profile as other radical nationalist groups who, alas, manage to make the political running.

I have found some more images of that fateful morning, although they are refusing to expand to a larger size. Here then are the Archduke, the Duchess and Gen Potoriek, Govenor of Bosnia,
arriving at the city hall in Sarajevo:

The Archduke and the Duchess leave the city hall:

The driver takes the fatal wrong turn on the Appel Quay and the Archducal car wheels can be seen to begin to turn to the right. The assassination happened seconds later:

I also found this picture, which is a reminder of the fact that Europe's reaction was to show solidarity with the Habsburgs in this assault on their Empire and dynasty:

Requiem in the church of St Catherine in St Petersburg for Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914.