The Event that Sparked World War I: The Aftermath

Mehmed Mehmedbasic

The day Franz Ferdinand was assassinated on Appel Quay in Sarajevo, the first to disappear from the scene was Mehmed Mehmedbasic. Indeed Mehmedbasic did not wait for Gavro’s shooting. He scarpered as soon as he heard Nedjo’s bomb go off.

As mentioned in a previous posting, Mehmedbasic was the only one of the plotters who had a direct involvement in the assassination who escaped and never stood the trial.

The details of Mehmedbasic’s escape are sketchy. What is clear is that he did not hang about in Sarajevo, indeed Bosnia, after the assassination. He stayed in Sarajevo for two nights, in the company of some Muslim men who were studying to be imams. He left Sarajevo on 30 June 1914. By the time Austrian police identified the entire group Mehmedbasic had reached Montenegro.

The Austrian asked for Mehmedbasic to be arrested and sent to Sarajevo to stand trial. Montenegro was a small kingdom at this time, largely neutral but also pro-Serbian in its outlook.

Mehmedbasic, upon his arrival in Montenegro, had wasted no time in bragging about his role in the assassination, although he, the first in the line of the assassins Gavro and Ilic had lined up on Appel Quay to ‘welcome’ the Heir-Apparent, had not actually acted when presented with the opportunity and had run away from the scene at the earliest opportunity. He was arrested by the Montenegro police and he readily admitted to his culpability.

Mehmedbasic was jailed, but he escaped. It is possible that the jailers abetted his escape.

Montenegro informed the Austrian officials that they no longer knew where Mehmedbasic was. The truth was he was still in Montenegro, but quietly, without advertising his heroic role in the plot.

Mehmedbasic stayed in Montenegro for four more months before making his way to Belgrade, where he joined the Komite army.

It was while he was in the Komite army that Mehmedbasic fell under the spell of the charismatic Colonel Dragutin—‘Apis’—Dmitrijevic. Three years later, when Apis’s fortunes nosedived, Mehmedbasic would be charged with the plot to assassinate the Prince Regent, Alexander. Asseen in an earlier posting, these were trumped up charges and there was no plot to assassinate Alexander (a poetic justice, perhaps, meted out to Mehmedbasic). However, Mehemedbasic escaped the 1914 assassination trial. The other plotters were not so lucky.  

Cvjetko Popovic

Cvjetko Popovic had placed himself at the corner of Cumurija Street when Nedjo’s bomb went off. He was equipped with a bomb and revolver although he used neither even though he must have realised, as the Archduke’s car passed him by after a few minutes that Nedjo’s bomb had failed to kill him.

Soon after the bomb went off Popovic decided to remove himself from the scene. He wanted to run back to his home, but did not want to take the chance of keeping his unused weapons in his home. He returned to Appel Quay and hid his weapons in the basement of the Prosjeta offices. It was from this location that Popovic’s weapons were recovered.

Popovic had resolved to end his life after the assassination, but made no attempt to kill himself afterwards, no doubt the idea appearing less appealing when the moment to act on it arrived.

Popovic stayed on in Sarajevo that night. The next day he left Sarajevo for Zemum where his father and step-mother lived.

Popovic would enjoy five more days of freedom. On 3 July he would be summoned and an accusation of his involvement in the plot would be read out to him. ‘Yes,’ Popovic would reply. ‘Everything is true.’

Trifko Grabez

Trifko Grabez was at the Emperor’s Bridge on Appel Quay when he heard two clear shots, one after the other. Soon after, the news that the Heir Apparent had been assassinated began to circulate rapidly.

Grabez decided that he had to get away from Appel Quay. He went to his uncle’s house in Sarajevo and hid the bomb under the seat in the bathroom and gun under the roof. He then went back to the streets and strolled, happy as a Larry, on Appel Quay.

Grabez spent the next day at the home of another uncle in Sarajevo, but then returned to his parents’ home in Pale. He felt completely calm, he later told the trial, when he was in Pale.

Grabez had a girl friend at that time, a woman named Leposava Lalic. Lalic was to go on travelling the next day and Grabez decided to join her. He decided to go to Visegrad, a town near the Serbian border. He did not inform his parents that he was leaving.

Grabez was arrested later the same day because he was travelling without an official permit. He had a legitimate passport with him. The passport showed that Grabez had entered Bosnia from Serbia on 30 May. This aroused suspicions of the police. He was returned to Sarajevo and put in jail.

The above account suggests that it was Grabez's bad luck that he got arrested. If he had a valid permit he might not have been arrested. However, it seems likely that his name would have been mentioned when the other plotters were arrested, and, had Grabez still been in Bosnia, he probably would have been arrested. If, on the other hand, he had crossed the border and entered Serbia, he might have been able to avoid the arrest.

Vaso Cubrilovic

Vaso Cubrilovic, like Mehmedbasic, did not did not hang about on Appel Quay for the shooting. After Nedjo’s bomb went off, he left Appel Quay to a pre-arranged rendezvous to meet Ivo Kranjcevic, and gave Kranjcevic his weapons. The day after the assassination Vaso went out on the streets with his friends and, as was his nature, began boasting about the killing of the previous day. He even declared facetiously that it was he who had fired the shots that killed the Archduke.

Vaso then left Sarajevo. He was arrested on 3 July, the same day Popovic was arrested, in the town of Dubica.

Ivo Kranjcevic

Kranjcevic, in the meanwhile, had hidden the weapons at a family friend’s place without the knowledge of the head of the family. Kranjcevic was lucky that the head of the family was not at home when he arrived at the doorsteps with a bomb and revolver, and was let in by the women. The family head was furious when he came to know what Kranjcevic had done. His family (the name was Momiconovic) was Catholic and ostensibly loyal to the Emperor. In the aftermath of the assassination a filthy anti-Serb mood had gripped Sarajevo; there were anti-Serb demonstrations and riots all over the city. Momiconovic called at Kranjcevic’s place and demanded that the weapons be removed from his house.

At the trial, Kranjcevic’s father, who was a retired sergeant from the Austrian police force, was at a loss to explain how his son, from a Catholic Croat family, loyal to the Empire, had come to identify with Serb nationalism. ‘He was misled,’ was all that Kranjcevic’s father could offer by way of explanation. This was exactly the same phrase the Emperor Franz Ferdinand had used in his Imperial Manifesto, released in the wake of Archduke’s assassination. The killing, the manifesto said, was carried out by eine kleine Schar irreg eliten—a small group of the misled. Nothing to do with the Austrians.

Gavro Princip

Gavro Princip in the meanwhile had been brought to the police station. He was initially questioned by Leo Pfeffer, a relatively inexperienced member of the Austrian judiciary. This is how Pfeffer remembered Gavro when he was brought to him:

‘The young assassin, exhausted by the beatings, was unable to utter a single word. He was undersized, emaciated, sallow and sharp featured. It was difficult to imagine that so frail an individual could have committed so serious a crime.’

The clear blue eyes of the ‘assassin’, according to Pfeffer, were piercing and burning; but there was nothing cruel or criminal in them. They spoke of innate intelligence.

After firing the two shots Gavro had turned the gun inwards and was about to shoot himself. However, a spectator standing nearby saw what Gavro was about to do. He lunged at Gavro and snatched the revolver away from him. In the ensuing chaos Gavro swallowed the cyanide, but, just as Nedjo’s cyanide didn’t work, Gavro’s didn’t either. He merely began vomiting as he was being dragged to the police station and received severe beatings on the way. Gavro’s plan of killing the Archduke was successful, but he could not become, as he had wished, a martyr immediately. That would have to wait for a few more years.

Gavro confessed that he had vowed two years previously to avenge the death of Bogdan Zerajic (who had tried to assassinate General Varesanin). When he heard of the Archduke’s arrival, he had decided to take his revenge because he considered the Heir-Apparent as the embodiment of the power that exercised terrible pressure on the Yugoslavs.

At the time of this conversation neither Gavro nor Pfeffer knew that Ferdinand was dead. Gavro was formally charged with murder later in the evening after the Archduke’s death was confirmed.

At this stage the Austrians knew of only two conspirators: Gavro and Nedjo Cabrinovic, both of whom had been arrested straightaway after their attempts of Ferdinand’s life. They had not yet made the connection that Gavro and Nedjo were in the plot together.

NedjoCabrinovic

Nedjo was arrested immediately after his unsuccessful attempt to kill Franz Ferdinand when he threw a bomb at the Archduke’s car.

Nedjo was interviewed by a different judge in the afternoon of 28 June. This is what Nedjo told him:

‘I am an adherent of the radical anarchist idea, which aims at destroying the present system through terrorism in order to bring in a liberal system in its place. Therefore I hate all representatives of constitutional systems, as the bearers of powers which oppress people. I have educated myself in this spirit by reading socialist and anarchist writings, and I can say that I have read almost all literature available in the Serbo-Croat language.’

Nedjo initially said that he had acted alone, as he could not trust anyone. However he later accepted his connection with Gavro. Typical of Nedjo that he gave the game away while trying to suggest that the two attempts were a coincidence.

Finally, on 30 June Nedjo admitted that he had conspired with Gavro in Belgrade to assassinate the Archduke.

The Austrians put Nedjo and Gavro in chains in isolated cells at the military prison. Their cells were positioned such that they suffered the full glare of the sun. Neither was given water. Their cells looked on to a courtyard where Serbian students, businessmen and peasants who were arrested as a result of the assassination were kept.

Available evidence suggests that neither Gavro nor Nedjo gave away the names of the other conspirators.

Danilo Ilic

Danilo Ilic was arrested fairly soon after Gavro’s arrest. At that time the authorities had no inkling of his involvement in the assassination. Ilic was one of the many radical young Serbs who were arrested that evening. Ilic had a cyanide pill on his person (the one he did not give to Grabez) when he was arrested.

It is generally believed that Danilo Ilic revealed the names of other plotters to the Austrian authorities.

Veljko Cubrilovic

Veljko Cubrilovic, the ‘teacher gentleman’ and Vaso’s elder brother, was rounded up, together with Misko Jovanovic, following Ilic’s disclosures.(Misko Jovanovic was the 'good Serb' in Tuzla who his the weapons Gavro Princip and Trifko Grabez had smuggled into Bosnia from Serbia, and passed them on to Ilic.)  

In due course all the peasants who had helped Gavro and Grabez in smuggling weapons into Bosnia were also arrested. Unlike the main conspirators, all these men were married with families. Veljko, for example, just before his arrest, had become a father for the first time.

Available evidence suggests that Veljko Cubrilovic could have avoided (or at any rate delayed) his fate by escaping to Serbia. He chose not to. It was his sense of honour that stopped him from seeking an escape. In his letter from prison to his wife Veljko wrote: ‘What would have my peasants thought of me if I had fled and left them alone in those trying days?’

Both Veljko and Misko felt (amongst others) that Danilo Ilic had betrayed them.

                                                              Misko Jovanovic

The Event that Sparked World War I: Conspiracy Theories

It is difficult to be absolutely sure about when the plot to assassinate Archduke Ferdinand was hatched and whether there were others (apart from those who were tried) who were operating from behind the curtain.

It can be concluded with some certainty that many of the conspirators such as Trifko Grabez, Cvjetko Popovic, Mehmed Mehmedbasic, and at least one of the Cubrilovic brothers, Vaso, were either recruited or got involved only in the preceding few weeks or, at most, months of the assassination. The other Cubrilovic brother, Veljko, maintained throughout his trial that he had no idea about the plot and had run into Gavro and Trifko Grabez in Priboj purely by accident.

With the exception of Ilic, Mehmedbasic and Veljko Cubrilovic, all the conspirators were young (less than twenty years of age); and even these three were only in their 20s.

So, was the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand an unfortunate consequence of an amateur conspiracy hatched by schoolboys, one of the many that were being cooked up on an almost daily basis, in the fervid anti-Austrian atmosphere in Sarajevo? Was it so that a series of haphazard circumstances and chance and (above all) the cavalier attitude of the Heir-Apparent towards his own safety that led to the moment in Sarajevo on the morning of 28 June 1914, when Ferdinand’s car turned into the street named after his uncle? Or was the assassination organized by other players, in particular Serbian secret societies that had mushroomed during the Austro-Hungarian rule of Bosnia and Hercegovina?

The conspiracy theorists gain credence from the involvement of two men in the plot: Vladimir Gacinovic and Major Vojislav Tankosic.

These two men, in turn, were linked with two pro-Serbian organizations: Young Bosnians and The Black Hand. There was another Serbian ‘cultural’ organization, Narodna Odbrana (in effect a Serbian Nationalist organization, created around 1908, as a reaction to the annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina by the Austrians) of which some of the plotters (Veljko Cubrilovic and Misko Jovanovic) were members. Narodna Odbrana was rumoured to have links with The Black Hand.

Young Bosnians

Almost all the plotters were members of the ultra radical Young Bosnian association, of which Vladimir Gacinovic was the guiding spirit. His stature among the revolutionary young Serbs was very high because of his association with BogdanZerajic who, in 1909, had attempted to assassinate general Marijan Varesanin, the predecessor of Oskar Potiorek, the hated governor of Bosnia and Hercegovina. (Zerajic fired at Varesanin from a close range five times, and missed every time.) Gacinovic, who was a friend of Zerajic, wrote several pamphlets eulogizing Zerajic, which served the twin purpose of accentuating the halo of martyrdom surrounding Zerajic (who was executed) and enhancing his own status among the young Serbs.

As we have seen in earlier postings, one of the plotters (the only one who got away) Mehmed Mehmedbasic attended ameeting in Toulouse in January 1914 in which Gacinovic spoke. The target chosen for execution in that meeting was Oskar Potiorek. Two months later, in March 1914, Danilo Ilic wrote to Mehmedbasic that Potiorek was no longer the target; the target now was Heir-Apparent himself. Since Mehmedbasic remained unconvinced the two wrote to Gacinovic who gave the go-ahead for the assassination of Archduke.

This suggests that Ilic was in touch with Gacinovic and one can then hypothesize that Gacinovic was in the know and had participated in the planning of the assassination.

But there is a problem with this hypothesis.Young Bosnians, while rigid and fervid in its beliefs, morality and code of conduct, was essentially a loose network of several secret organizations that proliferated in various towns and cities in Bosnia. The members were mostly young men of peasant background and the common thread that bound the societies together was their hatred of the Austrians. Young Bosnians had no leader although Gacinovic was the guiding spirit.

It is probable that Gacinovic gave his blessings to several assassination plots targeted at some or the other luminary of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the hope that one of it would succeed.

It is also probable that Gacinovic was only the spiritual guide of the assassins and, beyond giving his blessings, played no active role in the plotting itself.

                                                              Vladimir Gacinovic

The Black Hand

The other person who had more than just spiritual involvement in the assassination plot was Major Vojislav Tankosic. He was the one who provided the plotters with weapons and also arranged their training in shooting.

Originally from a village not very far from Gavro’s village, Tankosic was an influential figure in Komite (the volunteer Serbian army from Bosnia and Hercegovina). A small, frail man, he was reputed to be fierce and barbaric, and not just in a battle.

                                                          Major Vojislav Tankosic

Tankosic had a bodyguard by the name of Djuro Sarac, who had known Gavro Princip from Sarajevo. When Gavro arrived in Belgrade for the first time, in 1912, Sarac was there. The friendship between the two men became closer during Gavro’s stay in the city.

It was Sarac who introduced Gavro to Milan Ciganovic when Gavro arrived in Belgrade at the beginning of 1914. Who was Ciganovic? A Bosnian Serb like Gavro, Ciganovic, by that time, had become a heroic figure amongst the Komites, having awarded a gold medal for bravery in battle. Ciganovic was a close colleague of Tankosic. 

                                                               Milan Ciganovic

When Gavro met with Ciganovic, he explained what he was proposing to do (i.e. assassinate Ferdinand) and requested Ciganovic to provide him with the bombs, saying that he would find the revolver himself. Ciganovic was quiet for a while and then replied, ’we’ll see’. He further said that he would have to speak to a gentleman. That ‘gentleman’ (in the loose sense of the term) was Major Tankosic.

Ciganovic supplied Princip with the bombs warning that they were not reliable, as they exploded only after a delay of several seconds. And, as ‘Princip was poor’, he gave him a few revolvers.

Altogether, Tankosic supplied four pistols and six bombs to the plotters.

The involvement of Tankosic gave rise, over the years, to another conspiracy theory. The assassination was allegedly organized by a notorious Serbian secret society of the time, Union of Death, better known as The Black Hand.

The man who planned the assassination, according to this theory, was a close ally of major Tankosic and a senior figure in The Black Hand: Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevic, nicknamed Apis.

                                                            Dragutin Dimitrijevic 

In 1914, 37 years old Apis, formally the Head of the Serbian Intelligence Service, was a formidable figure, not least because of his alleged role in the 1903 killings of the Serbian King Alexander Obrenovic and his wife, Queen Draga.

After the 1908 annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina by the Austrians, the relationship between the Hapsburgs and Serbia had worsened. Austria gave an ultimatum to Serbia to demobilize its forces and be a good neighbour. The Serbian government capitulated. The retreat of the Serbian politicians was greatly resented by the military elites of Serbia. Since 1909, full two years before The Black Hand came into existence, rumours were rife that a secret society with Dimitrijevic at its centre would be formed. Soon after its formation The Black Hand started publishing its own newspaper, Pijemont, which was generally known as the mouthpiece of Serbian army.

It has been alleged by some historians (e.g. Luigi Albertini) that all the main conspirators of the 28 June plot were members of The Black Hand, notably Ilic and Princip. There is however no real evidence to back this up other than what an ex-member of the society, one Oskar Tartalja, told Albertini. Several different lists of the members of The Black Hand have been produced over the years; none contained the names of any of the conspirators. None of the conspirators ever admitted that he was a member of The Black Hand. It might be argued that they felt duty bound not to divulge their membership given the secretive nature of the The Black Hand and the involvement of the top Serbian army figures. That does not seem likely either. Vaso Cubrilovic, who was intimately involved in the 28 June plot and lived into a grand old age, always insisted that none them was a member of The Black Hand.

The theory that The Black Hand was behind the Archduke’s assassination received credence following the Salonika trial in 1917. Colonel Dimitrijevic and other military officials (who might have been members of The Black Hand) were charged with plotting to assassinate the Prince Regent of Serbia, Alexander.

Dimitrijevic, by this time, had fallen out of favour with Alexander, who had become the Prince Regent. He was dismissed as Chief of military Intelligence. His powerbase had begun to erode after the death of his close ally, Major Tankosic, in 1915, on the battlefield.

‘Apis’ and his ‘associates’ were arrested at the end of 1916 and stood trial in the spring of 1917 on the French-controlled Salonika front. The charge was: ‘Apis’ had planned the assassination of the Prince Regent. The consensus amongst the historians is that this was essentially a show-trial and the charges were trumped up; there had been no plot to assassinate the Prince Regent.

There were 11 defendants at the Salonika trial. One defendant died during the trial and charges were dropped. The remaining 10 were found guilty. 8 of them including ‘Apis’ were sentenced to death; the remaining two were sentenced to 15 years in prison. The Serbian high court reduced the number of death sentences to 7 and Alexander commuted four more death sentences. But there was no mercy for Apis and two of his close aides (colonel Ljuba Vulovic and Rade Malobabic, who was a Serbian spy). Dimitrijevic, Vulovic and Malobabic were executed by a firing squad (after they were made to stand by a ditch for two hours while all the charges against them were read).

One of the two who was sentenced to 15 years in prison was Mehmed Mehmedbasic who was involved in the assassination of Franz Ferdinand but had escaped trial, and, later, had fought for Komite in the First World War.

While Dimitrijevic was in prison, awaiting his trial, he put his name to a full confession that he had organized the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, in 1914. Dimitrijevic also sent pleading letters to the Price Regent and his father, Peter.

One can only speculate as to why Dimitrijevic agreed to put his signature to the confession which linked him to the assassination of the Archduke. We do not of course know, but can guess the tactics that might have been used to obtain Dimitrijevic’s ‘confession’.

The politics of the Balkans in general and Serbia in particular had become very murky during these times, pullulate as it did with intrigues, plots and subterfuge, not dissimilar to the atmosphere that prevailed in the first few years of French Revolution, when there was an intense and ruthless power struggle amongst different factions which were struggling to gain control and were ever ready to denounce and guillotine members of the rival factions. 

Prince Regent Alexander was the second son of Peter, the King of Serbia. In 1909 Alexander became the Crown Prince when his elder brother George was forced to renounce his claim to the throne after he kicked a servant to death in a fit of rage.

In the aftermath of the Second BalkanWar in which Alexander had won battle victories for Serbia, a vicious and complicated power struggle ensued as regards how Macedonia should be administered. King Peter chose to retire due to ‘ill-health’ and passed on the executive power to Alexander.

On 24 June 1914, just five days before the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, Alexander became Regent of Serbia.

Within a month of Archduke’s assassination, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which had sensed that there was Serbian involvement in the assassination, sent an ultimatum to Serbia, with a list of 10-near-impossible demands. The then Serbian prime-minister, Nicola Pasic, agreed to 9 out of 10 demands. This was still unacceptable to the Austrians who declared war against Serbia, which of course was the beginning of the destructive First World War.

As there was little doubt that at least three members of The Black Hand (Ciganovic, Dimitrijevic and Tankosic) had played a crucial role in the assassination of Franz Ferdinand (they had provided the plotters with weapons and training), The Black Hand was officially disbanded.

Alexander’s position as Prince regent was, at least to his mind and probably in reality, too, not secure. His elder brother, George (who fought in the First World War and was severely wounded), was trying to claim back his right to the throne. There was great enmity between the two brothers and rumours were rife that Alexander had even tried to poison George.

Dimitrijevic had not endeared himself with Alexander because of his haughty attitude and what Alexander saw as a lack of respect and humility towards the throne. Alexander must have been aware of the role played by Dimitrijevic in the assassination of another royalty (the Serbian King Alexander Obrenovic and his wife, Queen Draga). He had to be eliminated.

It is not beyond the realms of credulity that Dimitrijevic was removed by the cabal of Prince Regent Alexander and Prime Minister Pasic, as he was a threat to them. The charges against him were made up:  there was no assassination plot against Alexander; and, while he was incarcerated in prison, his fate sealed, a decision was probably made to offer him as the mastermind behind the assassination of Ferdinand (in which he had probably some involvement at any rate). All that was needed was obtaining Dimitrijevic's confession, which, one might assume, was obtained by methods that were not beholden to flabby concepts of liberality.

Dimitrijevic died in 1917 under a shower of machine gun bullets for an assassination he did not plot. Time, as they say, is a great equaliser. 17 years later, in 1934, Alexander would be assassinated while on a state visit to the Third French Republic by a member of Bulgarian Revolutionary organization. (This was the first political assassination filmed live, as it happened right in front of a cameraman.) After the Second World War, his family would be declared as the enemy of people by Marshal Tito’s communist Yugoslavia. In 1953 the Serbian Supreme Court would rehabilitate Dimitrijevic and his co-defendants, finding them not guilty, as there was no proof of their participation in the so-called assassination plot of Alexander.

There is no conclusive proof that The Black Hand, the secret Serbian organization, masterminded Archduke’s assassination, although there is little doubt that it supplied the plotters with the weapons and offered some of them training: Milan Ciganovic almost certainly was a Black Hand Member.

The available evidence suggests that Gavro Princip and Nedjo Cabrinovic approached Ciganovic for weapons. Did they know that Ciganovic was a Black Hand member? Or did they know him only as a prominent member of the Komite with easy access to bombs? Was the idea of assassinating Ferdinand thought up by the young Bosnian conspirators on their own, or were they approached by The Black Hand?

The account Dimitrijevic himself gave, a year after Archduke’s assassination was as follows:

One day Major Tankosic came to Dimitrijevic’s office and told him that some Young Bosnians were going to make an attempt on Archduke Ferdinand. Dimitrijevic thought that such an attempt would be impossible, as he imagined Franz Ferdinand would be well protected. At best, he thought, there might be an incident, which would be a warning to the Austrians that an attack on Serbia (which was what the Serbians feared the Austrians were planning) would be dangerous. However, so Dimitrijevic claimed, after he gave the matter some more thought, he tried to call the youths back—by this time Gavro, Grabez and Nedjo had crossed the Serbian border—via Djuro Sarac. He was too late. The perpetrators would not give up.

The above version seems more plausible that the confession Dimitrijevic signed in prison in 1917.

The Event that Sparked World War I: the Plot and Plotters

                                                          Cvjetko Popovic

Cvjetko Popovic was the youngest member of the plot to assassinate Franz Ferdinand. Not much is known about his background. His mother had died when he was young and his father, a retired school teacher, had remarried. Like most of the conspirators, Popovic was very young. He had just turned 16 and was in the third year at the Teacher’s College.

Popovic was recruited to the plot to assassinate Ferdinand by Vaso Cubrilovic, a month before the assassination. Apart from Vaso and Danilo Ilic, Popovic, at the time, was most probably unaware of the identities of the other assassins.

Popovic was on the Appel Quay, equipped with a pistol and a bomb, one of the five assassins lying in wait for the Heir-apparent.

Popovic was standing on the corner of Cumurija Street, the turning off the Quay, near a pastry shop. He was the fourth in line to assassinate the Archduke, after Mehmed Mehmedbasic, NedjoCabrinovic, and Vaso Cubrilovic.

Standing near Popovic was Danilo Ilic, who, although he was not taking part in the assassination, had decided he did not want to miss out on the spectacle of the slaying of the Heir-Apparent.

Like the rest of the plotters, Popovic had received cyanide pills. Indeed both he and Vaso had received their poisons almost three weeks before the assassination, even before they were given the weapons.

Popovic, however, failed to make an attempt on Archduke’s life even after it was clear that Nedjo Cabrinovic’s bomb had failed to kill Ferdinand (although Popovic thought it was Vaso’s bomb.)

Popovic was also one of the few plotters who survived to tell his tale. In an interview given to the author Joachim Remak, who, in 1959 published an account of the assassination, Popovic claimed that he did not throw the bomb because there were people in the way. However, according to the transcript of the trial (which was not available to Remak) Popovic’s nerves left him at the last minute. ‘I didn’t have the courage,’ he told the trial. ‘I don’t know what happened to me.’ He was only 16 at the time.

Decades later, in 1969 Popovic, in an interview to an American newspaper, recalled the morning of the assassination. 'The sun had come up hot in the clear sky,' Popovic recalled. It was a bright sunny morning, which apparently posed Popovic with a problem. It had rained for days prior to that day. He now had to think of a way to conceal the pistol and bomb he was carrying.It was 10 o'clock and the crowds had begun to gather. The seven assassins ('the seven of us') were spread across the area, 'each armed with either grenades or pistols or both'. (This seems like hindsight memory on Popovic's part. It is highly unlikely that at the the actual time of the assassination Popovic was aware that there were six others besides him involved in the plot.) The sound of the royal motorcade grew nearer, the crowd surged forward, and suddenly Popovic knew that he was in 'grave trouble'. The reason he felt he was in grave trouble (so he told the American interviewer in 1969) was because he knew that he had to hit the bomb against something hard, 'like the wall behind me' and wait for 10-11 seconds before he lobbed the bomb. If he moved ahead with the crowd there would be no hard surface available against which to hit the bomb. On the other hand, if he stayed back and hit the bomb against the wall, he would have to lob the bomb over the heads of people in front of him. In the event Popovic did nothing; but that was because (so he claimed in 1969) he heard a muffled sound, 'like a grenade that had fizzled'. There was lot of shouting and 'milling about' and no one noticed Popovic with his grenades and pistol. That did not stop him from panicking. As Gavro Princip, who eventually killed the Archduke after Nedjo Cabrinovic's failed attempt, sat in a nearby outdoor cafe to drink a cup of coffee and think of his next move, Popovic went around in a daze, thinking they had failed. Suddenly he heard 'a great shout over by the river, and I knew I was wrong. I just knew.'

The Event that Sparked World War I: the Plot and Plotters

                                                         

                                                         Mehmed Mehmedbasic

Mehmedbasic was the only Muslim involved in the plot to assassinate Franz Ferdinand. At 27 (or 26; there is uncertainty about the year of his birth which is given either as 1886 or 1887) he was the oldest of the conspirators who took a direct part in the assassination.

Although belonging to the Muslim community in Bosnia, which was (traditionally) loyal to the Austro-Hungarian empire, Mehmedbasic's political sympathies lay firmly with the Serb nationalists.

Mehmedbasic was a trained carpenter from the Hercegovina town of Stolac. His father was a feudal landlord, but the family had fallen on hard times.

Mehmedbasic wanted to get out of Hercegovina. In January 1914, he allowed his father’s last servile kmets to buy their freedom and travelled to France; to the southern city of Toulouse, to be precise. He wanted to attend a meeting.

It is not clear what exactly happened in this meeting which was also attended by radical ‘Young Bosnians’. According to some historians, this was the meeting in which the seeds of the plot that eventually killed Ferdinand were sown. According to others it was just one of the many plots that were being hatched on an almost daily basis in those extraordinary times.

Vladimir Gacinovic spoke at this meeting. Gacinovic was one of the original ‘Young Bosnians’. Although he was not officially the leader of the organization—there was no leader—he was the ‘guiding spirit’. He was highly critical of what he saw as the passivity and indolence of the older Serbs and repeatedly railed against them. He travelled to study in Switzerland where he came into contact with Russian revolutionaries. He had association with Leon Trotsky.

Lots of potential targets of assassination, including Franz Ferdinand, were discussed in the meeting in Toulouse; but Gacinovic impressed on the collective minds of the congregate the urgent need to assassinate Oskar Potiorek, the governor of Bosnia. Mehmedbasic was given the honour of assassinating Potiorek. He was supposed to kill Potiorek with a poisoned dagger!

Mehmedbasic set off for Sarajevo with a knife and a small phial of poison. As he was travelling on the train he heard that the gendarmes were searching the train for someone. Panicking, the would-be assassin ran to the toilet and threw away the dagger and the phial. Afterwards he realised that the gendarmes were looking for a petty thief.

Mehmedbasic, despite this setback, did not give up on his ambition to assassinate general Potiorek. He returned to his native town of Stolac, obtained a revolver and went back to Sarajevo. By this time the impending visit of the heir-Apparent was announced.

It is not exactly known how Mehmedbasic came to be involved in the plot to assassinate Franz Ferdinand, or, for that matter, how he got introduced to the plotters.. Most probably he knew of them via his association with the ‘Young Bosnians’ organization. It also seems clear that his contact with the plotters was Danilo Ilic. It is very likely that like most of the plotters save Gavro Princip and Danilo Ilic, Mehmedbasic was unaware of the identities of the other men involved in the plot.

According to some historians, Ilic wrote to Mehmedbasic in March 1914 and informed him that there was going to be an assassination attempt on the Heir-apparent and guns and bombs would be provided. Ilic informed Mehmedbasic that the assassination of Ferdinand would now have to take precedence over the assassination of Potiorek! According to others, the two met in person in the Bosnian town of Mostar.

Mehmedbasic told Ilic that he had given his word to Gacinovic that he would kill Potiorek, and he did not want to change the targets without running it past Gacinovic.

Mehmedbasic and Ilic then wrote a joint letter to Gacinovic and soon they received a two-word reply: ‘Forward Lions!’

Mehmedbasic then travelled back to his native town of Stolac awaiting further instructions from Ilic.

On 26 June (two days before the Archduke was assassinated) Mehmedbasic received a telegram from Ilic summoning him to Sarajevo. Mehmedbasic arrived in Sarajevo and booked himself into a hotel. There he met with Ilic, Princip and some others, and the group sat talking till the early hours of the morning, Ilic regaling them with exciting stories of Russian revolutionaries.

On the evening of 27 June Ilic again met with Mehmedbasic and gave him the bomb with some instructions about how to use it. (Mehmedbasic had never handled a bomb before.)

On the day Archduke was assassinated Mehmedbasic was assigned a position (by Ilic) at the head of the avenue of assassins (near Cumurja Bridge), the oldest and supposedly the most determined of the assassins.

But Mehmedbasic did not throw the bomb. Later he told a friend that Ilic had advised him not to throw the bomb unless he had recognised the Archduke; he could always throw the bomb later when the procession came back down Appel Quay from the town hall.

Years later, when he spoke to the historian Albertan, Mehmedbasic claimed that the real reason he did not throw the bomb was that just as the procession was approaching, a gendarme stood next to him. He was therefore afraid to throw the bomb (Mehmedbasic said) as he might have been seen and given the plot away. Perhaps the real reason was, like some of the other plotters, Mehmedbasic lost his nerve at the last minute. He ran off as soon as he heard Cabrinovic’s bomb exploding.

Mehmedbasic was the only one of the 28 June plotters who escaped and never faced the trial. However, a few years later he was arrested and faced trial for his alleged involvement in another assassination conspiracy (Salonika trial); but that is another story.

The Event that Sparked World War I: the Plot and Plotters

                                                             Trifko Grabez

Trifko Grabez had a direct involvement in the plot to assassinate Franz Ferdinand. Apart from Gavro Princip and Danilo Ilic who hatched the plot, Trifo Grabez (together with Nedjo Cabrinovic) had the longest involvement (approximately a few months) in the plot.

Grabez helped Gavro to smuggle the weapons from Serbia into Bosnia. He was Gavro’s constant companion throughout this ‘mystic journey’.

Gavro Princip recruited Trifko Grabez  into the plot, in Belgrade, in the Spring of 1914.

Originally from the town of Pale (near Sarajevo), Grabez had studied first in Sarajevo and then in Tuzla.

Grabez was a short-tempered, hot-headed young man who had spent two weeks in jail for assaulting his professor who he thought had laughed sarcastically at him. After the assault he was barred from Tuzla and expelled from Bosnia.

Like many other disaffected, angry young Serbs, Grabez made his way to Belgrade where he spent time frequenting cheap cafes and plotting revenge on the Austrians.

When Gavro Princip arrived in Belgrade in March 1914 (his last visit to the Serbian capital), he met Grabez, born, ironically enough, on 28 June, the day the Archduke Ferdinand would be assassinated.

Gavro and Grabez knew each other from before when both lived in Sarajevo.

Grabez’s father was a priest and Grabez himself was a believer. In his trial Grabez said that he wanted unification as Yugoslavia and political freedom. When asked what he meant by political freedom he answered that he did not know, as he was not familiar with the term. The court suggested that he did not use terms he did not know the meaning of.

Gavro recruited Grabez to their plot to assassinate Ferdinand. Grabez agreed readily. It was a duty, he said, of every Bosnian to ‘welcome’ the Heir-apparent. During one of his earlier visits to Sarajevo, Grabez had read the hints in the newspapers that Austria might attack Serbia. When he read that Grabez made up his mind that Ferdinand had to be killed.

Gavro informed Grabez that Nedjo Cabrinovic too was fully committed to the assassination.

The would-be assassins then got a message from Milan Ciganovic that Major Vojislav Tankosic, the leader of the Komite army, wanted to meet them. Gavro had already met with Ciganovic and negotiated obtaining weapons from him. However, he would not go to see Tankosic (even though it was Tankosic who had given the final authorization that the plotters be provided with the weapons) because he had not forgiven the major for dismissing him when he had volunteered to join the Komite at the time of the First Balkan War. Nedjo Cabrinovic would not go because he had a tendency to laugh at the most inappropriate times and annoy the other person ( so he said). In the end Ciganovic took only Grabez to meet major Tankosic.

Tankosic asked Grabez whether he could shoot. Grabez told the major he couldn’t. Indeed none of the aspiring assassins could shoot. Tankosic then took out a gun, gave it to Ciganovic and told him to teach the ‘boys’ how to shoot.

Grabez and Gavro smuggled the weapons from Serbia to Sarajevo. This was the arduous journey which took them through Priboj and Tuzla. Nedjo Cabrinovic accompanied them for part of their travels, but, after a quarrel with Gavro, Nedjo made his way separately to Tuzla, after handing his weapons to Gavro and Grabez. In this journey (which Gavro described as a mystic journey during the trial) Grabez and Gavro were helped by Veljko Cubrilovic, Misko Jovanovic and a number of peasants, all of whom were arrested and meted out severe punishment.

Grabez arrived in Sarajevo, in the company of Gavro Princip in June 1914. He consorted closely with Gavro and Danilo Ilic. As mentioned in a previous posting, Ilic seemed to have developed doubts about the advisability of their endeavours in the last three weeks before 28 June. He most probably tried to dissuade Grabez in vain from participating in the assassination on more than one occasion.

Grabez was one of the seven plotters (including Danilo Ilic) who took a direct part in the assassination. He was given his weapons by Danilo Ilic. Ilic took Grabez to his (Ilic's) mother’s house and gave him a bomb and a revolver. He did not give him the cyanide pill, probably believing that he had successfully put Grabez off the mission.

Perhaps Danilo’s exhortations had their effects. Because it would appear that Grabez changed his mind more than once as to what he was going to do. In the trial he said that even as he received the weapons he promised Ilic that he would not carry out the shooting, nor would he kill himself. He would keep himself alive for working for the revolution. But, so he informed the trial, it was all sham; he just wanted Ilic off his back.

Grabez would live, but not for long. And the remainder of his short life he would not be spent working for any revolution.

On the day the Archduke met his end Grabez was one of the six assassins waiting for him on his route. 

After collecting his weapons from Iliac, Grabez went to Appel Quay to carry out his part in the assassination. In his trial he said that he went there with the intention of locating Gavro. He, Grabez, was going to throw the bomb and create a diversion while Gavro was going to carry out the actual shooting. (It is not clear whether the two had met before the assassination and had actually discussed this, or whether this was something Grabez had in his mind but had not discussed with Gavro.)

However, when he reached the Quay, Grabez was unable to find Gavro and assumed that he must have been arrested.

Grabez then took up his position by the Emperor’s Bridge which was on the direct route to the Governor’s building (Konak) where a lunch in honour of Ferdinand was arranged. Grabez reckoned that if Nedjo Cabrinovic failed to kill the Archduke with his bomb, the chauffeur would want to bring him to Konak by the quickest route where, by the Emperor’s Bridge, he would be waiting for the royal couple.

Grabez was standing near the bridge for a few minutes when he heard an explosion. Nedjo’s bomb had gone off. Grabez was sure that it was Nedjo who had thrown the bomb, as the others, so he would say at the trial, were Bosnian youths of weaker qualities (presumably he meant Vaso Cubrilovic and Cvjetko Popovic).

Grabez was still at the Emperor’s Bridge when the Archduke’s cavalcade returned to Appel Quay an hour later, after Nedjo’s bomb failed to kill him. However Ferdinand avoided Grabez because of a last minute change to his route following Nedjo’s unsuccessful attempt on his life, only for the Royal chauffer to make an error and turn into a side-street (Franz Joseph Street, named after the Emperor) where Gavro Princip was waiting forhim.

The above was Grabez’s account to the chief of the trial.

Grabez gave two different accounts from the one above: one before and one after his interview with the chief of trial.

In the pre-trial interview Grabez denied that he had agreed to take part in the assassination.

Finally, when the trial began, Grabez changed his version yet again. He said that even though he had stopped trusting Ilic (who tried to dissuade him at the last minute from taking part in the assassination attempt), he had decided not to take part; he had never gone even to Appel Quay on the day the Archduke was assassinated; he had collected the weapons only to remove the evidence from Ilic’s house. (He wrapped the weapons into an awkward shaped package.) He had no intention of assassinating anybody. He said he had lied before (when he gave evidence to the chief of trial) about being at the Emperor’s Bridge on the day of assassination because he wanted to hide the identity of someone he had been with that day.

Grabez dug his grave even deeper by these repeated changes of his account. The trial became more and more sceptical as Grabez changed his versions. ‘That is the third time you’ve changed your story,’ the trial reminded Grabez. ‘What are we to believe?’