The Event that Sparked World War I: How it Ended for the Plotters

Veljko Cubrilovic, Danilo Iliac, and Misko Jovanovic

                                                             Veljko Cubrliovic

Veljko Cubrilovic appealed against his death sentence. He was wasting his time. He waited for several weeks for the judgment of the High Court which rubber stamped the death sentence.

Even though Danilo Ilic and Misko Jovanovic had not appealed against their death sentences, the two men received a reprieve while the High Court deliberated on Veljko’s appeal. For some reason the Austrians wanted to hang the three men together.

While he awaited his fate Veljko exchanged several letters with his wife. He wrote a letter to his daughter Nadja, who was an infant at the time, with the instruction to his wife that Nadja receive the letter when she turned 15. Veljko ended this very moving letter by telling his daughter, who grew up without knowing her father, that in his last hours his thoughts were directed at her and her mother.

Veljko’s wife, Jovanka (who did not remarry after Veljko’s death and wore mourning clothes for many years after her husband’s death), gave this letter to Nadja, as her husband had wished, when Nada turned 15. Jovanka had never exactly hidden the story of Veljko’s life from Nadja, but she became more open about it as Nadja grew older.

In 2006, 92 year old Nadja would tell an interviewer, in Belgrade, that her father was a Yugoslav hero and, even though she never knew him, she was immensely proud of him.

Veljko was hanged along with Danilo and Misko on 2 February 1915. On the last day of his life Veljko wrote his final letter to Jovanka. There is a note of resignation in this letter. He wrote: ‘Do not grieve too much and don’t be sad. It had to be this way.’ As Veljko wrote this letter, a photograph of his wife and daughter was in front of him, on the table. 

The last letters Veljko wrote to his wife and daughter got to them by a stroke of good luck. The prison authorities sent these letters not to Jovanka, but to a judge in the town Jovanka was living at the time (Bosanka Gradiska). The judge wrote to the Austrian High Court that the letters be destroyed. In one of the letters Veljko had written that he was leaving behind ‘untarnished name’. It was unacceptable, the judge felt, that a child in a crib [Nadja] be told that a man who had committed high treason and who was subsequently hanged was leaving an ‘untarnished name’! The High Court agreed with the judge’s recommendation and the letters were destroyed. However, a high court clerk made copies of these letters before destroying them. The copies were passed on to the director of a bank in Sarajevo. The director handed the letters to Vaso Cubrilovic after the war and Vaso passed them on to Jovanka.

The last moment of Veljko’s life were described to Jovanka by a friend of Veljko from Priboj, a priest, who was in the same prison.

Veljko left some money for the guards to have a drink in his memory. As he was being given the last rites on the platform, along with Danilo Ilic and Misko Jovanovic, Veljko asked the priest to tell his wife and daughter that he was thinking of them at the end.

Veljko was very co-operative with the executioner. When ordered to remove his coat, he also removed the collar and tie so that the hangman would find it easier to fit the noose around his neck. There was a fixed smile on his face all the time. As the noose went round his neck, he said: ‘Long live the Serbian people! Long live the Serbian army! Long live King Peter!’

The executioner, Alois Seifried, an Austrian, left an account of the execution. According to Seifried’s account the three prisoners’ chains were removed in their cells and they walked unaided to the gallows, led by a priest who was reciting prayers.

All three men were calm and looked composed. They listened quietly when the verdict was read out.

The first one to step forward was Veljko, As Veljko fumbled to unbutton his shirt and tie so Seifried offered to help him. Veljko declined and said he would do it himself.

According to Seifried, the second man, who was Misko Jovanovic, was also very calm.

The third man, Danilo Ilic, Seifried wrote, had the greatest guilt written on his face, but he too was serene.

One of the men, Seifried could not remember which one afterwards, said to him, ‘please don’t torment me for long.’

As the drums were rolling the executioner heard all the men shouting. He recalled that all three of them expressed themselves very strongly against Austria.

Seifried completed his account by saying that he had never met such brave, calm delinquents in his life.

According to Vaso Cubrilovic, both Veljko and Misko refused to say goodbye to Ilic on the scaffold, presumably still holding a grudge against him for the betrayal. Vaso, who would only be one of the two main accused who survived prison, could afford to be magnanimous to Ilic in his memoirs. He wrote:

‘I don’t blame [Veljko and Misko] nor do I support the fact that the late Veljko and Misko did not wish to say farewell to him [Ilic] before their deaths.’ Vaso then turned philosophical. ‘ I know,’ he continued, ‘from my own experience that there are moments in life that require the utmost energy of soul to remain in balance.’

                                                            Danilo Ilic

Austrians decided to bury the bodies of the three hanged men secretly at night. The Empire did not want the graves to become a point of pilgrimage. (The chief of police wrote: ‘Their graves will be decorated with flowers every night as if they were martyrs and heroes.’)

The burial took place the following day, 3 February 1914. No one knew where the bodies were buried until sometime later, when a landscape artist walking round the suburbs of Sarajevo was told by a peasant that his (the peasant’s) son had watched city policemen on the night of 3 February 1914 digging graves.

The artist who was a professor at the Teacher’s Collage and had taught Danilo Iliac painting when Ilic went to the Teacher’s School, immediately guessed that this was the grave of the three hanged men.

The authorities were informed about this after the Great War ended. By that time the Austro-Hungarian Empire had disappeared. The bodies were recovered and reburied in the cemetery in Sarajevo. Here they were eventually reunited at the memorial for all the conspirators.

                                                         Misko Jovanovic

Mehmed Mehmedbasic

                                                        Mehmed Mehmedbasic

Mehmedbasic, the only Muslim involved in the plot to assassinate Franz Ferdinand, escaped. As seen in earlier postings Mehmedbasic escaped to Montenegro and from there went to Belgrade. He joined the Komites and fought in the First World War. It was while he was in the Komite that Mehmedbasic became close to Dragutin Dimitrijevic (Apis).

Three years later, in 1917, Apis was arrested, along with 10 others, on charges of conspiracy to assassinate the Prince Regeant Alexander. As seen in an earlier post these were trumped up charges and the aim was to neutralize Alexander’s enemies within the army.

One of the 11 men who stood trial was Mehmed Mehmedbasic. He was found guilty and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

One wonders whether Mehmedbasic appreciated the irony of his situation. Three years earlier (in 1914) he had avoided conviction for an assassination in which he was directly involved (if caught he would most certainly have been hanged, as he had a direct involvement and was over the age of 20), but now he was facing 15 years in prison for something which he did not do.

As it happened, Mehmedbasic did not spend 15 years in prison. He spent only 2 years and was released in 1919 after the First World War ended..

After his release Mehmedbasic returned to Sarajevo. He was 31 and his CV boasted involvements in two high profile assassinations—one genuine and one imaginary. He obviously decided that he had had enough excitement and lived for the remainder of his life quietly in Sarajevo, making a modest living as a gardener and carpenter. Beyond this not much is known of Mehmedbasic’s life in Sarajevo. In 1937 he was interviewed by the Italian historian Luigi Albertini about his role in the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.

However, fate had one final violent twist for Mehmedbasic. The exact circumstances of his death are not known, but it is believed that the man who participated in the assassination of a noble for his revolutionary ideas in 1914 was killed by the Ustase fascists on 29 May 1943, probably because of his long standing Serb sympathies. Mehmedbasic would have been 56 or 57 when he was murdered.

The Rest

Vaso Cubrilovic, Veljko’s younger brother, and Cvjetko Popovic were escorted from Sarajevo in chains, and taken by train to the prison at Zenica, 70 kilometres away from Sarajevo.

A second group of prisoners, comprising the Kerovic father and son, Lazar Djukic, Ivo Kranjcevic and Jakov Milovic soon joined the teenage conspirators.

In December 1914, the prisoners were removed from this prison. Austria had declared war against Serbia within a month of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination and, after initial success, the Empire was struggling. The Austrians became increasingly nervous about keeping the prisoners on Bosnian territory and decided to remove them.

Lazar Djukic and Ivo Kranjcevic were sent to the prison in Theresienstadt (current day Czech republic) while Vaso, Popovic, the Kerovic father and son, and Milovic were sent to Mollersdorf near Vienna, and were immediately sent to solitary confinement. The conditions in the prison were extremely harsh.

Gavro Princip, Nedjo Cabrinovic, and Trifko Grabez were removed to a fortress in Terezin, North of Theresienstadt in Bohemia (the former name for Czech Republic).

In the initial months of the war, Austrians were prevailing against Serbia and a prison guard told the prisoners of the Austrian successes. Gavro replied, ‘Serbia may be invaded but not conquered. Serbia will one day create Yugoslavia, mother of all south Slavs.’ When the guard asked Gavro whether he was sorry he was going to die in prison, Gavro waved his hand dismissively. The guard then asked Gavro why had he killed a woman (the Archduchess)? Gavro replied that he had no wish to kill a mother; it just happened. The bullet, he said, does not always go where one wishes and the two (Ferdinand and Sophie) were sitting close to each other. Gavro concluded that it was all Archduke’s mistake as he wished to subjugate and destroy whole of his people and all the Slavs.

The trio were joined by Lazar Djukic and Ivo Kranjcevic. Kranjcevic was the only one who got out alive.

All the prisoners were subjected to considerable spite and physical violence. When they became ill, they were denied proper treatment.

Except Vaso, Popovic, and Kranjcevic who were young and in robust health, no one survived.

As the winter of 1915 set in the health of the prisoners began to deteriorate.

Death of Nedjo Cabrinovic

                                                     Nedjo Cabrinovic

Nedjo was the first to die. He died within a year of imprisonment, of advanced tuberculosis, hunger and exhaustion.

Nedjo Cabrinovic’s family lived in Sarajevo and faced a calamitous situation following Nedjo’s arrest. His father Vaso was arrested, and the rest of the family expelled from Sarajevo. Their house and restaurant were ransacked by rioting anti-Serb mobs. Nedjo’s mother gathered the rest of the family and took a train to Trebinje, the home of her brother-in-law. Vaso had looked after his brother’s children and paid for the education, so Nedjo’s mother had high hopes from the Trebnje branch of Cabrinovics. However, the brother-in-law closed the door in her face and told her that he did not want anything to do with her family. The family was given shelter by a friend of Vaso until, three months later, the police arrived and arrested all of them. The family was taken to an internment camp where some of the children caught dysentery, and were removed. The family never reunited.

Nedjo’s mother died during the Great War. Vaso Cabrinovicreturned to Sarajevo and remarried. The new wife was not kind to the children of the first wife and they dispersed. Vaso Cabrinovic lived into his seventies, a bitter and unhappy man, frequently talking of killing himself.

Dusan Cabrinovic, Nedjo’s youngest brother was only four when Nedjo was arrested. Dusan carried on living in Sarajevo until his death in the mid-1990s.

None of the family ever saw Nedjo again, although the siblings remained proud of Nedjo.

Vukosava, Nedjo’s favourite sister, learned from a young Austrian soldier, Franz Werfel, who went on to become a novelist in America, how her revolutionary anarchist brother met his end.

Werfel had been posted in Terezin when he was invited by his corporal to ‘see something’ on the closed ward of hospital number 13 in the fortress town. That ‘something’ was Nedjo, who, by this time, was suffering from advanced tuberculosis. It was a pathetic sight. His lymph glands were swollen. He was so weak and emaciated that he could barely sit and could not keep his legs from shaking while he was sitting. He was completely broken by cold, hunger, isolation and tuberculosis.

Werfel was appalled to learn that the hospital doctor had deemed Nedjo fit enough to be taken back to his cells. The doctors said they believed Nedjo posed a danger of escape! The truth probably was the doctors had concluded that Nedjo’s condition was beyond redemption and there was nothing they could do for him, not even allowing him to die with dignity.

Years later (in 1924) Werfel wrote an article about his only encounter with Nedjo Cabrinovic. Werfel waxed lyrical in this article. He wrote:

‘I now detect a white, indescribably ethereal form clinging with a phosphorescent hand to the iron bedstead. It seems to be clothed in spectral white linen wound tightly around it. But it does not give the impression of a shrouded skeleton—no, of a tremulous, pale vision, an insubstantial hovering vapour in the air—as if a disembodied spirit was about to dissipate in the unnatural yellow luminescence that filled the room.

‘Cabrinovic supporting his hand upon the bed, made motions with his feet like those of a man trying to step into his slippers standing up. His emaciated knees touched each other. His limbs trembled violently as in some nervous crisis.’

Werfel noted that the guards were rude and aggressive towards Nedjo while he, in striking contrast, was serene and elegant, a figure (Werfel turning lyrical again) almost saintly in his martyrdom.

(Werfel was Jewish and later himself faced charges of high treason because of his outspoken support of pacifism. He moved to Vienna where he met and fell in love with the widow of composer Mahler, who left her second husband to be with Werfel. Werfel was living in Vienna at the time of Anschluss. He moved to California where he died in 1945 after a long career as a writer.)

                                                       Franz Werfel

Nedjo Cabrinovic did not last long after the doctors sent him back to his cell. He lay in his cell for a few more weeks and died on 27 January 1916. The police authorities in Sarajevo later wrote to the prison authorities in Terezin, asking them to exhume Nedjo’s body, cut off the head and send back the skull to Sarajevo. The permission was not granted. Nedjo’s body remained intact when it was exhumed in 1920.

Nedjo was 20 at the time of his death.

Death of Jakov Milovic

Milovic was the next to die. He had never recovered from the beatings he had received. An abscess the size of a fist had developed on his rib cage but he was denied treatment and lay in his cold damp cell. He died in April 1916.

Death of Nedjo Kerovic

A few days after Milovic’s death Mitar’s son Nedjo, who was also denied treatment despite complaining of severe stomach pain, died. In the end he could no longer sit up or walk. At this stage he was removed to the infirmary where he died a week later.

Nedjo Kerovic was 30 when he died.

Death of Mitar Kerovic

Mitar Kerovic, Nedjo’s father, was 65 at the time of his imprisonment and suffered terribly. He survived his son by a few months. He too developed severe stomach complaints.

Mitar Kerovic died in September 1916.

The Kerovic father and son were poor peasants who got embroiled, most probably unwittingly, in the conspiracy when, at the behest of veljko Cubrilovic, they provided gavro and Trifko Grabez with transport (a cart!) to travel from Priboj to Tuzla. For this, they paid with their lives.

Death of Trifko Grabez

                                                         Trifko Grabez

By the time the winter of 1916 arrived Trifko Grabez’s health began to deteriorate rapidly. Like the rest of the conspirators he was denied access to proper treatment. Eventually he was taken to a hospital when he had severe stomach pain, but was returned to his cell the same day. He was found dead in his cell the next day. Vaso Cubrilovic believed that Grabez took his own life. However, Kranjcevic, who was in the same prison as Grabez had seen Grabez the day before he died. Grabez was so exhausted he could neither eat nor sit up nor stand. To cheer Grabez’s spirits Kranjcevic told him that he didn’t look too bad; that he [Kranjcevic] too suffered from stomach complaints; and that hopefully they would meet each other again if they could find a friendly guard. Grabez could not answer. The next day he was found dead in his cell.

Kranjcevic believed that Grabez died from general exhaustion and chronic starvation. Grabez would have been 20 when he died.

Lazar Djukic

Djukic, who had a peripheral involvement in the plot, suffered a mental breakdown in prison. He was convinced he was being poisoned and began rambling incoherently. He also began claiming that he had knowledge of an old plot to assassinate the Emperor, Franz Joseph. The authorities took this seriously to begin with and summoned Kranjcevic to confront Djukic. Kranjcevic recalled later that Djukic was all skin and bones, and had a festering wound in his right eye which was untreated.

Djukic was eventually transferred to a psychiatric ward in Prague where he died in either March or May of 1917. He was buried secretly and his grave has never been found.

Djukic would have been 21 when he died. 

The Event that Sparked World War I: The Trial and Outcome

There were a total of 25 defendants. Some of their names are as follows:

There were the six main conspirators (Mehmedbasic, aged 27, was missing).

Gavro Princip (aged 19), Nedjo Cabrinovic (aged 19), Danilo Ilic (aged 24), Trifko Grabez (aged 18), Vaso Cubrilovic (aged 17), and Cvjetko Popovic (aged 16).

Then there were others:

Ivo Kranjcevic (aged 19), who had hidden Vaso’s weapons after the assassination; Lazar Djukic (aged 18) who had introduced Vaso to Danilo; Veljko Cubrilovic (aged 28) the ‘teacher gentleman’ who had helped Gavro and Grabez to smuggle the weapons from Priboj to Tuzla; and Misko Jovanovic (aged 36) the cinema owner from Tuzla who his the weapons in his house.

Then there were the peasants who had helped Gavro and Grabez in their travel. These included Mitar Kerovic (aged 65) and his three sons, Nedjo (aged 28), Jovo (age unknown) and Blagoje (aged 34), and their friend Cvjan Stjepanovic (aged 37) who had accompanied Gavro and Grabez in their cart journey from Tobut to Tuzla.

The other peasants who had helped Gavro and Grabez in their journey were rounded up too. These were Mico Mimic (aged 26), Jakov Milovic (aged 43) and Obren Milosevic (aged 38).

Finally the three unfortunate members of the Croatian family where Ivo Kranjcevic had hidden Vaso’s weapons, the Momicinovics, were in the dock: Ivan Mimocinovic (aged 67), his son-in-law Franjo Sadilo (aged 43), and Franjo’s wife Angela Sadilo (aged 38).

Angela was the only woman in the trial.

The heir to an empire (albeit in its terminal decline) had been killed; someone had to hang. The trouble for the authorities was that all those who had directly participated in the assassination and were caught were all younger than 20 (there would be some uncertainty about Gavro’s age, but that would be cleared in due course and he too would be deemed to be under the age of 20) and, according to Austrian law, could not be executed. Only the main conspirators who had gone out with guns and bombs on that morning on 28 June to assassinate Ferdinand could be charged with murder and all five of them were too young to be hanged. The rest—Veljko, Misko, the peasants, and even Danilo Ilic could only be charged with being accessories to murder; and that was not a capital crime.

The Empire charged five of the defendants (Gavro, Nedjo, Grabez, Popovic and Vaso) with high treason. The rest were charged with being accessories to high treason. High treason was a capital crime and being accessory was also a capital crime. Therefore if any of the five charged with high treason were found guilty, the accessories would be found guilty of capital crimes. And although it still meant that the five could not be executed (being too young) some of the accessories who were in their twenties could be executed.

That’s what happened.

The trial began. There was no jury. Instead the president of the court, a judge named Luis von Curnidali, sat with two fellow judges. (After the trial, Curinaldi retired from public life, went to live in a monastery and became a friar.)

There was no public gallery. None of the relatives of the defendants was allowed to attend.

The Empire provided all the defendants with lawyers; however, with the exception of Dr. Rudolf Cistler, who represented the Cubrilovic brothers, the lawyers seemed almost embarrassed to represent the defendants and, at best, put up a half-hearted defence. (It has to be said though that Gavro’s lawyer conclusively proved to the court that his client was indeed younger than 20 years of age.)

Cistler was a German and put up a spirited, if slightly curious, defence. He challenged the legality of the annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina to the Austrian Empire. He claimed that the Empire had never formally completed the annexation of the region. Therefore the region was technically still under Turkish rule. Ergo, none of the defendants could be charged of high treason. It was of no use; the Judges’ minds were made up. Cistler was reprimanded for showing contempt towards the Emperor.

When the defendants were invited to address the court, only Nedjo Cabernovic took up the offer. His voice cracking with emotion, Nedjo gave a long speech.

Nedjo began his speech by saying that they did not hate Austria, but reminded the court that after taking control of the region 33 years ago Austria did nothing for its people. He went on to speak about his own anarchist ideas. He spoke about how the conspirators came to view that Franz Ferdinand as the enemy of the Slavs and, while no one told them directly to ‘go and kill him’ (an indication perhaps that neither The Black Hand nor Young Bosnians were behind the assassination), they came to have idea in the milieu they lived in.

Nedjo concluded his speech with the following words:

‘There is something else I would like to say. Although Princip plays the hero, all of us play the hero. Nevertheless we are very sorry, because we did not know in the first place that the late Franz Ferdinand was the father of a family. We were deeply touched by the words he said to his late wife, “Sophie, stay here, for our children.”

Think what you like of us but we are not criminals. For myself and in the name of my comrades I beg that the children of the late Heir Apparent forgive us; and you render whatever verdict you like. We are not evildoers, we are honest people, honourable, idealistic, we wanted to do good, we loved our people, we will die for our ideals.’

Nedjo was weeping by the time he finished his speech.

As soon as Nedjo finished Gavro leapt to his feet and said that Nedjo was not authorized to speak in his name. It seems that Gavro by this time was conscious of how posterity would judge him and was keen not to be seen as seeking forgiveness.

The judges took five days to reach the verdict.

On 28 October 1914, exactly 4 months after Franz Ferdinand met his end, the verdict was delivered. By that time the Great War was in its third month.

Out of 25 defendants 9 were acquitted, including all members of the Croat family (the Momicinovics) whom Ivo Kranjcevic foolishly involved in the plot.

Gavro Princip, Nedjo Cabrinovic and Trifko Grabez were each sentenced to 20 years of penal servitude.

Vaso Cubrilovic received 16 years while Cvjetko Popovic received 13 years.

All of them were to have their imprisonment intensified by solitary confinement in a dark cell on 28 June each year. Gavro who killed Ferdinand was to, in addition, have one day of fasting each month.

Lazar Djukic and Ivo Kranjcevic were each given 10 years’ sentence.

Old Mitar Kerovic was sentenced to life imprisonment while his son Nedjo and Jakov Milovic were sentenced to be hanged. The sentences of the Kerovics were subsequently commuted to 20 years, while Miovic’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

Danilo Ilic, Veljko Cubrilovic and Misko Jovanovic were sentenced to be hanged and were not granted any reprieve or amnesty.

After the conspirators were returned to prison after the verdict, a Jesuit priest visited Nedjo Cabrinovic in his cell. He had with him blanket forgiveness from Franz Ferdinand’s children. The children had forgiven him because he had repented and expressed his regrets. After he handed him the letter the priest proceeded to deliver a lengthy sermon to Nedjo. Nedjo who was an atheist was apparently so surprised that he could not utter a word in riposte.

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: the Plot and Plotters

                                                            Danilo Ilic

Danilo Ilic remains the most controversial figure of the plotters involved in the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.

Danilo is generally credited as the man who masterminded and organized the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (together with Gavro Princip). While that might be exaggerating Danilo’s role in the conspiracy, there is no denying that he was in the plot right from the beginning. He and Gavro Princip planned together to assassinate Ferdinand.

Danilo and Gavro were the only two who knew the identities of all the men lying in wait for Ferdinand on Appel Quay on the morning of 28 June 1914. Danilo also was responsible for recruiting three of the plotters who were expected to take direct part in the assassination (Vaso Cubrilovic, Cvjetko Popovic, and Mehmed Mehmedbasic).

Danilo was the man who collected the weapons from Misko Jovanovic, in Tulza, and smuggled them into Sarajevo.

Danilo is also generally cited as the man who, upon his arrest, betrayed the rest of the conspirators.

Danilo met Gavro Princip in 1907 when Gavro arrived, for the first time, in Sarajevo to pursue further studies, and lodged with Danilo’s mother. Danilo was four years older than Gavro.

Danilo was the only child of his parents. His father, a cobbler, died when Danilo was five, and his mother did not remarry. Danilo was a sickly child and suffered from stomach ulcers and various other ailments in his childhood.

Danilo and Gavro would appear not to have kept in contact after Gavro had to leave Danilo’s home as his (Gavro’s) brother could not afford the rent. They probably reacquainted their friendship sometime in 1912 and 1913.

This was a period when Gavro was drifting between Hadzici (where his brother, Jovo, lived), Belgrade and Sarajevo. When in Sarajevo Gavro spent a lot of time in the company of his old friend Danilo.

By this time Danilo had qualified as a teacher and was working in Sarajevo.

This was also a period of great strife in Bosnia and Sarajevo. In May 1913 Oskar Potiorek, the increasingly unpopular governor of the increasingly unpopular Austro-Hungarian Empire, announced the repressive Emergency measures; Serbia (towards which all the Bosnian Serbs felt a great deal of loyalty) was involved at the time in the Second Balkan War, and there were lots of young Serbs, Gavro and Danilo amongst them, whose heads were full of assassination plots to rid Bosnia of the foreign presence.

Gavro and Danilo discussed between them assassinating Oskar Potiorek—Danilo had, by this time, obtained a revolver.

But then a more pressing matter arose to which Danilo felt he had to devote his full energies. The Second Balkan War started in June 1913. Danilo volunteered for Komite to fight for Serbia. He spent some time as an ambulance driver, but returned to Sarajevo in the autumn of 1913.

Upon his return Danilo became ill and was hospitalized. In the hospital Gavro visited him, and the two revolutionaries decided to put on hold the plans to assassinate general Potiorek. They were still fired by their idea of creating a pan-Slavic state, but decided that they must first create an organization in Bosnia and Croatia, and then make an attempt on the life of Potiorek.

In early 1914 Danilo made a visit to Switzerland. In his 1914 trial he would claim that he went to Switzerland to learn pedagogy. However, during the trial Danilo was desperately trying to dissociate himself from the plot, and his real reason for going to Switzerland was not to learn pedagogy (the judges did not believe it in any case). In all probabilities Danilo went to Switzerland to meet with Russian revolutionaries and to talk with Vladimir Gacinovic, a demagogue and the ‘guiding spirit’ of the ‘Young Bosnians’, an organization consisting of several secretive societies full of, in the main, Bosnian Serbs, who despised the Hapsburgs. According to one account, Gacinovic told Danilo that ‘the heads of the some of the leading dignitaries of the Hapsburg Empire must fall.’

In March 1914 Gavro left for Belgrade telling Danilo to await communication from him if any significant development happened.

A month later, in mid-April 1914, Danilo received a coded letter from Gavro that he had managed to obtain weapons which he would smuggle into Bosnia and eventually into Sarajevo (Described inan earlier post). Danilo’s task, Gavro wrote in the letter, was to recruit three more people—a second group—for the assassination.

The Archduke would be visiting Sarajevo in just over two months. Danilo was running out of time. Danilo approached a man named Lazar Djukic, a rabble-rouser and a member of the ‘Young Bosnian’ organization, to participate in the plot. Djukic declined. Danilo then asked Djukic to suggest someone else. Djukic introduced Danilo to a 17 year old boy, Vaso Cubrilovic. Danilo approached Vaso. This was exactly the kind of encouragement Vaso, who was spending his days imagining wreaking unspeakable havoc on the Austrians, did not need. Vaso readily and happily agreed to take part in the killing. Vaso Cubrilovic was the younger brother of Veljko Cubrilovic, the ‘teacher gentleman’, who had helped Gavro to smuggle and hidethe weapons in Tuzla; however it is likely that neither of the brothers was aware of the other’s involvement in the plot until they all were arrested. (Vaso Cubrilovic had also known Gavro Princip, the two had become friends when Gavro briefly studied in Tuzla a few years earlier; however, until the very end, Vaso did not know of Gavro’s involvement in the plot.)

Danilo tasked Vaso with the responsibility to recruit another person to the plot and Vaso approached Cvjetko Popovic who at the time was only 16 (the youngest of the conspirators) and lived in the same hostel as Vaso. Popovic agreed to take part in the assassination with eagerness that surprised the courts during the trial.

The third person Danilo recruited was Mehmed Mehmedbasic, the only Muslim involved in the conspiracy (more about him later). It is not clear how Danilo knew Mehmedbasic, who came originally from Croatia. It is very likely that the two knew (or knew of) each other via their membership of the ‘Young Bosnian’ association. They had also met Vladimir Gacinovic, the ‘guiding spirit’ of the Young Bosnian in early 1914, although in two different meetings, and perhaps it was Gacinovic who made them aware of each other’s existence when he sensed that the two men were itching to kill some or the other Austrian luminary. Danilo met with Mehmedbasic sometime in April 1914 in the town of Mostar. Danilo told Mehmedbasic that there was going to be an assassination attempt on Archduke Ferdinand and that he would send him a telegram when everything was arranged. (In his trial Danilo would claim that it was Mehmedbasic who wrote to him and arranged the meeting in Mostar, and it was Mehmedbasic who put the idea of killing Ferdinand in his mind even before Gavro Princip. However, by this time Danilo was trying everything he could to avoid the gallows. Mehmedbasic was the only one of the conspirators who was not caught, and it must have been tempting for Danilo Ilic to put the blame on him.)

In early June 1914 Gavro arrived in Sarajevo with Nedjo Cabrinovic and Trifko Grabez. The weapons, he told Danilo, were hidden in Tuzla at the house of Misko Jovanovic. Danilo was to get them into Sarajevo.

On 14 June 1914, exactly two weeks before the assassination, Danilo Ilic boarded the train to Tuzla. He had with him a box of Stefanija cigarettes, a secret sign Gavro told him he had agreed with Misko.

Danilo arrived at the doorsteps of an increasingly anxious Misko Jovanovic who, until he heard of the assassination two weeks later, remained unaware of the identity of the victim (or so he claimed in the trial). Danilo could not hide all the weapons (4 revolvers and 6 bombs) on his person. (The day before Danilo’s arrival, Misko’s mentor, Veljko Cubrilovic, arrived in Tuzla to take part in a Serbian festival. It was Veljko who had asked Misko to hide the weapons. When Misko met Veljko and informed him that no one so far had arrived from Sarajevo to collect the weapons, Veljko asked him (so Misko would claim in his trial) whether he (Misko) knew what the weapons were for. Misko said he didn’t. Veljko then started talking in generalities about the repressive Austrian regime in Bosnia and Misko formed the impression that the intended victim was General Oskar Potiorek.) Danilo told Misko to put the weapons in a sugar box and get them to the station next to Tuzla. That station was Doboj.

In his trial Misko would claim that he took the box himself. The court most probably did not believe him because Misko had travelled to Doboj in the company of a local Tuzla man and his wife. The wife could not recall Misko carrying any box. Interestingly she herself was carrying a sugar box. When quizzed about it, Misko replied that it must have been a genuine sugar box. According to Misko’s account, he himself carried the weapons in a sugar-box and alighted at Doboj hoping that Danilo would arrive on the next train. Danilo didn’t arrive. Getting anxious Misko walked into the town and went to the tailor shop of a man he knew and left the box there. Then he went back to the station and resumed his wait for Danilo. Finally Danilo arrived. The two men went back to the tailor’s shop and collected the box. Danilo then boarded the train and left.

Two weeks later, when he heard of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, it finally dawned upon Misko (so he claimed in his trial) what the weapons he had agreed to hide in his house were for. Misko Jovanovic was one of the only three conspirators who were hanged for their part in the conspiracy.

Danilo took a very circuitous and convoluted route into Sarajevo to avoid detection by the police. He successfully brought the weapons into Sarajevo and hid them in his house. The weapons would remain hidden for the next 12 days in his house.

Danilo Ilic, despite his various claims and counterclaims during the trial, was involved in the conspiracy to kill Franz Ferdinand right from the beginning. It was he and Gavro Princip who formulated the plan to assassinate the Heir-Apparent sometime in the early 1914 after Ferdinand’s visit to Sarajevo was announced.

Gavro had initially expected that Danilo would join the group involved in the actual assassination. However Danilo told him that he would prefer to operate in the background. Was Danilo committed to killing Ferdinand? The available evidence of his activities in the weeks leading to the assassination suggests that he was. Danilo recruited Vaso Cubrilovic and, through him, Cvjetko Popovic to the plot. He also recruited Mehmedbasic and convinced him that Franz Ferdinand was a far bigger target than general Potiorek (whom Mehmedbasic wanted to kill, as we shall see later.) Danilo was the one who finally smuggled the weapons into Sarajevo from Tuzla at what must have been a considerable personal risk. He kept the weapons hidden in his house and distributed them to the other assassins.

However, it would also appear that the 24 year old teacher, one of the few involved in the plot who were older than 20, was also assailed by doubts about the usefulness of their mission. In his trial Danilo claimed that even as he was making arrangements for the assassination, he was trying to talk Gavro and Trifko Grabez out of it. This was confirmed by Gavro, who told the trial that Danilo tried to deter him from the course of action ‘which could only lead to ruin’. Danilo told them (so Gavro informed the trial) that now was not the time to kill Ferdinand, as it would only lead to more persecution of the Serbs. Gavro disagreed. (In the trial Gavro said that he had never imagined that the consequences of the killing would be so devastating; that the assassination would trigger a bloody war involving several European nations. Gavro might not have envisaged the exact nature of the consequences of the assassination; however, he was clearly hoping that the killing would trigger great upheaval and catastrophe. Trifko Grabez told the trial that during his talk with Gavro and Danilo, Gavro had used the phrase apres mois ie deluge (after me the flood)).

Gavro’s account (that Danilo tried to dissuade him from killing Franz Ferdinand) was supported by Trifko Grabez. Grabez told the trial that after arriving in Bosnia from Belgrade he spent some days in his native town of Pale and returned to Sarajevo 3 days before the assassination. He met Danilo who told him that the assassination had been called off. Danilo then began talking as if he was against the assassination.

The same afternoon Danilo called again on Trifko Grabez and told him that while the assassination was going ahead, the others would carry it and under no circumstances should Trifko take part in the assassination. However, Trifko, by this time, had become suspicious of Danilo’s motives (so he told the trial); also he had probably reached that fervid state of mind when the voice of reason would have had no effect on it. He chose not to believe Danilo or obey his instructions.

Interestingly, as was revealed in the trial, Danilo had tried the same tactics with Gavro. When he realised that Gavro would not be persuaded against the assassination, Danilo said to him, ‘All right then, let the others do it; just you don’t.’ Gavro had fallen silent upon hearing this and Danilo believed (so he told the court) that he had convinced his friend against taking part in the assassination. According to Gavro’s account Danilo was quite persistent and spent almost 10 days trying to get him to see the futility of the endeavour he was about to undertake.

Danilo told the trial that he hoped that the situation in Bosnia would improve, and the harassment of the Serbs (as he saw it) would stop, and that the assassination would not be necessary.

During the trial, Danilo was asked the obvious question: if he was so much against the assassination why did he not get rid of the weapons he had collected from Misko Jovanovic? Why did he distribute them amongst the other plotters? Danilo could not give a satisfactory answer to this question. His defence was: he knew the source of these weapons (the Serbian Komite leaders), and was afraid of them. ‘By my conduct,’ he told the trial, ‘I’d become an object of their hostility.’

Should Danilo’s assertion in the trial that he had second thoughts about the assassination and did not want it to go ahead be believed? During the trial Danilo was desperately trying to distance himself as much as he could from the assassination plot. As we shall see later, he had also betrayed the other plotters by revealing their names to the Austrian police. Was his ‘confession’ in the trial nothing more than a desperate attempt of a desperate man who was trying to avoid the hangman’s noose? Gavro supported him; but then Gavro and Danilo were old friends, and it could be argued that Gavro (who knew he was definitely going down, having carried out the actual killing) was doing what he could to save his friend. However, Trifko Grabez had no such obligations. He did not know Danilo well and had probably met him for the first time in the month of Archduke’s assassination. He had no reason to lie for Danilo. Even if Gavro was lying for his friend, Trifko Grabez wasn’t. This suggests that Danilo Ilic did have second thoughts about the wiseness of what they were about to perpetrate.

Danilo did not (or could not) give satisfactory explanation of why he had doubts about the mission. It could be that as the day of the planned assassination approached the enormity of the act dawned upon him. At 24 Danilo was the second oldest of the men directly involved in the plot (excluding Veljko Cubrilovic, who, at 28, was the oldest. Although his role in the plot was peripheral, he would pay dearly for it.) Danilo was the only one (again, excluding Veljko) who had qualifications; he edited a radical, socialist journal entitled Zovna—the Bell. It might be argued that he was in a better position than almost all, except perhaps Gavro, to appreciate the wider implications of the assassination of the Archduke. It would stretch credulity to suppose that Danilo had doubts about their mission because he realised the killing would trigger a great war; more likely, as he told the trial, he became concerned that the assassination would only result in more hardships for and suppression of his people (the Serbs), which was not he wanted to see.

It is also possible that Danilo developed cold feet as the day of the killing approached. Although older than the most of the men who had direct involvement, Danilo was only 24. He had a steady job and was earning a decent salary. He was the only child of his parents. His father had died when he was young and he was the only one to support his mother. Veljko Cubrilovic might have (naively) expected that the plotters would kill themselves after the killing, but Danilo was not naive enough to hope that that would happen. He must have been aware that there was a high chance that they would get caught and face certain ruin. It is possible that, as 28 June drew nearer, he wondered whether it was worthwhile to throw his life away over an act the advisability of which he was beginning to doubt. He was only human.

These are speculations. We shall never know why Danilo Ilic, who, together with Gavro Princip, had devised the plan to assassinate Franz Ferdinand, began having second thoughts about their mission (if he indeed had them). What we do know is that despite his doubts, he made only half-hearted attempts to dissuade Gavro and Grabez. He also performed the role that was assigned to him: smuggle the weapons from Tuzla into Sarajevo. Danilo was the one who hid the weapons in his house and distributed them among the young men who were going to take a direct part in the assassination.

As he had feared, Danilo was arrested soon after the assassination and his life was ruined.