Why Is Franz Ferdinand Assassination Justified

The assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie on June 28, 1914 was one of the most important events of the twentieth century. Because Franz Ferdinand was the Archduke of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, his assassination caused the Austro-Hungarian Empire to declare war on Serbia. This started a domino effect of countries being brought into the war because of treaties and ended up being the start of the first world war. Why was Franz Ferdinand assassinated and was it justified? I feel that it was not justifiable and that the assassins were totally wrong.

Franz Ferdinand was born into the Habsburg family which was the ruling family of the Austro-Hungarian empire. For most of his life he did not expect to be the next emperor because

he was third in line for the crown. He did not really prepare for being a ruler and spent his time in the army and travelling. He married Countess Sophie Chotek against his uncle’s (the Emperor) wishes. Because her family was not important enough for him to marry, their children could not be considered to be future Emperors. This caused a lot of problems but he was in love and was very stubborn. He was suddenly moved into being the next in line for the crown when his cousin Rudolph committed suicide. He was not prepared for this but tried hard to do a good job.

There were a team of six assassins trying to kill the Archduke that day.

They were armed with hand grenades and pistols that they had gotten from Serbia. They all belonged to a group called the Black Hand. The Black Hand group was trying to restore Serbia to power by using sabotage and terror on its enemies. Gavrilo Princep was a Serbian student in Sarajevo who wanted to be a martyr for Serbia. He idolized Bogdan Zeragic who had tried to assassinate a Austro-Hungarian General and then killed himself. Princep was recruited along with a couple of other students that also followed Zeragic to be in the Black Hand. They all travelled to Serbia where they planned the assassination and were given the guns and hand grenades to use to kill Franz Ferdinand. They also had cyanide pills to take in case they were caught so that they could kill themselves. The Serbs gave them a little bit of training on how to shoot the gun and brought in three more people to go with them for the assassination. Serbian agents then helped them get back over the border to Bosnia and made sure they had places to stay with other Black Hand

members.

Serbia was ruled at the time of the assassination by Peter Karadordevic.

He had come to power in a military coup where troops had brutally murdered the previous King and Queen. Karadodevic was determined to bring Serbia back to being a powerful empire by mostly taking back the Balkans from the Austro-Hungarian empore. The man that lead the military coup was named Dragutin Demetrijevic and he was the head of Serbian military intelligence and the head of the Black Hand. Karadodevic and Demetrijevic were determined to weaken the Austro-Hungarian empire by killing their leaders and destroying their infrastructure. They were using the Black Hand to do this in Bosnia because the Austro-Hungarian empire was too strong to take on

directly.

They picked Franz Ferdinand to kill only because of his importance. The Archduke was actually planning to give the Serbs more independence when he became Emperor. Princep and the other assassins did not have any reason to kill Ferdinand other than he was an important Austro-Hungarian person. They weren’t upset with anything that he had done himself. They just wanted to be martyrs for Serbia like their hero Zeragic. The outcome of the assassination was horrible. Around 18 million people were killed in World War 1 and another 20 million were wounded.

I really do not believe that the assassins had any good reason to kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand. He had very little power and had done nothing to them. He was even planning on giving the Serbs more power when he became Emperor. The only reason for assassinating the Archduke was for terror. Unfortunately Serbia got what it was after at the end of the war. Bosnia became part of Serbia (now called Yugoslavia) and Karadordevic remained the King. Princep was the assassin that killed the Archduke and his wife but failed to become a martyr because his cyanide pill was too weak. He died in prison of Tuberculosis.