Tuesday, March 11, 2014

The Final Day of Franz Ferdinand


So this may be for your edification since it is on NPR and only something you can listen to, but it is a fascinating five minutes of the final day of Franz Ferdinand.  You probably know he survived an attempt on his life in the morning, but the proceeded on his published journey that day.  But did you know there were seven assassins looking to kill him that day and that Princip should not be one of them as the security team had decided to change the Archduke's path, but had forgotten to translate for the drivers who only spoke Czech or that they were turning around and had stopped right in front of Princip as they tried to go to a different path.  This is a great interview for history geeks! 

1 comment:

Ben Mayfield said...

This was a very interesting interview to listen to. I find it ironic that the reason for the drivers not knowing the correct route is because they did not speak German and no one translated it for them. That plays into the Nationalistic attitude of the Austrian's and German's.You could ask yourself a lot of "what if" questions about this incident and WWI. For instance what if they did cll the motorcade off and simply gone back to Austria-Hungary? I still believe that WWI would have happened regardless of Franz Ferdinand's assassination. It was only a matter of time before France and Germany went back to war and tensions between Germany, Britain, and Russia where already growing tighter with Germany trying to build up their Navy and dominate Mitteleuropa as Wilhelm II wanted.


Thank you for sharing this.