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TIMELINES: Whose assassination in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 lead to massive consequences?
On June 28, 1914, Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, and wife Sophia, are assassinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia. The killer, Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip, was part of a team of six Bosnian Serb assassins positioned along the couple’s motorcade route to a Town Hall reception. Along the way, a team member throws a bomb at the car, it bounces off and explodes, leaving the archduke badly shaken and angry, but unharmed. After the reception, Ferdinand orders a change in plans and in the confusion his driver takes a wrong turn—into a street where Princip happens to be exiting a delicatessen. Princip sees his opportunity and fires two lethal shots at close range. The event leads Austria-Hungary to declare war against Serbia, setting off a series of treaty-alliance dominoes that brings Europe’s great powers, then most of the rest of the world, into World War I.
Today, Bosnia remains a flashpoint in Europe with Serb nationalism again causing tension. After World War I, Bosnia became part of a South Slav state later named Yugoslavia. In World War II, Bosnia and Herzegovina was subsumed under a Nazi-sympathizing Croatia. Yugoslavia fell to communists after the war, which lasted until the fall of the iron curtain in 1991. A few months later, Yugoslavia broke apart. Bosnia-Herzegovina declared independence and Bosnian Serbs declaring their own state. Fighting however broke out over the 30 percent of eastern Bosnia not part of the Serb state. A horrific war characterized by ethnic cleansing and genocide, largely but not exclusively perpetrated by Serbian forces, lasted until 1995 leaving some 100,000 dead. The 1995 Dayton treaty created a country with two semi-autonomous entities, the Serb-led Republika Srpska and Bosnian-Croat Bosnia-Herzegovina. In recent months, Serbs have been agitating for greater independence, deepening the ethnic divide to its worst state since 1995.
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