Page - 87 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Shock 87 surrounding the ‘tyrannicide’. In time, a whole list of people began to be regarded as ‘worthy of assassination’ : the Austrian Emperor, Foreign Minister Count Berchtold, Finance Minister Biliński, General of Artillery Potiorek, the ban of Croatia, Baron Ivan Skerletz, the Governor of Dalmatia, Slavko Čuvaj and naturally the heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand.177 There were cross-connections to Croatian and Bosnian exile circles in the USA, Switzerland and France, but the most stable link was to Serbia. The assas- sination was prepared not by the American friends of ‘Mlada Bosna’, but by the secret Serbian organisation ‘Ujedinjenje ili smrt’ (‘Unification or Death’) which was linked to the head of the Serbian military secret services, Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević (or ‘Apis’). Some of its members gave the would-be assassins necessary lessons in shooting near Belgrade, and procured the hand grenades and pistols as well as the potassium cyanide. Even Dimitrijević could admittedly not have assumed that the successful as- sassination of Franz Ferdinand would lead to war. His goal was more modest : to send a signal to the southern Slavs in the Monarchy and to put pressure on the Serbian government. In his opinion, any further concessions to the Danube Monarchy on the part of Belgrade would cost Serbia its influence over the southern Slavs in the Monar- chy. However, he of all people must have been aware that a hardening of policy towards Vienna could at some point mean war. The Shock 28 June 1914 was a Sunday. Time and again, attempts have been made to capture the mood of that day far away from Sarajevo, and particularly in Vienna. It was a sleepy Sunday, but in contrast to today, when only a few people in positions of influence are likely to be found in Vienna on their day of rest, in 1914, there was a large number in the city  – politicians, officials and members of the military alike. Only the Emperor and his household had already left for the royal holiday residence in Bad Ischl. On top of this, the following day, 29 June was a public holiday, offering the prospect of two days of early summer relaxation. However, shortly after midday, the peace was suddenly broken. Telegrams and telephone calls buzzed across the Monarchy. In fact, it was astonishing how quickly news of the murder of the heir to the throne and his wife was disseminated, reaching one person here and another there. Nobody was left unmoved. Shock, helplessness, anger and verbal aggression were expressed. Joyous reactions were also reported. Count Ottokar Czernin, the envoy in Bucharest at the time who would later become Foreign Minister, noted in his memoirs that in Vienna and Budapest, expressions of joy outweighed those of sorrow.178 Josef Redlich, already mentioned above, whose diary is one of the most important sources for this period, since it has the advantage of being authentic rather than having been written sub-