Gavrilo Princip being on vacation and doing regular tourist stuff at the White House, wearing a "I Love DC" tophat, unable to believe his luck when he sees who just walked into the room
That’s funny because that’s kind of what happened. Gavrilos group messed it actually up so he gave up and went to a sandwich bar and while he was eating thinking about what went wrong the driver of the princes car took a wrong turn and drove right by that shop!
It's even more strange when you know why Ferdianand was in Sarejevo in the first place, and what he was going to say at the conference. He was in agreement with the "home rule" group.
Yeah, but the group Princip was a part of didn't want home rule, they wanted Bosnia integrated into a large South-Slavic state ruled by Serbia. I guess they got their wish eventually, with the formation of Yugoslavia, but don't be fooled into thinking they actually cared about Bosnians' rights.
But do you think the anarchists were actually aware of that at the time? The goal in 1914 seems to have been to kick out the Austrian Empire by any means necessary.. mostly by getting Russia to stand behind their treaty obligations with Serbia. Germany it was who made the mistake.
It's honestly difficult to blame anyone other than Serbia or Austria-Hungary. Germany had little choice; abandoning Austria would have left them with no reliable allies, while being surrounded by two countries (France and Russia) that were growing ever closer.
Comments
"Ferdinand the bull? Oh yes a big beautiful bull. The best bull. Many bulls in fact. But we have only the best bulls here."