Born Lev Bronshtein on 7 November 1879 in the village of Yanovka in Ukraine, Leon Trotsky, the son of a prosperous Jewish farmer, became involved in politics from a young age. Arrested in 1898, the 19-year-old Trotsky was exiled to Siberia where he married and had two daughters, both of whom predeceased him. In 1902, he escaped exile using a forged passport bearing the name Trotsky, the name, he later claimed, of a prison guard he had met in Odessa. He made his way to London where, for the first time, he met Vladimir Lenin and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Following the split of the RSDLP, Trotsky’s loyalty floated between the two factions, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, often repudiating any party ties and holding a stance of non-allegiance. He opposed Lenin on many issues, a stance that was later held against him.

Leon Trotsky, 1915.

Following the outbreak of disturbances throughout Russia in 1905, Leon Trotsky arrived in St Petersburg and there joined its council of workers, or ‘Soviet’, becoming its chair until its forced break-up by tsarist troops in December. Trotsky, along with other leaders, was arrested and again sentenced to exile in Siberia. But en route, he escaped and made his way to London before settling in Vienna where he founded and wrote a newspaper for Russia’s workers, Pravda, ‘Truth’, earning the nickname, ‘the Pen’, for his writing. With the outbreak of war in 1914, Trotsky, as a Russian, was forced to leave Austria. He lived in Paris until, expelled for his anti-war writings, he emigrated to Spain and then New York, arriving in January 1917.

Revolution

Trotsky returned to Russia and Petrograd (as St Petersburg was now known) in March 1917 and became, in effect, Lenin’s second-in-command as the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government and set up a new socialist order. (Trotsky turned 38 the day of the October Revolution.)

In forming the Council of People’s Commissars, Russia’s new government, Lenin initially offered the post of chair, in effect head of state, to Leon Trotsky but Trotsky declined the offer, fearing that having a Jew in charge of a country that was still strongly anti-Semitic could be problematic. Instead, Trotsky was appointed the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs.

Following Russia’s withdrawal from the First World War, Trotsky was appointed War Commissariat, responsible for strengthening and injecting much-needed discipline into the Red Army. His use of former officers of the tsar’s imperial army caused much disquiet within the party, Joseph Stalin being particularly critical, and was another tool later used against him.

The most capable man

Trotsky seemed the natural successor to Lenin. In Lenin’s ‘Testament’, (Lenin’s written assessment of his underlings), he was described as having ‘outstanding ability’ and ‘perhaps the most capable man in the present Central Committee’ but was prone, according to Lenin, of displaying ‘excessive self-assurance’. But Trotsky’s succession was blocked by a troika consisting of Stalin, Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev. Trotsky greatly underestimated Stalin, once referring to him as ‘an excellent bit of mediocrity’.

Following Lenin’s death in January 1924, Stalin ensured he was centre place during the funeral arrangements and the funeral itself. Trotsky had been ill and was recovering in a resort in the Caucasus and Stalin’s telegram to him purposefully gave the wrong date for the funeral.

Trotsky was increasingly marginalised by the party to the point in January 1925, he was relieved of his ministry. Kamenev and Zinoviev, two-thirds of the troika, themselves fell out with Stalin and belatedly joined forces with Trotsky. In October 1927, Trotsky was expelled from the Central Committee and the following month from the Communist Party altogether.

Exiled

In January 1928, Trotsky, accompanied by his wife, Natalia Sedova, was exiled to Kazakhstan and finally banished from the Soviet Union altogether in February 1929. After four years in Turkey, two years in France and two in Norway, always heavily under guard, Trotsky settled in Mexico. For a while, he lived in the house of the artist Diego Rivera and, while there, had an affair with Rivera’s wife and fellow artist, Frida Kahlo. Moving into a house in a leafy suburb of Mexico City, Trotsky began writing prolifically – penning, amongst several books and articles, an autobiography, a history of the Russian Revolution and embarking on a biography of Stalin, in which he described Stalin as having ‘played a dismal role during the 1917 revolution’. (The book remained unfinished). 

Meanwhile, Moscow hosted the first of the infamous Show Trials in which old Bolsheviks, such as Kamenev and Zinoviev, confessed to various anti-state conspiracies and having acted under the instructions of Trotsky. All were sentenced to death, including Trotsky who was found guilty in absentia.

Leon Trotsky, Natalia Sedova and their son, Lev Sedov, 1928.
State Museum of Russian Political History.

Trotsky’s two sons from his second marriage both predeceased him: Sergei Sedov was eliminated in 1937 during Stalin’s ‘Great Purge’ while, in February 1938, his brother, Lev, died on the operating table from a supposed acute appendicitis (very likely on the orders of the NKVD). 

Assassination

Despite having up to ten guards at a time, in May 1940, Trotsky survived a raid on his house in Mexico, in which his 25-year-old assistant was abducted, tortured and later murdered, and his grandson, Esteban Volkov, was shot in the foot. Trotsky was unharmed but he was less fortunate three months later. 

During this time, Trotsky and his wife were befriended by a Canadian called Frank Jacson, who was introduced to them by Trotsky’s secretary who happened to be Jacson’s lover. Jacson was, in fact, Jaime Ramón Mercader del Río, a Spanish communist and agent for Stalin’s NKVD, who had seduced Trotsky’s secretary in order to get close to his intended victim. 

On 20 August, about 5.30 pm, Ramon Mercader turned up at Trotsky’s home, asking if Trotsky would read something he’d written. A hot day, Sedova, Trotsky’s wife, asked Mercader, ‘Why are you wearing your hat and topcoat?’ Refusing Sedova’s offer of tea, Mercader followed Trotsky into the study. Sitting down, Trotsky began to read Mercader’s work. Mercader then retrieved the ice pick he’d been hiding within his coat (he had shortened its handle to better conceal it) and struck such a heavy blow to the back of Trotsky’s head that it impacted the brain. Having heard a ‘terrible, soul-shaking cry’, Sedova found her husband ‘leaning against the door…. His face covered with blood, his eyes, without glasses, were sharp blue, his hands were hanging’.

Rushed to hospital, Leon Trotsky died in hospital the following day. It had taken over a decade, but Stalin had got his man.

Sedova hoped that ‘retribution will come to the vile murderers’. Claiming he had acted alone, Ramón Mercader served twenty years in a Mexican prison but never suffered much by way of retribution. Released in 1960, he received a warm welcome from Fidel Castro in Cuba before making his way to the Soviet Union where he was presented with a ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’ award. He died in 1978.

The house in which Trotsky was attacked was later made into a museum, run by Esteban Volkov, the grandson who had been shot in the foot.

Rupert Colley.

Read more Soviet / Russian history in The Clever Teens’ Guide to the Russian Revolution (80 pages) available as paperback and ebook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

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Count Stauffenberg loses faith

A fervent supporter of Hitler, 36-year-old Count Claus von Stauffenberg had fought bravely during the Second World War for the Fuhrer. Fighting in Tunisia in 1943, Stauffenberg was badly wounded, losing his left eye, his right hand and two fingers of his left. Once recovered, Stauffenberg was transferred to the Eastern Front where he witnessed the atrocities firsthand which made him question his loyalty. As it became increasingly apparent that Germany would not win the war, Stauffenberg lost faith in Hitler and the Nazi cause.

At some point in early 1944, Stauffenberg joined a group of German officers intent on bringing the war to a quick end and negotiating peace with the Allies. Their biggest obstacle was of course Hitler.

But the plotters received a bit of luck when Stauffenberg was appointed to the staff of the Reserve Army, reporting directly to General Friedrich Fromm, another officer who had lost faith in the Nazi cause. When Stauffenberg was invited to a meeting in Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair in Rastenburg, East Prussia, for 20 July, the opportunity seemed perfect.

The conspirators hatched their plan, codenamed Valkyrie, and crucial to its success was Stauffenberg’s proximity to Hitler.

‘I Am Alive, I Am Alive’

About to attend the meeting, Stauffenberg, lacking time to prepare two devices, only managed to prepare one bomb. With it set to detonate after ten minutes, Stauffenberg entered the meeting room at the Wolf’s Lair and found Hitler poring over a large air reconnaissance report from the Eastern Front spread across a table. The Count placed his briefcase beneath the map table and, as prearranged, received a phone call, necessitating his immediate attention and departure. (Picture: five days before the event, a photograph taken at the Wolf’s Lair with Stauffenberg, far left, Hitler, and Wilhelm Keitel, right).

Whilst Stauffenberg made good his escape, an attendant, with his foot, pushed the briefcase further under the heavy oak table so that when, at 12.42, the two-pound bomb went off, the thickness of the wood spared Hitler the main thrust of the explosion.

Billows of black smoke poured from the windows of the meeting room, and staggering out leaning on each other were two men, their clothes torn to shreds, their skin blackened, and their hair singed. One of them was General Wilhelm Keitel, the other was Hitler himself, muttering “What was that? I am alive, I am alive!”

Arrest him immediately

Hitler was examined – contusion on the left arm, damage to his eardrums and wooden splinters in his legs from the floorboards. (His trousers were torn to shreds, as seen in the picture below). Considering his proximity to the bomb his survival was miraculous. So superficial his injuries he was able to keep an appointment that afternoon with Italian leader, Benito Mussolini, meeting him in person at the local railway station and shaking Il Duce’s hand with his left. Hitler himself put his survival down to the hand of providence. Germany, the fates dictated, would win the war and Hitler’s life had been spared to ensure it.

Others had been more seriously injured and taken to hospital. Four of them later died. The movements of all were scrutinised and it soon became apparent that Stauffenberg, seen leaving hurriedly in his car, was the culprit. “Arrest him immediately!” bellowed Hitler.

Hitler is dead

Early afternoon, Thursday 20 July 1944 – Count Claus von Stauffenberg, believing that he had successfully killed Hitler, returned to Berlin. The first part of the operation had been successfully completed. Now he issued the codeword, Valkyrie, the instruction for the Reserve Army to place Germany under a state of emergency. General Friedrich Fromm, Stauffenberg’s senior officer within the Reserve Army, informed local commanders that a new administration would be formed.

However, one of those commanders, Major Remer, received a telephone call directly from Hitler where the Fuhrer informed the Major that, contrary to popular rumour, he was still very much alive – and in control.

When it became obvious that the coup had failed, Fromm, in an attempt to distance himself from the conspirators, ordered the arrest and immediate execution of Stauffenberg. The Count was detained and duly shot, along with three others, at one in the morning, just over 12 hours after the bomb had gone off, and hastily buried in the grounds of the War Ministry.

Himmler takes control

But it did Fromm little good. Once Heinrich Himmler, Hitler’s SS boss, had arrived in Berlin, he re-established control of the city and the mass arrests began, and among the first to be arrested was Fromm. He also ordered the exhumation of Stauffenberg’s body. The Count’s final resting place has since remained a mystery – until recently.

Many committed suicide rather than face Nazi justice. The ringleaders were rounded up and hanged by piano wire, their deaths recorded onto film and the films sent to the Wolf’s Lair for Hitler to watch at his pleasure. Over the coming months, more than 7,000 were arrested, of whom 4,980 were executed. Fromm remained imprisoned until 12 March 1945, when he too was shot.

Rommel’s fateful choice

The highest-ranking victim of this post-July purge was one of Hitler’s favourite and most ablest generals, Erwin Rommel. Rommel, who shared the same birthday as Stauffenberg, 15 November, although not directly involved, had previously voiced sympathy for the plan. Once his endorsement came to light, he was given the option of honourable suicide or subjecting himself to the humiliation and the kangaroo court of Nazi justice, and his family deported to a concentration camp. He chose the former and, on 14 October 1944, accompanied by two generals sent by Hitler, poisoned himself. He was, as promised, buried with full military honours, his family pensioned off.

Aftermath

Those who had been at Hitler’s side in the conference room on 20 July were awarded a specially-made ‘Wounded Medal’, either in black, silver or gold, that bore Hitler’s signature and the date (pictured). It was, for the remaining months of the war, the ultimate badge of loyalty and honour.

The buildings that made up the Wolf’s Lair were demolished soon after the war but today, on the site, is a memorial stone dedicated to Stauffenberg – the “bravest of the best” as Churchill described the fallen Count.

Rupert Colley.

Read more in The Clever Teens’ Guide to Nazi Germany, available as ebook and paperback (80 pages) on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

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Born 10 March 1957, Osama bin Laden was one of 52 (or more) siblings born to his billionaire father, Mohammed, and his 22 wives. Osama’s mother, Alia, was 14 when she married Mohammed, his tenth wife, and 15 when she gave birth to Osama (‘young lion’ in Arabic). Osama was the only product of this union. His parents divorced soon after his birth.

Mohammed bin Laden had built from scratch a large building empire in Saudi Arabia and when, in 1968, he died in a helicopter crash – his vast fortune was distributed amongst all his children.

Osama bin Laden stood 6ft 5in tall and married the first of his four wives, a 14-year-old, when he was 17. He had 19 children, of whom his 22-year-old son, Khalid, was killed in the US attack that killed Osama in May 2011.

The Mujahideen

Bin Laden first visited Afghanistan during the early weeks of the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-89) and helped organise the supply of men, arms and money for the Mujahideen fighting the Soviet invaders.

Following the withdrawal of the Soviet Union in February 1989, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia a hero for having contributed to the Soviets’ defeat. During the late eighties, possibly 1988, bin Laden formed Al-Qaeda, meaning ‘the base’.

Following the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1990 the threat to Saudi Arabia seemed real. Bin Laden offered the Saudi king Mujahideen fighters to help defend the country but the king declined the offer and instead allowed 300,000 US troops onto Saudi soil from where they could attack Iraq. Bin Laden heavily criticised the Saudi king to the point his country of birth revoked his citizenship and had him banished.

Al-Qaeda

In 1992, bin Laden migrated to the Sudan and from there built up Al-Qaeda. In 1996 bin Laden was forced to leave the Sudan and he returned to Afghanistan where he met the Mullah Mohammad Omar, the leader of the Taliban. Omar reputedly married bin Laden’s daughter. Bin Laden became the Taliban’s financial benefactor and helped organise their push on Kabul in September 1996.

In 1998 bin Laden issued a fatwa calling on Muslims throughout the world to “kill Americans wherever they are found”. Following the 1998 suicide bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, US President, Bill Clinton, demanded that the Taliban hand over bin Laden. But the Mullah Omar refused to comply. Bin Laden’s support for the Taliban obligated Omar’s loyalty and to have handed him over would have violated his deep-rooted sense of hospitality.

Despite several rumours of his death since 2001, bin Laden was still alive until US intelligence finally tracked him down, living in a three-storey house within a fortified compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan, 35 miles north of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

Death of Osama bin Laden

On May 2, 2011, a small team of elite US Navy Seals stormed the house – its objective: to kill Osama bin Laden.

The 24 Seals took off from their Afghan base in Bagram in Black Hawk helicopters specially modified to reduce rotor noise. Flying in low to avoid radar detection, the helicopters swooped into the compound.

The Seals had been practising for weeks on a mock-up of the triangular compound, fortified on all sides by a twelve-foot wall topped with barbed wire.

In a 38-minute operation, the climax of which was a seven-minute firefight, three men and a woman were quickly dispatched, while the Seals homed in on their target. (Amongst the victims was bin Laden’s 22-year-old son, Khalid).

Bin Laden and a woman (later confirmed as one of his wives) were found in his bedroom unarmed and wearing pyjamas. Having shot his wife in the calf, the Seals shot bin Laden first in the chest (the “stop shot”), then the head (the “kill shot”). The pyjamas were later found to have 500 euros sewn within.

Thousands of miles away, in Washington DC, President Obama and his staff (pictured) watched the ruthless proceedings via cameras mounted on the helmets of the Seals.

“Geronimo EKIA” (enemy killed in action), reported back a Seal, using their codename for bin Laden. “We got him,” said the President.

Having confirmed through DNA the identity of Bin Laden, the body was flown out to the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier. Bin Laden was not to be buried anywhere that could become a shrine. After the reading of Islamic passages, his body was buried in the North Arabian Sea.

President Obama addressed the nation and America celebrated. It may have taken nine years, seven months and 19 days but the US had finally got justice over a man that had cast such a long shadow over their recent history. Osama bin Laden, leader of Al-Qaeda and mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was dead.

Rupert Colley.

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Alexander instigated a vast improvement in communication, namely expanding Russia’s rail network from just 660 miles of track (linking Moscow and St Petersburg) in the 1850s to over 14,000 miles within thirty years, which, in turn, aided Russia’s industrial and economic expansion.

Alexander’s reformist zeal restructured the judicial system which included the introduction of trial by jury. Military reform saw the introduction of conscription, the reduction of military service from 25 years to six, and the establishment of military schools. He expanded Russia’s territory in Central Asia, up to the borders of Afghanistan, much to the worry of the British government.

Emancipation of the Serfs

But reform only opened the eyes of what could be, thus came the demand for more, which brought about a number of active groups demanding greater reform and revolution. Thus, on 3 March 1861, Alexander II issued what seemed on the face of it the most revolutionary reform in Russia’s history – his Manifesto on the Emancipation of the Serfs. The edict freed 23 million serfs from their bondage to landowners, and the ownership of 85 percent of Russia’s land was wrestled from private landowners and given to the peasants. The landlords, understandably, opposed such a sweeping change but were told by the tsar, ‘It is better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait for the time when it will begin to abolish itself from below’.

But the high ideals of Alexander II’s emancipation of the serfs fell very short of its ambition. The 15 percent of land the landowners held onto was, invariably, the best, most sought-after, and the peasants had to buy back their land from the nobles, usually at an inflated price. Those unable to afford the cost, which was virtually all, were given a loan by the government, repayable at 6 percent over 49 years. The peasant, freed from serfdom, was no better off and no happier.

Assassination target

But Alexander’s reforms did not extend to democracy and he resisted all calls for a parliament or freedom of expression – it remained illegal to criticize the tsar or his government. Frustrated by the tsar’s autocracy, anti-government groups formed and met in clandestine, many prepared to use violence to achieve their aims. On 20 April 1879, Alexander survived an assassination attempt when a 33-year-old revolutionary and former schoolteacher, Alexander Soloviev, shot at him five times but missed. Soloviev was hanged the following month.

A year later, on 5 February 1880, Stepan Khalturin, a carpenter working within the tsar’s Winter Palace, planted a bomb beneath the tsar’s dining hall timed to go off at the time Alexander was expected to sit for dinner. But a late guest that evening delayed the start of dinner. The bomb killed several staff but the tsar was unharmed.

The People’s Will

But on 13 March 1881, the tsar was not so lucky. A group calling themselves the People’s Will threw a bomb at the tsar’s carriage as it drove through St Petersburg. Initially unharmed, Alexander, against advice to stay in the carriage, emerged to check on his wounded guards. A second bomb was thrown, this one severely wounding him. He was carried back to the Winter Palace, both his legs blown away and his stomach ripped open, where he died. He was 62. The tsar’s son (Alexander III) and 12-year-old grandson (Nicholas II) were witness to Alexander’s violent end. As future tsars they never forgot.

Ironically, Alexander II had just, hours before his death, put his signature to a draft decree to establish a parliament, a Duma, the first step towards a constitutional monarchy. He knew that the emancipation of the serfs had failed and that his reforms, although laudable, merely created the demand for greater reform. Thus, by their very action, the terrorists had unwittingly aborted any chance of constitutional reform. Instead, they got a new tsar, Alexander’s son, Alexander III, who immediately tore up his father’s parliamentary proposal, undid his reforms and intensified the level of repression.

Alexander III

The new tsar’s Manifesto on Unshakable Autocracy, issued within two months of his father’s death, summed up Alexander III’s view on how Russia should be ruled. Liberalism and democracy were signs of weakness. For the benefit of all, his people needed to be ruled with a firm hand and the nation needed to be more Russian. Ethnic languages and nationalistic tendencies were repressed. The vast empire was to be subject to the new tsar’s Russification and autocratic rule.

The new tsar intended to start teaching his son the art of statesmanship once Nicholas had reached the age of 30. But on 1 November 1894, aged only 49, Alexander III died of kidney disease. His son was still only 26. Thus, following the death of his father, Nicholas was thrust unprepared into the limelight. Fearful of the responsibility that was now his to bear, he reputably asked, ‘What will become of me and all of Russia?’

Rupert Colley.

Read more Soviet / Russian history in The Clever Teens’ Guide to the Russian Revolution (80 pages) available as paperback and ebook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

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Only six days before, Confederate forces under General Robert E Lee had surrendered to General Ulysses S Grant, effectively bringing to an end the American Civil War.

John Wilkes Booth

John Wilkes Booth (pictured), who originated from a famous family of actors and was himself regarded a fine actor, had lived in the North throughout the war but, a great believer in the institution of slavery, his loyalties lay firmly with the Confederate South.

In March 1865 Booth had hatched a plan to kidnap the president but the plan came to nothing. However, following Lee’s surrender, Booth’s determination to punish the man he saw as responsible for the war and the ending of slavery hardened.

On hearing that on the evening of April 14, Good Friday, Lincoln would be at the Ford’s Theatre watching a performance of the farce, Our American Cousin by British playwright Tom Taylor, Booth quickly devised a new plan. Together with two companions, Lewis Powell and George Atzerodt, Booth planned a triple assassination – of the president, the Vice-President, Andrew Johnston, and Secretary of State, William Seward.

Come 10 pm, the agreed time, the three men went to work. Atzerodt, however, backed out whilst Powell broke into the home of Seward and attacked the Secretary of State with a knife. Seward survived but bore the facial scars for the rest of his life.

Ford’s Theatre

Meanwhile, at Ford’s Theatre, during the third act, Lincoln’s bodyguard had slipped away to get a drink. It was incredible piece of luck for Booth who had broken into the theatre earlier in the evening and had tampered with the outer door to Lincoln’s box. Now, just gone 10 pm, armed with a pistol and a knife, Booth opened the outer door and wedged it shut from within.

Sitting with the president was his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, and two companions – a Union Army major, Henry Rathbone and his fiancée, Clara Harris. Booth was familiar with the play being performed and waited nervously for a particular piece of dialogue he knew would raise a roar of laughter.

Thus always to tyrants

Then, at the right moment, as laughter filled the theatre, Booth swung open the inner door and shot the president in the back of the head. Mary screamed and caught her husband as he slumped forward. Rathbone jumped up to prevent Booth’s escape but the assassin slashed him with a knife before jumping from the box and landing heavily on the stage, fracturing his left ankle and shouting, “Sic semper tyrannis” – Latin for “Thus always to tyrants”, the state motto of Virginia.

By now the audience was aware of something terrible happening. Rathbone, his arm bleeding profusely, yelled, “Stop that man!” But too late. Before anyone could react, Booth had exited through a stage door and to a horse tied up outside.

Doctors within the audience rushed to Lincoln’s aid, pushing aside the screaming Mary. But immediately, on seeing the wound, they knew it was fatal.

Deciding not to carry the president back to the White House, they carried him across the street to a house of rented rooms and lay the president down on a bed. (Being so tall, he had to be laid out diagonally). Mary, by now hysterical, had to be removed.

At 7.22 the following morning, Easter Saturday, April 15, President Lincoln died. He was 56. Following a prayer, the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton famously said, “Now he belongs to the ages”.

The Funeral Train

Lincoln’s body, draped in a flag, was taken to the White House, whilst all around, the church bells rang out. After lying in state in a heavily-decorated open coffin, he was transported by train to his hometown of Springfield, Illinois. The body of Lincoln’s third son, William, who had died aged 11 in 1862, was exhumed and placed on the train alongside the body of his father.

Travelling at a top speed of 20 mph the train stopped at various cities, starting at New York, where Lincoln’s coffin was taken off the train and laid in state. Finally, after 13 days, and having travelled 1,654 miles, the whole route lined with mourners, the train arrived in Springfield.

Footnotes

John Wilkes Booth was finally tracked down, hiding in a barn in Virginia. His pursuers, having set the barn alight, shot the fugitive. Fatally wounded, Booth was dragged from the blaze and died three hours later. He was 26.

As a sad footnote to this story, Major Rathbone and his fiancée, Clara, did marry, moved to Germany and had three children. However, Rathbone succumbed to mental illness, and in December 1883, he shot and stabbed Clara to death and tried to commit suicide. Rathbone spent the rest of his life in an asylum, dying in 1911.

Rupert Colley.

Rupert Colley’s novella, set during World War Two and Paris in 1968, The Woman on the Train, is now available.

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Six months earlier, on 28 December 1941, two Free Czech agents, Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabčík, trained by Britain’s Special Operations Executive (the SOE), had parachuted into Czechoslovakia. Their objective, almost certain to end in their deaths, was to assassinate the ‘Deputy Reich Protector of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia’, to give Reinhard Heydrich his full title.

Assassination attempt

On 27 May 1942, the agents, on learning of Heydrich’s movements that day, went into action. As the car taking Heydrich to a meeting slowed to navigate a hairpin bend, the two men attacked. Heydrich, as was his routine, was without an armed escort. Gabčík tried to shoot Heydrich but his submachine gun jammed at the fatal moment. Instead of ordering his chauffeur to drive off, Heydrich chose to fight. He attempted to fire back but a small bomb, thrown by Kubis, exploded, injuring him. Heydrich and his driver gave chase on foot, but the two agents escaped before Heydrich, bleeding profusely, collapsed from his injuries. He was rushed to hospital. Surgeons operated and initially it seemed the stricken Nazi was recovering.

On 2 June, a week after the attack, he received a visit from his superior and mentor, Heinrich Himmler. Following Himmler’s visit, Heydrich slipped into a coma and died on 4 June. He was given a sumptuous funeral in Prague followed by a second ceremony in Berlin.

Meanwhile, Heydrich’s assassins, Kubis and Gabčík, hid in the crypt of a Prague church. Three weeks later they were betrayed and the church was surrounded by 800 members of the SS. The men held out for as long as possible before turning their guns on themselves.

Young Heydrich

Reinhard Heydrich was born in the eastern German town of Halle on 7 March 1904. His mother was an actress and his father, Richard, a music teacher and occasional opera composer inducing in his sons (Reinhard and his younger brother, Heinz) a love of the operas of Richard Wagner. Reinhard became an accomplished violinist. Heydrich’s father, a fervent German nationalist, was sometimes known as Heydrich-Süss.  Süss, having a Jewish ring to it, fuelled rumours that the family had Jewish blood. Later, Reinhard Heydrich was so haunted by the thought, that he ordered an SS investigation into his family ancestry. The report concluded, unsurprisingly, that Reinhard Heydrich’s family contained no trace of Jewish descent.

Conduct unbecoming

Too young to enlist as a soldier during the First World War, in 1919, the fifteen-year-old Heydrich joined the post-war Freikorps, a right-wing paramilitary group, an unruly rabble of demobilized soldiers. In 1922, Heydrich joined the German Navy and steadily rose through the ranks, soon becoming a first lieutenant. In 1930, he became engaged to Lina von Osten, a member of the Nazi Party. In doing so, he broke off a previous engagement to a shipyard director’s daughter, whom he may have got pregnant. The affair earned him a dismissal from the navy for ‘conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman’. He was granted a monthly allowance for two years by way of compensation.

Up until now, Heydrich had lampooned the Nazis, the ‘privates from Bohemia’, as he called them. But depressed by his loss of career and the uniform he so highly prized, and with Von Osten’s influence, whom he had married in December 1931, Heydrich joined the Nazi Party and became a member of its security wing, the SS. His skills soon came to the attention of SS boss, Heinrich Himmler, who, on knowing the rumours of Heydrich’s Jewish background, was able to demand complete obedience of his protégé.

Heydrich was Adolf Hitler’s archetypal Aryan – tall, blond, and athletic. He was placed in charge of the SD, the ‘Security Service’, the intelligence and surveillance side of the SS. The promotion was, for Heydrich’s wife, the ‘finest hour of my life, of our life’.

In 1934, Heydrich played a leading role in organising Hitler’s purge of the SA, a rival paramilitary organization that displayed greater loyalty to its leader, Ernst Rohm, than Hitler. The killing of Rohm and his henchmen was remembered as the Night of the Long Knives.

In 1936, Heydrich again was promoted and became responsible for the SD, the criminal police and the Gestapo.

Enemies of the Reich

Heydrich helped coordinate Kristallnacht, an organised series of attacks on Jews and Jewish property during the night of 8-9 November 1938. A leading proponent of forcing Jews to emigrate, Heydrich, along with Adolf Eichmann, looked into the feasibility of deporting four million Jews to Madagascar but the plan failed, and from it came the conclusion that extermination was easier than mass deportation.

On the eve of war, in 1939, Heydrich was appointed head of the Reich Main Security Office. Its aim was to fight all “enemies of the Reich” within Germany and occupied Germany. Together with Eichmann, Heydrich established the first Jewish ghettos within occupied Poland.

The Wannsee Conference

In 1941, Hermann Goering set Heydrich the task of finding a ‘total solution of the Jewish question’ in German-occupied territories. One of Heydrich’s earlier solutions was the establishment of roving killing units, the Einsatzgruppen, which followed up the German armies’ advances into Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, rounding up and murdering Jews. But the killing of Jews by bullet was a time-consuming task and often detrimental to the mental health of those carrying out the mass executions. A more efficient means of murder was needed. On 20 January 1942, Heydrich chaired the one-day Wannsee Conference in Berlin during which senior Nazis discussed and planned the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish question’.

The Butcher of Prague

In September 1941, Heydrich was appointed the Reich governor of Bohemia and Moravia, part of modern-day Czech Republic, where he promised to ‘Germanize the Czech vermin’. He soon earned the sobriquet, the ‘Butcher of Prague’. It was in Prague that Reinhard Heydrich met his death.

Himmler spoke at Heydrich’s funeral: ‘Whatever actions he took he carried them out as a National Socialist and an SS man, from the very bottom of his heart and through his blood, he carried out, felt, and understood Adolf Hitler’s world vision’.

Following Heydrich’s assassination, the Gestapo retaliated by executing hundreds of Czechs and wiping out the entire villages of Lidice, about thirteen miles north of Prague, and Ležáky. The villages were razed to the ground and the 173 male inhabitants of Lidice were murdered. The 198 women were sent to concentration camps where most were gassed. Thousands of Czech people were also deported to extermination camps as a direct consequence of Heydrich’s death. The Bishop of Prague was also executed, held responsible for allowing the assailants to hide in one of his churches.

Lina von Osten, Heydrich’s wife, survived the war and in 1976, published a memoir, Life with a War Criminal. Despite its title, Von Osten, who had remarried, defended her first husband’s name right up to her death in 1985.

Rupert Colley.

Read more in The Clever Teens’ Guide to Nazi Germany, available as ebook and paperback (80 pages) on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

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In 1931, Malcolm’s father died in mysterious circumstances, run over by a streetcar. Although it was never proved, the suspicion remained that he had been killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan. The police recorded the death as suicide, thereby annulling Earl Little’s life insurance.

Malcolm Little

Left poverty-stricken, Malcolm’s mother struggled to make ends meet for her large family. The pressure took its toll and in 1937, six years after her husband’s death, she was committed to an asylum. The children were farmed out to various foster parents and homes. Malcolm went to school where a teacher asked the vulnerable Malcolm what he wanted to be. Malcolm answered, a lawyer. The teacher scoffed, told him to be realistic and recommended, instead, he become a carpenter. Disillusioned, he dropped out of school at the age of 15 and went to Boston to live with his older half-sister, Ella.

Detroit Red

From Boston, Malcolm moved to the Harlem district of New York City where he got a job as a shoeshine boy. Called “Detroit Red” for the reddish hint in his hair, he drifted into a life of petty crime, involving robbery and drug selling. He lived well off the proceeds but in 1946, following a failed robbery, Malcolm was sentenced to ten years imprisonment. Whilst incarcerated he spent much of his time reading in the prison library, obtaining the education he felt was lacking in his life. He converted to Islam and became a member of the Nation of Islam, or the Black Muslims. Founded by Elijah Muhammad, the self-proclaimed Messenger of Allah, the Black Muslims rejected Christianity as a white man’s religion and preached separation of the races.

Malcolm X

Having served six years, Malcolm was released from prison in 1952. He moved to Chicago and founded (or took over – resources differ on this point) the Nation’s newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, which espoused racially controversial views about the natural superiority of blacks. Malcolm, having shed his “slave name”, advocated black separatism and the use of violence, if necessary, to achieve it. America’s blacks, he said, were in the midst of a revolution and there was “no such thing as a non-violent revolution”. Air time on national television brought him immediate fame, or notoriety. His preaching drew new converts and his charismatic style appealed to much of America’s black youth.

Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Describing himself as the “angriest black man in America”, Malcolm rejected Martin Luther King‘s non-confrontational approach and mocked King’s March on Washington (August 1963). Achieving integration through non-violence and, as Malcolm saw it, long-term suffering, would not progress the African American’s place in society. Instead, Malcolm preached independence, black power and black consciousness, a message that had widespread appeal. The Civil Rights Movement had, in Malcolm’s view, “begged the white man for freedom”, and begging for freedom did not, he continued, set you free. “The price of freedom is death”.

(The six foot, 3 inches tall, Malcolm  X and Martin Luther King, Jr met just the once, pictured, in March 1964).

El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz

Elijah Muhammad, impressed by Malcolm’s undoubted abilities, named him his second-in-command. Although the two men argued over the direction of the organization, Malcolm saw Muhammad as a mentor and a spiritual guide, and perhaps even a father-figure. But Muhammad’s private life failed to match his public persona as a man beyond reproach. Malcolm was left feeling betrayed when he learnt that Muhammad had fathered six children with different women.

Their relationship deteriorated further when, following the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, Malcolm said it was a case of “chickens coming to roost”. Malcolm was ordered to observe a 90-day period of silence. Refusing to comply, in March 1964 Malcolm left the Nation of Islam and founded his own Islamic group, the Muslim Mosque, Inc. In 1965 he formed the secular group, the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

Malcolm embarked on a tour of Africa and the Middle East, paid a pilgrimage to Mecca, and, having changed his name to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, converted to the Sunni branch of Islam. He returned to the US a more moderate man: “I recognize that anger can blind a man”, he later said.

Assassination of Malcolm X

Having left the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X received numerous death threats. In 1964, Elijah Muhammad said that “hypocrites like Malcolm should have their heads cut off”. Indeed, an edition of Muhammad Speaks that year featured a cartoon of Malcolm X’s decapitated head. On 14 February 1965, Malcolm’s family home in New York was firebombed. He firmly believed that those responsible were members of the Nation of Islam.

A week later, on 21 February, as he was about to deliver a lecture at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, Malcolm was shot fifteen times and killed. He was three months short of his fortieth birthday. Three of Elijah Muhammad’s followers were later found guilty of the murder. The last of the three, Talmadge Hayer, having served 45 years in jail and having been refused parole sixteen times, was released from prison in 2010.

Elijah Muhammad, on hearing of Malcolm’s death, said, “Malcolm X got just what he preached… We knew such ignorant, foolish teachings would bring him to his own end”.

In 1958, Malcolm had married Betty Shabazz, who, like Malcolm, called herself ‘X’. They were to have six daughters, the youngest two, twins, born after Malcolm’s assassination. On 1 June 1997, Betty’s home was set on fire by her 12-year-old grandson, Malcolm Shabazz. Three weeks later, she died of her injuries. Shabazz, who spent four years in a juvenile detention centre, immediately expressed his remorse. Shabazz himself was murdered in Mexico City on 9 May 2013. He was 28.

Malcolm’s Autobiography of Malcolm X, dictated to Alex Haley and written over two years, was published soon after his death, and remains a cult hit.

Rupert Colley

Claim your free copy of Rupert’s novel, My Brother the Enemy. 

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But there was one man who awaited Hitler’s appearance with equal anticipation – but for entirely different reasons. This man was a 36-year-old carpenter, Johann Georg Elser, born 4 January 1903. For Elser, a long-time anti-Nazi, had planted a bomb with the full intention of killing Adolf Hitler. And his bomb was due to explode halfway through the Fuhrer’s speech.

Kill Hitler

Georg Elser had always been quietly defiant in his hatred of the Nazi regime – he’d supported the communists and, once Hitler was in power, refused to give the Nazi salute. He feared Hitler’s aggressive warmongering and foresaw the coming of war and resolved himself, in his own way, to do something to prevent it – and that was to kill Hitler.

Exactly a year earlier before the fateful night, on the 8 November 1938, Elser attended the same annual commemoration in Munich marking the anniversary of Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. And it was this annual event, he decided, that would provide the perfect opportunity to implement his audacious plan. The following night, he witnessed first-hand the vicious Kristallnacht, when Nazis throughout the country terrorized Germany’s Jews in a concentrated orgy of killing and violence. Seeing for himself this state-sponsored anarchy merely confirmed for Elser that what he was doing was right.

Elser spent the next year preparing. Each year on 8 November, since 1933, Hitler had come to the same beer hall and delivered a two-hour speech, starting at 8.30, the precise time that, in 1923, he had bulldozed into the hall brandishing a pistol, interrupting a meeting of Bavarian city officials and, firing two shots into the ceiling, declared revolution. The Beer Hall Putsch failed but had become an occasion to honour and remember the Nazis that had fallen that night in Munich.

Thus Elser, who managed to secure a job as a carpenter within the beer hall, painstakingly hollowed out a pillar near the speakers’ podium and placed within it a timed device set to go off at the point Hitler was midway through his speech.

Thirteen minutes

But sadly for Elser (pictured), and indeed for all mankind, Hitler changed his routine. War had broken out two months before and Hitler had more pressing matters to attend to and had to get back to Berlin. Thus, Hitler began his speech earlier than normal and instead of the usual two hours, spoke only for an hour. He left the building at 9.07. Thirteen minutes later, Elser’s bomb went off. It killed eight Nazis and injured over sixty. But Hitler was not one of them.

Elser was arrested as he tried to escape into Switzerland. He was interrogated and brutally tortured by the Gestapo, often in the presence of Heinrich Himmler, who refused to believe that Elser had worked alone and was not part of a wider conspiracy. Astonishingly, they didn’t execute him – at least not straight away. They kept him alive until the very end… he was shot in Dachau concentration camp on 9 April 1945, weeks before its liberation.

Thirteen Minutes is the name of a 2015 film about Elser and his failed assassination.

Hellmut G Haasis’s book, Bombing Hitler: The Story of the Man Who Almost Assassinated the Führer, originally published in German in 2001, has only just been released in English. Piecing together contemporary transcripts, personal testimonies and family recollections, Haasis puts together a compelling story of the doomed hero, a testament to a man who almost singlehandedly changed the course of twentieth-century history – almost. It is a story of quiet courage, determination and tragedy. One closes the book wondering what might have been had this simple carpenter with a mission had set his bomb to go off just thirteen minutes earlier.

By such thin threads, hangs the destiny of mankind.

Rupert Colley.

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Despairing, Yusupov shot Rasputin in the back and then, satisfied, left to join his fellow conspirators. Returning a little later to check on the body, Rasputin sat up and lunged at the prince. The prince’s friends came to his rescue, shooting the ‘mad monk’ a further three times, once in the forehead. But still refusing to die, Rasputin’s attackers resorted to clubbing him senseless then wrapping his body in a blue rug and throwing him in the icy waters of the River Neva.

The subsequent autopsy found that Rasputin had died by drowning, implying he had survived the huge dose of poison, four bullets, and the severe clubbing.

At least, this is the story that has filtered down through the decades.

The Russian people will be cursed

Rasputin had a sense of his coming demise, warning the tsar, Nicholas II, weeks before his death:

‘I shall depart this life before January first. If one of your relatives causes my death, then none of your children will remain alive for more than two years. And if they do, they will beg for death as they will see the defeat of Russia, see the Antichrist coming, plague, poverty, destroyed churches, and desecrated sanctuaries where everyone is dead. The Russian tsar, you will be killed by the Russian people and the people will be cursed and will serve as the devil’s weapon killing each other everywhere.’

One of Prince Yusupov’s conspirators, the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, was indeed a cousin of the tsar, and the tsar and his family would be murdered by the Bolsheviks within 18 months of Rasputin’s murder.

I have killed the Antichrist

Two years earlier, on 28 June 1914 (the very day that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo), Rasputin had survived another assassination attempt. Visiting his family in Siberia, Rasputin was almost killed by a woman named Khionia Guseva. Guseva, who, apparently, lacked a nose, may have been urged on by a former friend of Rasputin’s, an anti-Semitic monk called Iliodor. Waiting for him outside a church, Guseva stabbed Rasputin in the stomach, crying out, ‘I have killed the Antichrist!’ Rasputin recovered but became dependent on frequent doses of opium to relieve his pain. Declared insane, Guseva was later committed to an asylum.

Born Grigori Yefimovich Novik in a remote Siberian village on 22 January 1869, Rasputin’s adopted name is Russian for ‘debauched one’, a nickname he earned by his reputed womanizing and drunkenness, which he defended by claiming he was driving out sin with sin. As a boy, he was known for his psychic powers leading some to believe he was possessed by the Devil.

As a young man, Rasputin began his pilgrimages, going as far as Greece and Jerusalem, sometimes walking days on end without food or water and wearing shackles to amplify the pain. He reputably practiced flagellation as a further means of purification.

Rasputin and the Tsarevic

In 1903, Rasputin arrived in St Petersburg, his reputation as a holy man preceding him. Summoned by the Royal Family, Rasputin was able to stem the bleeding of the tsar’s youngest child and only son, the heir to the throne, the haemophiliac Alexei. Only Rasputin, it seemed, could treat the poor boy. Thus, he formed a bond with the royal couple and enjoyed their patronage. The tsar dismissed reports of Rasputin’s drunkenness and promiscuity as gossip and found the mystic’s presence ‘calming’, stating that he felt at peace whenever Rasputin spoke with him of God.

Rasputin was certainly the victim of malicious rumourmongers – newspaper cartoons portrayed him as devilish and the nobility sought every opportunity to discredit him. The scandals relating to his debauched behaviour would have been passed off as nothing unusual had Rasputin been an aristocrat. But he wasn’t, and Rasputin’s sympathy for Russia’s Jews certainly riled St Petersburg’s anti-Semitic nobility.

Russian nobility certainly felt that Rasputin had too much influence on royal affairs, especially during the Great War with Nicholas away at the front. The tsarina hired and fired ministers on a disconcertingly regular basis, based entirely on Rasputin’s recommendations. But Rasputin’s influence only went so far – he had tried to persuade the tsar not to go to war in the first place and to halt the regular pogroms initiated against the Jews – all to no avail.

Did the British kill Rasputin?

The above story on how Rasputin was killed, accepted as fact for almost a century, has come under increasing scrutiny. The account relies entirely on Felix Yusupov himself, who was keen to take the glory for having killed Rasputin. Prince Yusupov and his pro-monarchist friends believed they were acting in the best interests of the monarchy. (Yusupov was a transvestite, who once appeared as a cabaret singer dressed as a woman.)

However, more recent evidence points increasingly to the involvement of a British spy, Oswald Rayner. Rayner and Yusupov had met at Oxford, where the Russian had lived and studied for three years. If British involvement had come to light, it would have severely damaged Anglo-Russians relations – the murder had to be seen as the work of Russians committed in the best interests of Russia.

The British were alarmed by reports that Rasputin was trying to persuade the tsarina to use her influence to remove Russian troops from the war. The consequences of this would have allowed Germany to transfer 350,000 troops and equipment from the Eastern Front to the Western Front, greatly bolstering its forces against the Allies – an alarming prospect for the British and the French.

Rayner, working for the Secret Intelligence Bureau, was present at Yusupov’s palace on 29 December, where the prince had lured Rasputin with the promise of women and sex. Rasputin was heavily tortured as his tormentors tried to ascertain what links he had with Germany. His testicles were ‘crushed flat’.

Yes, Yusupov did try to poison and shoot Rasputin but it was Rayner, it is now believed, that fired the fatal shot. Of the four bullets found in Rasputin’s body – one was significantly different, having been fired from a revolver that was standard British issue. This bullet, shot from point-blank into the centre of Rasputin’s forehead, was the work of a professional killer and would have killed him instantly.

The story is chronicled in a 2010 book by Richard Cullen, Rasputin: The Role of Britain’s Secret Service in his Torture and Murder.

In 1932, Prince and Princess Yusupov successfully sued Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in an English court over the MGM film Rasputin and the Empress for portraying the princess as having been seduced by Rasputin. They won and were awarded the sum of £25,000 (about £1.5 million / US$2.5 million in 2015). (The case set a precedent thereby introducing the ‘all persons fictitious disclaimer’.) Appearing on the witness stand, Yusupov was asked whether he’d killed Rasputin. Knowing he was free from prosecution, he freely admitted it: ‘Yes, I killed Rasputin. It was my duty to kill him. So I killed him’.

Demonic

Following his murder in December 1916, the distraught tsarina, Alexandra, had Rasputin buried on the grounds of Tsarskoye Selo, the royal residence, south of Petrograd.

In 1917, after the overthrow of the tsar, a number of Petrograd workers removed Rasputin’s corpse and burned it in a nearby forest. Alarmingly for the workers, Rasputin’s body sat up in the flames causing them to flee in panic. The men had failed to cut the tendons thereby as the corpse heated, the tendons contracted, making his limbs twist and the torso bend at the waist. The episode may have had a logical reason but of course the workmen were not to know and it cemented Grigori Rasputin’s demonic reputation.

During Stalin’s rule, the autopsy report into Rasputin’s death vanished and Stalin ensured that all those associated with it vanished as well.

Rupert Colley

Read more Soviet / Russian history in The Clever Teens’ Guide to the Russian Revolution (80 pages) available as paperback and ebook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores. 

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Archduke in love

The Emperor of the Austrian-Hungarian (Habsburg) Empire, Franz Joseph, had ruled since 1848, and was to do so until his death in 1916, aged 86, a rule of 68 years. When his nephew and heir presumptive, Archduke Franz Ferdinand announced his desire to marry Sophie Chotek it sent shockwaves through the royal family. For Sophie, although a countess, was a commoner. But the archduke was in love and no amount of family pressure would dissuade him from taking her hand. They married on 28 June 1900. Sophie, as a non-royal, would never become queen, and the archduke had to sign away the right of his future children to succeed him. To add to the indignity, Sophie was barred from attending royal occasions, the only exception was in regard to the archduke’s position of field marshal when, acting under his military capacity, he was allowed to have his wife at his side. (Pictured the archduke and Countess Sophie moments before their assassination).

The Black Hand

Bosnia had been a recent and unwilling addition to the Habsburg Empire. Resentful Bosnian Serbs dreamt of freedom and incorporation into the nation of Serbia. The 28 June was also a significant day for Serbia – it was their national holiday. Only in 1878, after five hundred years of Turkish rule, had Serbia gained its independence – but not the Bosnian Serbs who remained first under Turkish rule, then, from 1908, Austrian-Hungarian rule. Nationalistic groups formed, determined to use violence to strike terror at the heart of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. One such group, the sinisterly named Black Hand, included among its number a nineteen-year-old named Gavrilo Princip. And it was in Sarajevo that Princip would change the world.

Each armed with a revolver, a hand grenade and, in the event of failure, a vial of cyanide, the would-be assassins joined, at various intervals, the mass of spectators lined along a six-kilometre route and waited for the six-car motorcade to come into view. The first lost his nerve, whilst the second, Nedeljko Čabrinović, managed to throw his bomb causing injury to a driver and a few spectators but leaving the Archduke and his wife unharmed. Čabrinović swallowed his cyanide and jumped into the River Miljacka behind. But the poison, so old, failed to work and the river only came up to his ankles. Arrested, he was attacked by several bystanders. Meanwhile, Princip, witnessing the failure of the mission, traipsed to a local inn.

Franz Ferdinand, unsurprisingly, was not impressed. On arriving, as planned, at the City Hall, he complained to the city mayor, ‘Mr Mayor, I come to Sarajevo on a visit, and I get bombs thrown at me. It is outrageous.’ Then, in delivering a speech, he ended with the words, ‘I see in [the people of Sarajevo] an expression of joy at the failure of the attempt at assassination.’

Later in the day, on the countess’s suggestion, Franz Ferdinand declared his wish to visit the injured lying in hospital. On leaving the hospital, his chauffeur, unfamiliar with his part of the city, turned down a one-way street, ironically named after the emperor, Franz Josef. On realising his mistake, the chauffeur tried to reverse but stalled next to the tavern where Princip was still cursing his bad luck.

On seeing the royal car in front of him, Princip drew his revolver and leaped onto its running board and fired. The first bullet killed the countess instantaneously. ‘Sophie, don’t die,’ cried the archduke, ‘stay alive for the children’. The second bullet caught him in the throat. As the car rushed to the governor’s residence, a member of his entourage asked him if he was in great pain, to which the archduke replied several times, ‘It is nothing’, before expiring. Princip was wrestled to the ground (pictured), his revolver snatched from his hand. He managed to swallow the cyanide but, the poison, being so old, had no effect.

The Road to War

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (pictured) had very much been the work of Gavrilo Princip and his band of Black Hand conspirators but Austria-Hungary saw an opportunity to assert its authority over Serbia. But first, it sought reassurance from its powerful ally, Germany. Austria-Hungary and Germany had formed the Dual Alliance in 1879 which, three years later, became the Triple Alliance when Italy added its signature. The German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, gave Austria-Hungary the assurance it needed and then promptly went off on a cruise around Norway.

It took the Austrian-Hungarian government three weeks but the ultimatum they sent Serbia was, in the words of Britain’s foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, the ‘most formidable document ever sent from one nation to another’. Serbia was given 48 hours to comply with ten demands specifically designed to humiliate and be rejected. Although the Serbs agreed to eight, suggesting, quite reasonably, that the other two be decided by the Hague Tribunal, it was never going to be enough for the bellicose Austrian-Hungarians and on 28 July they declared war on Serbia.

Events now moved quickly, one triggering off another. In response to Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war, Russia, which saw itself as protector of Serbia, began to mobilise. France, Russia’s ally since 1892, offered her its support. In response, the Germans gave Russia twelve hours to halt its mobilisation. The deadline passed, thus on 1 August, Germany declared war on Russia and, two days later, on France. ‘The sword has been forced into our hand,’ claimed the Kaiser.

Germany’s determination to invade France through Belgium brought in Great Britain, who in 1839 had signed a treaty guaranteeing their neutrality. Germany could not believe that Britain would go to war with a ‘kindred nation’ over a ‘scrap of paper’, a treaty signed 75 years before. But it did. Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August. Sir Edward Grey, gazing out from the Foreign Office, remarked, ‘the lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime’.

Within a matter of weeks, what started off as ‘some damn foolish thing in the Balkans’, as the former German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, had once predicted, had escalated into a major conflict, one that would last 1,568 days, from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918, and cost over 9 million lives.

Gavrilo Princip’s gun; the car in which the archduke and the countess were riding; his bloodstained sky blue uniform and plumed cocked hat, and the chaise longue on which he died, are all on permanent display in the Museum of Military History in Vienna, Austria.

Rupert Colley.

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