The Assassination of the Archduke by Greg King
Author:Greg King
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
THIRTEEN
The Fatal Invitation
A collision of wills seemed inevitable between Franz Ferdinand and Conrad, especially after the summer of 1913. On August 17, the emperor promoted the archduke to inspector general of the empireâs armed forces. A delighted Franz Ferdinand decided to rush to Ischl, where the emperor was on holiday, and thank him personally. He tried to bring Sophie, thinking that the emperor would not object to her presence at a private dinner, but he had not counted on Franz Josefâs continued ambivalence. On learning of his nephewâs plan, the emperor craftily asked Bardolff to dine with him as well. As head of the archdukeâs Military Chancery, Bardolff âs invitation turned a private occasion into an official dinner, and one from which Sophie was thereby excluded.1
Three weeks later, in September of 1913, the archduke attended the autumn maneuvers in Bohemia as inspector general for the first time. Things went badly between him and General Conrad. The archduke berated the general, accusing him of inefficiency, and angrily confronted him over missing church services (Conrad was an atheist). It was, Conrad complained to a friend, âa scene without parallelâ; never before had he been subjected to such brutality.2 By the time the maneuvers had ended, Franz Ferdinand was even more determined to replace Conrad. As for the chief of the general staff, he, too, left Bohemia depressed and disgruntled. On his return to Vienna he again submitted a letter of resignation, but the emperor again refused to accept it.3 âAs highly as the Archduke formerly praised him to the skies,â said an observer, âso now he hates him.â4
This was the backdrop to the fateful invitation to attend army maneuvers the following June near the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. Even after a century the circumstances surrounding the invitation are surprisingly muddy. Conrad gave two contradictory versions. He insisted that he first learned of the visit on September 16, when the archduke personally told him he planned to attend and to take Sophie with him.5 Yet Conrad later said he knew nothing of the proposal until September 29, when General Oskar Potiorek, governor-general of Bosnia, informed him of the archdukeâs plan.6 âOn whose initiative the decision to attend the maneuvers rested,â Conrad wrote, âI do not know.â7
Many historians have assumed that Franz Ferdinandâs recent elevation to inspector general of the armed forces demanded his attendance at the Bosnian maneuvers. This is what his son Max later suggested, saying that his father felt obligated to appear in his role at the head of the Imperial Army.8 In fact, though, Franz Ferdinand went to Bosnia only as an observer. He did not attend the maneuvers as inspector general and had no official role in the exercises.9
Max suggested that his father was excited about attending the impending maneuvers in Bosnia.10 Perhaps this was true, when the proposal merely involved watching the exercises and staying at a nearby resort, but any enthusiasm for the trip quickly waned when it swelled to encompass an unwelcome ceremonial visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo.
Download
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
The Radium Girls by Kate Moore(11592)
100 Deadly Skills by Clint Emerson(4675)
The Templars by Dan Jones(4549)
Rise and Kill First by Ronen Bergman(4538)
The Doomsday Machine by Daniel Ellsberg(4235)
The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang(4007)
Killing England by Bill O'Reilly(3893)
Hitler in Los Angeles by Steven J. Ross(3790)
Stalin by Stephen Kotkin(3715)
12 Strong by Doug Stanton(3409)
Hitler's Monsters by Eric Kurlander(3148)
Blood and Sand by Alex Von Tunzelmann(3046)
Darkest Hour by Anthony McCarten(3011)
The Code Book by Simon Singh(2841)
The Art of War Visualized by Jessica Hagy(2826)
Hitler's Flying Saucers: A Guide to German Flying Discs of the Second World War by Stevens Henry(2618)
Babylon's Ark by Lawrence Anthony(2422)
The Second World Wars by Victor Davis Hanson(2416)
Tobruk by Peter Fitzsimons(2369)
