#Man who assassinated franz ferdinand movie

The route of their procession to the civic reception in the town hall was published in local newspapers. Army units were unavailable because their uniforms were muddy - and not presentable for the royal visit - from field maneuvers the had performed the previous day. 'Approximately 120 of the police force had turned out that day to provide security for the visit of the crown prince of the entire empire,' said Lyon. Sarajevo had a police force of about 200 policemen. On the final day of their state visit, security for the royal couple had thinned, leaving them vulnerable. James Lyon, Ph.D., author of the upcoming book “Serbia and the Balkan Front, 1914: The Outbreak of the Great War.' The Apollo was showing ‘A Shot at Midnight,’ and the Imperial ‘A World Without Men,” said Dr.

#Man who assassinated franz ferdinand movie

'The weekend that the archduke and Sophie visited Sarajevo the movie theaters were showing two films that foreshadowed the horrible events that would follow. The archduke visited Sarajevo despite warnings of anti-Austro-Hungarian sentiment among the Serbian population of the city. Sophie was aristocratic but not royal, so her marriage came with restrictions-their children had no right to aspire the throne and she could not appear at Ferdinand’s side at most major events. Princip, 19, was such an amateur assassin that he testified that he looked away when he fired.įerdinand was the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and because of a tangle of alliances, Princip’s shots quickly escalated into the The Great War.Īrchduke Ferdinand enjoyed traveling to the outposts of the empire, where protocol rules were much more relaxed than in Vienna, where his wife, a Bohemian countess, was deemed unsuitable for the dynasty, according to Habsburg rule. The archduke was assassinated along with his beloved wife Sophie by Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914.

There was an heir to an empire, a royal couple in love, the wife resented by the ruling family, a clandestine group known as the “Black Hand,” careless security officials, a warning not passed along, nationalistic teenagers ready to die, a wrong turn, cyanide pills and a lucky shot. — - The shot that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand 100 years ago today - which started a bloodletting that didn’t stop until 10 million people died and four empires were ruined in World War I - had all the elements of an exaggerated “Game of Thrones” script.