The Start of WW1 | Frightful First World War | Horrible Histories

 People should read The Road to Sarajevo by Vladimir Dedijer for details on the context and how the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand happened from the assassin's perspective. Once I read it in English, then I tried checking it out from an InterLibrary Loan through ILLIAD, and then it came in French which I can't read. I had to return it.  It's very dense, full of footnotes, and is not light reading. The other book I would recommend would be 

The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance That Changed the World by Greg King. It details the whole family's romance, the unpopularity of Franz Ferdinand, and the aftermath of WWI and WWII for Ferdinand and Sophies' royal Hapsburg descendents.

Things I learned:

1. Franz Ferdinand was so large, morbidly obese, and had such a bad personality  that his nickname among the Austrian nobility was "The Ogre." 

2.  The Austrian nobility was full of sexual infidelity of all types at all levels despite being one of the most Catholic and orthodox of traditional Catholic empires.

3. Franz Ferdinand's last words were "Sopherl! Stay alive for the children!" Sopherl is the cute or short form of the name Sophie. I'm pretty sure she died first, if I recall correctly, and unfortunately.

4. Max Hapsburg (the firstborn son of the couple) was a brave force of good against the Nazis during the interwar period and the Second World War. His motives were a bit suspect, he wanted to be restored to the throne and rule Austria as a monarchy or as an emperor. But he was noble and decent for a difficult thoroughly evil time and fought the Anschluss. When he was liberated from the concentration camp he spent a bunch of time in during the war by the Soviets, he was given the rank of Soviet Major so that noone would bother him as they occupied Austria. It was a good strategic decision for the Soviets because Austria stayed neutral during the Cold War (it didn't join NATO like Germany, and other German-majority states), and I wonder if that was because of their access to the elite of Austria like Max Hapsburg, rather than simply the geopolitical fact that Austria was surrounded on two sides by the Warsaw Pact satelite states of East Germany and Hungary. Based off the Soviet and Russian history of using HUMINT more than SIGINT, that may make as much or more sense than simple geopolitics.

5. Like I've mentioned in another blogpost, the two families have made their peace.

I've walked across the bridge, and seen the sandwich shop (they're really not shops, they're tents or food stands), and seen where he probably bought his ćevapi or beef-pork sandwich which he was eating when he shot the archduke.

This movie is a great introduction to the beginning of WWII. (It's humorous).