Berlin behind Sarajevo? A strange claim...

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Berlin behind Sarajevo? A strange claim...

#1

Post by Terry Duncan » 23 Feb 2012, 00:12

Whilst looking through book reviews I found the following passage ina review by Alan Sked of Rohl's 'The Kaiser and His Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany' from 1998;
Rohl also believes that, like Hitler, the Kaiser was responsible for starting a world war. His analysis of the December 1912 War Council makes clear that the people who counted were the Kaiser's naval and military friends and that the civilian leaders--the Chancellor and the Foreign Secretary-- took second place. As a result, the 1913 Army Bill was pushed through, naval plans for war against Britain were prepared, stockpiling of gold and fodder was approved and the course set for war in 1914 when the Kiel Canal would be ready - as Tirpitz demanded. Moltke, of course, wanted war straight away. Rohl makes clear that, despite early doubts, the Kaiser gave unconditional support to Austria during the First Balkan War and was ready to unleash a world war to defend Austria- Hungary's position in the Balkans. In short the "blank cheque" of 1914 was ready for delivery as soon as the other preparations were completed. Rohl doesn't say so in his book, but I know from seminar discussions with him, that he suspects that Berlin may even have been behind Franz Ferdinand's assassination at Sarajevo in 1914.
http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/47

Can anyone throw any light on why Rohl would even privately suspect Berlin of such a thing? The ideas from the time over Tisza or even the Hapsburg court plotting the assassination were certainly supported by some possible agenda, but I really cannot see much incentive for Berlin to do so, especially as Franz-Ferdinand and Wilhelm got on well.

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Re: Berlin behind Sarajevo? A strange claim...

#2

Post by favedave » 23 Feb 2012, 19:32

First, I do not in any way support Rohl's private claim. However, I can understand the genesis of it. While Franz and Wilhelm were on generally amiable terms, in their last meeting two weeks before the assassinations in Sarajevo, Hugh Strachan indicates that Franz Ferdinand was intent on letting Wilhelm know that Austria-Hungary under his leadership would be going its own way in regards to it foreign relations with Russia and its Slavic populations domestically and across the region. Wilhelm did not support Franz in his notions of Trialism for the Dual Monarchy, admitting Austria-Hungary's slavic populous to the reigns of goverment, or in having a relationship with Imperial Russia which might destroy the military Dual Alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary. Fear of being without allies in a war with the Entente was certainly the basis for Wilhelm's disapproval of Franz Ferdinand's decision to be his own man. His assassination two weeks later might lead some to believe that Wilhelm would choose to eliminate the problem. But no European monarch would suborne regicide. On the other hand, there is ample evidence that members of Franz Josef's court and the Governor
General of Bosnia-Herzegovina might.


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Re: Berlin behind Sarajevo? A strange claim...

#3

Post by glenn239 » 23 Feb 2012, 19:35

It's a hearsay quote. Why he'd believe such a thing - presumably same reason why others blame Austria, Britain, France, Russia for Sarajevo. IMO, it goes back to evolutionary biology and the human brain (well, some of them) being wired for war. This type of thinking tells you more about the person expressing the opinion than it ever does about the subject of it.

(Anyone supposing the likes of the Kaiser, or Grey, etc., would ever dabble in terrorism obviously knows nothing about the origins of WW1).

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Re: Berlin behind Sarajevo? A strange claim...

#4

Post by Terry Duncan » 24 Feb 2012, 00:32

As Rohl is one of the historians people consider to be an expert on Wilhelmine Germany whilst Sked is supposed to be an expert on the Hapsburg empire, so it is hardly as though this is something two people with little knowledge in the subject have talked about. Presumably Rohl has not just formed the idea from idle speculation, historians at this level usually base their ideas upon something more solid, and it would appear that Sked doesnt write it off as some unthinkable daydream.

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Re: Berlin behind Sarajevo? A strange claim...

#5

Post by glenn239 » 24 Feb 2012, 19:21

It has nothing to do with expertise - it's about the raw basic wiring of the Mk1 human brain. Anyone who has been on this planet for a while notices that a sector of the male of the human species seems prone to what I would qualify as near paranoid dillusion. This "type" can otherwise be quite intelligent and sane. Rohl may indeed have more working knowledge of Wilhelmine Germany than anyone else on the planet for all I know, but when he starts talking of the Kaiser acting like Joseph Stalin - that is tinfoil hat material.

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Re: Berlin behind Sarajevo? A strange claim...

#6

Post by Terry Duncan » 24 Feb 2012, 19:50

Sked didnt say that Rohl thought the Kaiser was responsible, he said Berlin, which could mean the Kaiser knew nothing of it. In that aspect it is not too unlike the maneuvering to keep the Kaiser on holiday and uninformed about what was happening during the July Crisis. As to what the government would find acceptable, lets not forget that this is the same government that within weeks had allowed its military to conduct aerial bombing of cities, and within months gas attacks which were both prohibited under the 1907 Hague Conventions, and people often like to claim the Russians were plotting the Sarajevo attack based on little more than speculation in that case too. I would agree it seems an improbable idea, but it comes from a good source and would seem to offer more for discussion than repeat posts ed infinitum.

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Re: Berlin behind Sarajevo? A strange claim...

#7

Post by glenn239 » 25 Feb 2012, 16:36

If you thought the idea improbable personally, then why did you start a thread to promote it? Isn't one thing you're trying to tamp down on is inordinate amounts of attention spent on infeasible theories?

If the odds of Germany being responsible for Sarajevo are, say, 1 in 10,000,000, then we should have a thread on whether Grey ordered the murder, because the odd of that might be 2 in 10,000,000.

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Re: Berlin behind Sarajevo? A strange claim...

#8

Post by Terry Duncan » 25 Feb 2012, 19:00

If you thought the idea improbable personally, then why did you start a thread to promote it?
Because of the stading of the two people involved here. If it had been two posters on a forum elsewhere I wouldnt have bothered to bring it to peoples attention, but when two of the world experts on the two empires in question have had such conversation and one is apparently holding a firm belief in such a view it does deserve mention.
Isn't one thing you're trying to tamp down on is inordinate amounts of attention spent on infeasible theories?
I have no objection to anyone posting a theory, only to repeatedly posting it or flooding the board with multiple posts on minor aspects of the same subject, especially when other threads already exist. I am willing to address most questions raised, even on totally way out ideas, in the hope of widening peoples appreciation of the subject.

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Re: Berlin behind Sarajevo? A strange claim...

#9

Post by Jon Clarke » 25 Feb 2012, 23:43

Personally I would rule out the idea that Berlin was behind the assassination for pretty much the same reason I would discount Peter's even wilder claims of an Entente conspiracy, namely that it is extremely unlikely that any country plotting an assassination in order to deliberately start a world war would have left the pivotal role to a bunch of amateurs whose success as Dedijer points out was 'due mainly to sheer luck'.

The idea that Berlin may have been behind the assassination is not new - Dedijer devotes a chapter in The Road To Sarajevo to examining two such claims of a German involvement and concludes that:

This writer believes that both Dr. Hohenberg’s and Stojadinovié’s views about the involvement of Germany in the organization of the Sarajevo assassination are based on inadequate historical documentation. Dr. Hohenberg is the victim of his upbringing and his legitimist obsession; Stojadinovié takes as his starting point the verdict of the Salonika trial, a typical Justizmord, trying desperately by bits and pieces to prove his thesis. In 1922 he was unable to find, with Zimmermann’s permission, any documents in the German Foreign Office archives which could support this thesis. This writer forty years later, when all the German archives, with the exception of the Supreme Command archives, have been opened to historians, has not found any proof of Dr. Hohenberg’s or Stojadlinovié’s accusation.

I doubt that Rohl has been any more successful than Dedijer in proving a link as I suspect that we would have seen something in print about it by now.

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Re: Berlin behind Sarajevo? A strange claim...

#10

Post by Terry Duncan » 26 Feb 2012, 06:29

Personally I would rule out the idea that Berlin was behind the assassination for pretty much the same reason I would discount Peter's even wilder claims of an Entente conspiracy, namely that it is extremely unlikely that any country plotting an assassination in order to deliberately start a world war would have left the pivotal role to a bunch of amateurs whose success as Dedijer points out was 'due mainly to sheer luck'.


As you know, I have always said the assassination was an amateur operation that was far luckier than it had any right to expect, and that the claims of some great plot are wrong. Given the number of pages devoted to the idea the Russians or even the Entente were behind the plot, it seemed only fair to give this some exposure given the status of the two people involved in discussing the matter.
I doubt that Rohl has been any more successful than Dedijer in proving a link as I suspect that we would have seen something in print about it by now.
Almost certainly the case but we still see the claims for Russian involvement despite the gaping holes in it having been pointed out by yourself and others for many years, neither are at all likely but the ideas persist. To be honest I was quite surprised to see such an idea linked to somebody of Rohl's prominance.

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Re: Berlin behind Sarajevo? A strange claim...

#11

Post by glenn239 » 27 Feb 2012, 19:42

I doubt that Rohl has been any more successful than Dedijer in proving a link as I suspect that we would have seen something in print about it by now.
The whole thing smells like the popular Islamic theory that the CIA was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The human brain – or at least some of them- is pre-disposed to finding a crank theory - any crank theory - to blame the enemy for attacks on the enemy.

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Re: Berlin behind Sarajevo? A strange claim...

#12

Post by Attrition » 13 Apr 2012, 23:41

~~~~~The human brain – or at least some of them- is pre-disposed to finding a crank theory~~~~~

Is this a conspiracy theory? ;O)

It seems to me that the assassination was a catalyst, so it's ony natural to wonder if there was more to it than there seemed (but only to the extent that we consider that there was less to it as well). Like the Reichstag fire and the New York kamikaze, it has the quality of a windfall to people who were hoping that something would turn up.

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Re: Berlin behind Sarajevo? A strange claim...

#13

Post by Slobodan Cekic » 29 Aug 2015, 10:54

Terry Duncan wrote:Whilst looking through book reviews I found the following passage ina review by Alan Sked of Rohl's 'The Kaiser and His Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany' from 1998;
...


Can anyone throw any light on why Rohl would even privately suspect Berlin of such a thing? The ideas from the time over Tisza or even the Hapsburg court plotting the assassination were certainly supported by some possible agenda, but I really cannot see much incentive for Berlin to do so, especially as Franz-Ferdinand and Wilhelm got on well.


Well, there are simply too many coincidences. I ll mention only some.

Admiral Fisher, the chief of the British navy has been able to predict in 1908 that Germany is going to start the war immediately after the completion of the Kiel Canal in 1914.
In December 1912, a session of the German Imperial War Council says just that, the war ASAP, but not before the Canal has been completed.
Admiral Müller, who wrote the notice on the session, underscores the need of an ultimatum transferring the blame to the other side.

As the Canal gets completed in June 1914, at exactly this time the Germans get their ultimatum opportunity in Sarajevo. The Canal opening ceremony had to be postponed, actually, because of the Archduke's death.

In his well written book, Dedijer downplays a bit the strong pro-German sympathies of Apis, and even of Bogicevic, too. He defends Apis, and for that reason Bogicevic as well.

Bogicevic was a diplomat and lawyer of some format, certainly no paid pawn, very well connected in Germany, but it is clear that these connections of his brought him over the fuzzy line between being a diplomat and a foreign agent well before the 1914 events.
He finally went over to the Germans in 1915, and spent almost 2 decades writing books exculpating Germany for the war.. or himself, in effect, may it be?
As he was preparing to return to Belgrade in July 1938, he has been found dead in a Berlin hotel toilet, from alleged suicide.

Apis and Bogicevic were very close friends. Easy to imagine, what Apis knows, Bogicevic gets to know - and he was rather closer to his hosts, than the diplomats usually are.

Austrian security in Sarajevo has been sloppy in the extreme. It is hard to believe, but after the unsuccessful first attempt, Potiorek even allegedly refused to deploy soldiers on the streets because their uniforms were dirty. He sad the visit can go on.

And so on. As you see, lots of coincidences and rather suspicious circumstances, but no evidence. If any comes out, the truth could be more surprising than what is suspected; the truth tends to be like that.

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Re: Berlin behind Sarajevo? A strange claim...

#14

Post by Terry Duncan » 29 Aug 2015, 15:02

Hi and welcome to AHF :welcome:

I agree with the events you mention, and the close links between Apis, Bogicevic, and the German military, though it is not clear they consulted over events such as the Balkan Wars or the assassination. What I find odd is that a distinguished historian, one that is felt by his peers to be the worlds leading expert on Wilhelmine Germany, should voice such suspicions in such a way they find their way into print, unless he felt there was a very good chance he was correct. The security in Sarajevo was certainly poor, but how much of that was down to the archduke, incompetence, or a possible plot is hard to say. It does need to be noted that the Serbs seem to have given a veiled warning to Bilinski, and that Potiorek was not fond of Franz-Ferdinand, but this does not mean they conspired to kill him. Also, Apis may well have had links to the German military, but links between him and Princip are tenuous at best, so even if the security was poor, and people had wanted to take this opportunity for war, the rather amateur nature of the actual assassins would make them unlikely choices to commit the deed. To my mind if Germany and at least some in Austria had decided to kill Franz-Ferdinand as a pretext, it is more likely that a group of professional assassins would have been in Sarajevo to kill the archduke, but by a 'happy accident' Princip and Co got to act first.

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Re: Berlin behind Sarajevo? A strange claim...

#15

Post by glenn239 » 29 Aug 2015, 16:08

If any comes out, the truth could be more surprising than what is suspected; the truth tends to be like that.
Some kids from Bosnia that wanted to do a terrorist attack scraped a bit of money together and went to Belgrade, where they made a pitch to a Serbian army officer. One might think a normal army would have arrested them on the spot, but this was Serbia in 1914 so the army officers thought this was all a splendid idea gave them some bombs and pistols and a bit of money and training and sent them on their way. Belgrade, where secrets were not kept for long then plotted and schemed in its typically Balkans fashion, each faction awaiting the results of this nonsense, planning to spin the outcome to their advantage. Everyone knew the Austrians didn’t have the guts to do anything anyways, right?

Not quite the zazz of the Kaiser on the grassy knoll with the second rifle, but the ring of truth nonetheless.

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