Would Franz Ferdinand really have prevented the First World War?

Was Archduke Franz Ferdinand truly a tragic ‘prince of peace’? Should Gavrilo Princip be remembered as a reckless killer? More than a century after these two men were united by one Earth-shattering event on the streets of Sarajevo, Annika Mombauer asks if it’s time we reassess their reputations

Black-and-white historical photograph of Archduke Franz Ferdinand standing in uniform among military officers, with a circular inset highlighting a portrait of his assassin, Gavrilo Princip.

Published: November 6, 2026 at 3:00 PM

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On 28 June 1914, a 19-year-old man stood on a street corner in a bustling European city and awaited his chance to commit murder. This was no ordinary murder, for the teenager was Gavrilo Princip, member of a group of would-be assassins known as ‘Young Bosnia’. His target was Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the 50-year-old heir presumptive to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire. And what unfolded that morning in Sarajevo would send Europe spiralling towards catastrophe.

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It took Princip just a matter of seconds to discharge his bullets, yet in the blink of an eye, he immortalised both his own name, and that of his victim. The consequences of the murder led to both Gavrilo Princip and Franz Ferdinand becoming indelibly linked with one of the great disasters of the 20th century – the First World War. Their characters, motivations and reputations have been debated endlessly since the summer of 1914. Their names have been invoked in any number of political battles stretching into the 21st century. Yet does that debate – the 112 years of argument, scrutiny, reassessment and revision – mean we have lost sight of the real men?

Illustration of man and woman in cart surrounded by soliders

An illustration published in an Italian newspaper shows Princip killing Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie. Political assassinations were not uncommon in the early 20th century; it was what happened next that made this one so extraordinary | Credit: Getty Images

The fact is that, had events evolved differently on 28 June 1914, one of those men – Princip – would barely have been known to history at all. That’s because, earlier that day, another member of ‘Young Bosnia’ had tried, and failed, to kill the archduke. His name does not come to mind as readily: Nedeljko Čabrinović had thrown a hand grenade at the archduke’s open-top car, which bounced into the following vehicle, injuring several people. Franz Ferdinand and his wife were shocked, but unscathed.

Man and woman

Franz Ferdinand married Sophie Chotek against a backdrop of scandal, as Sophie was not of equal dynastic rank. Emperor Franz Joseph I reluctantly consented to the union but barred the couple’s future children from inheriting the throne or Habsburg titles | Credit: Getty Images

A few hours after this attempt on their lives, the couple travelled once more through the streets of Sarajevo. When their car came to an unscheduled stop right in front of Princip, the assassin seized this opportunity, killing both the archduke and his wife with two bullets.

Princip, along with his fellow conspirators, was seized by outraged crowds, arrested and placed on trial. He only escaped the death penalty due to his age, and was sentenced to 20 years’ hard labour and kept in dreadful conditions.

In conversation with a psychiatrist who visited him in prison, Princip – who was at this point dying of bone tuberculosis – reflected on what had motivated him and his friends. He had been inspired to act by a hatred of Austria-Hungary, which had annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908 and which stood in the way of the wish of some Bosnian Serbs to become part of a Greater Serbia. His ideal had been “the unity of the south Slav peoples, Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, but not under Austria”. He described those who had attempted earlier assassinations as “heroes to our young people”. Princip himself “had not thought of becoming a hero. He wanted merely to die for his idea.” He succumbed to TB in prison in 1918, just 23 years old.

Domino effect

Political assassinations were not uncommon in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And the death of Franz Ferdinand need not have been more memorable than other such crimes, were it not for the calamitous events that it set in train. The Austro-Hungarians strongly suspected the Serbian government had supported the plot to murder the archduke: the weapons with which the young assassins had travelled to Sarajevo from Serbia had been supplied by members of the Serbian army. Beyond this, however, no hard evidence was found to link the Serbian government to the teenage assassins.

Men in courthouse

Members of the ‘Young Bosnia’ revolutionary group, including Gavrilo Princip (front row, third from left), are put on trial. Princip was sentenced to 20 years in prison as he was too young for the death sentence | Credit: Getty Images

Nonetheless, the government in Vienna considered the murder of the heir to the throne a provocation that could not go unpunished. It took steps to seek retribution from the Serbian government, including a deliberately unacceptable ultimatum. Even though the Serbian government accepted all but one of the Austro-Hungarian demands, their reply was rejected by Vienna and Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. This triggered mobilisations and declarations of war across Europe as the other Great Powers came to the aid of their respective allies. Within a few days, a Balkan conflict had turned into a European war.

Men marching

Reservists and volunteers march behind a flag in a street in Belgrade, Serbia in July 1914, with general mobilisation happening in a matter of days | Credit: Topfoto

In the Anglophone world and beyond, Princip has widely been saddled with the blame for knocking over the first domino that led to a continental conflict. Although he did not target bystanders – and was deeply upset that he had unintentionally murdered the archduke’s wife – some of his critics have gone as far as to compare him and his fellow members of ‘Young Bosnia’ with 21st-century terrorists.

But not everyone agrees with this view. In Yugoslavia after 1918, members of ‘Young Bosnia’ were considered freedom fighters and celebrated as national heroes. Their act of violence became the founding moment for the South Slav movement. The bodies of the assassins (some had died in captivity, and three had been executed) were exhumed and transferred to Sarajevo where their new graves in the ‘Chapel of the Vidovdan Heroes’ became a site of pilgrimage. In 1930, a commemorative black marble plaque was unveiled above the spot from which Princip had fired his fateful shots. The plaque did not mention the world war with its countless victims. Instead, its inscription read: “At this historical site Gavrilo Princip brought liberty.”

In the socialist Yugoslavia that emerged after 1945, the cult of Princip reached even greater heights. Streets and schools were named after him. Footprints were added to the spot from which Princip had fired the fateful shots. Franz Ferdinand’s killer was celebrated as a revolutionary hero.

Gravestone

The grave of Gavrilo Princip, who died of tuberculosis in solitary confinement in 1918 | Credit: Alamy

Terrorist acts

All that changed after the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Muslim Bosniaks made up newly independent Bosnia-Herzegovina’s largest identity group, and they were far less inclined to engage in Princip hero worship. In fact, they tended to view him as a Serb terrorist whose murderous act had spelt disaster.

For Bosnian Muslims, the period of Austro-Hungarian rule before the First World War had been largely positive. Every major ethnic group had been represented by a political party and been granted a degree of autonomy. The period after 1918 was characterised by far fewer freedoms: Bosniaks lost these privileges, and in communist Yugoslavia many Muslim institutions were abolished. Following 1990, freed from the official Yugoslav view, plaques commemorating Princip were removed and the (unofficially named) Princip Bridge in Sarajevo became once more the Latin Bridge.

In Yugoslavia after 1918, members of ‘Young Bosnia’ were celebrated as freedom fighters and heroes

A medal for bravery

During the Bosnian War (1992–95), Princip’s alleged courage was employed to motivate soldiers fighting on the side of the army of Republika Srpska (the Serbian part of Bosnia-Herzegovina). A new medal for bravery was minted and named after Princip. The soldiers who laid siege to Sarajevo for 1,425 days, committed war crimes and destroyed much of the city, invoked Princip and the other ‘Young Bosnians’. Unsurprisingly, Princip’s association with the enemy only strengthened the Bosniaks’ opposition to his hero worship.

People with wreath

The centenary of the assassination was marked in different ways in Bosnia- Herzegovina. Here, a wreath is laid at the place where the archduke and his wife were murdered in Sarajevo | Credit: Getty Images

Because the two sides disagreed on how to interpret the past, they also could not agree on how to commemorate the centenary of the First World War. And so, in the summer of 2014 – as the world’s eyes focused, once more, on Sarajevo – they organised separate events. In Sarajevo itself, commemorations attended by delegates from across the European Union and drawing international crowds highlighted the tragic nature of the events of 1914.

Republika Srpska’s president, Milorad Dodik, and prime minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, turned down their invitations to join the Sarajevo commemorations. Instead, they attended a celebration held, with financial support from Serbia, in Andrićgrad, a theme park city two hours east of Sarajevo. Here, crowds enjoyed a dramatic reconstruction of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination and looked on as a large mosaic of Princip and his co-conspirators was unveiled. A century after Princip had fired his fateful shots, he was commemorated both as a hero and a villain.

Man carrying burning cross

In Andrićgrad, Republika Srpska, an actor plays Gavrilo Princip carrying a burning cross, commemorating him as a national hero | Credit: Reuters

Peace and war

And what of Franz Ferdinand? Has his reputation similarly divided opinion over the past century? In most accounts, he is portrayed as a man of peace who would have prevented war had he lived. The fact that his murder sparked a terrible conflict only adds to the pathos of his tragic demise.

Soon after the war, the director of the Austrian War Archives set the tone, referring to the assassination as a “tragedy of fate” and claiming that Franz Ferdinand had been the first to die on “the battlefield of the world war”. Indeed, his name was included in a list of war victims in a crypt erected in Vienna in 1933–34, even though his death predated the outbreak of war by four weeks.

Group of male soldiers

Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf pictured in 1915. The hawkish chief of staff of the Austro- Hungarian army and navy was appointed on the recommendation of Franz Ferdinand | Credit: Getty Images

The circumstances of Franz Ferdinand’s death were indeed tragic. He had travelled to Sarajevo to inspect military manoeuvres despite warnings that he might be in danger, intent on spending his wedding anniversary with his wife, Sophie, away from Vienna’s stifling royal protocol. Because of this, it has even been suggested that he “died for love”.

But was he really a man of peace? Alex Hoyos, an Austro-Hungarian diplomat who played a leading role in the crisis that followed the assassination, certainly thought so, remarking: “The world does not know that the archduke was always against the war. Thus he has, through his death, helped us to get the energy which he never wanted to expend as long as he lived!”

This is a view that is often put forward by modern historians, too. Margaret MacMillan has argued that Franz Ferdinand’s death “ironically, removed the one man who might have been able to prevent his country from declaring war on Serbia”. Christopher Clark, meanwhile, has contended that Franz Ferdinand “would have continued to warn against the risks of a military adventure” if he had survived the Bosnian incident.

Group of women

Muslim women at a street market in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1930. Many Muslim Bosniaks lamented the liberties they lost in the wake of the First World War | Credit: Alamy

Franz Ferdinand certainly appears to have provided a check on the Austrian chief of staff, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, whose bellicosity – particularly towards Serbia – was extreme. And yet, Franz Ferdinand had been instrumental in Conrad’s appointment, despite knowing he was a warmonger. This suggests that the archduke was less inclined to peace than has often been claimed – especially as he was surrounded by ‘hawks’ who advocated removing the ‘European appendix’, Serbia. Had Franz Ferdinand survived Princip’s attempt on his life, the suspicion that the Serbian government had encouraged the ‘Young Bosnians’ to launch an audacious attempt on his life might have convinced the archduke that it was time to accept Conrad’s frequent demands for war.

Conflicting stories

Contemporaries were certainly aware of Franz Ferdinand’s potential to endanger peace. His attitude towards the various minorities in the Austro-Hungarian empire gave particular concern. Franz Ferdinand openly disliked Poles, French, Italians – and Serbs. There was, he claimed, “no decent Hungarian”. He objected to socialists, Jews, Freemasons and sometimes to Protestants.

“I do not know whether this man is more dangerous alive or dead,” commented the German diplomat Count Anton Monts just days before the assassination. Monts considered the archduke capable of “setting the whole of Europe ablaze”.

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Franz Ferdinand’s biographer Alma Hannig argued in 2013 that the archduke did not want to preserve peace at any price. He counselled against war, she argues, because of unreliable allies and the weakness of the Austro-Hungarian army, rather than a dislike of conflict per se. He was no ‘dove’ in a nest of ‘hawks’. War was a legitimate means to a political end for him.

In most accounts, Franz Ferdinand is portrayed as a man of peace, who would have prevented war

Hannig does, however, dispel a further myth about the “tragic prince of peace”: that Franz Ferdinand’s death was received across the Austro-Hungarian empire with an uninterested shrug of the shoulders. The Austrian novelist Stephan Zweig observed, decades later, that when people learned of the archduke’s demise, there was “no notable shock or outrage on their faces”. And, just two hours later, “people were chatting and laughing”.

Zweig may have painted an unfavourable portrait of an unpopular man. Yet, argues Hannig, in reality his death inspired widespread feelings of sorrow. Despite his distaste for many of the empire’s minorities, he had, for some people, held the promise of multinational reform, and there was genuine grief at his death.

Peace-loving or not, Franz Ferdinand had some deeply unattractive qualities. He was known for his quick temper. His predilection for hunting was both legendary and disturbing. When he died, he had shot nearly 275,000 animals at home and on trips around the world, including several hundred in a zoo. His estate at Konopischt was home to around 100,000 hunting trophies and he kept meticulous records of his kills, a fact that seems somewhat irreconcilable with the pacifist image we have of him.

Among his friends was the equally unpleasant German kaiser Wilhelm II, with whom he shared his love of hunting. He did not make many friends among members of the government and was disliked by his uncle Kaiser Franz Joseph, not least for his marriage to a woman of lower rank.

True culprits

After the war, many contemporaries reflected critically on Franz Ferdinand. Adolf Hitler even approved of the fact that the archduke, whom he described disparagingly (and wrongly) as “the greatest friend of the Slavs”, had been killed by a “Slav fanatic”. In private, however – and on this point contemporaries and historians agree – Franz Ferdinand was a loving husband and father who was unlike his often grim-faced official photographs.

Man, woman and child

Franz Ferdinand and Sophie with one of their children in 1912. The Austrian archduke was a loving husband and father | Credit: Getty Images

On the centenary of the assassination, The New York Times observed: “As with any heir who does not live to inherit, it is easy to project on to Franz Ferdinand... any number of virtues and vices and to generate elaborate ‘what if’ scenarios ad nauseam.” Years of speculation and debate have proven the truth of these words. It’s surely also true to point out that by remembering the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne only as the hapless victim of a radicalised teenage assassin, we fall short of understanding why he divided opinion at home and became the target of a group of would-be assassins abroad.

Three men and two dead tigers

Franz Ferdinand with two tigers he shot in Sariska, India in 1893. The archduke was an insatiable hunter of animals and kept meticulous records of the number he killed | Credit: Topfoto

Unsurprisingly, neither of these two now famous men – Franz Ferdinand and Gavrilo Princip – was as one-dimensional as popular opinion might have it. Nor, it could be argued, were they as quite as influential as the decades of debate might suggest. For, ultimately, it was neither the Austrian’s death nor the Bosnian Serb’s choice to fire his gun that caused the First World War. Rather, it was the decision to use the opportunity afforded by the assassination to provoke a conflict. That choice was made by members of the Austro-Hungarian government in Vienna, whose names have proved much less memorable.

Annika Mombauer is professor of modern European history at the Open University. Her books include The Causes of the First World War: The Long Blame Game (Taylor & Francis, 2024).

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This article was first published in the December 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine

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