A century on from Sarajevo's 'shot heard round the world,' the impacts of WWI still being felt: Elizabeth Sullivan

Gavrilo Princip (Charlie Riedel, Associated Press)

I stood in the footsteps of Gavrilo Princip.


In 1990, during a trip through the old Yugoslavia to document the country's accelerating descent into ethnic partisanship and division -- ironically, greased by the arrival of open elections -- my late husband Jim Parker and I came across the small, dark museum in Sarajevo honoring Princip and his fellow Bosnian revolutionaries.

And just outside, carved into the pavement near the Miljacka River -- a river destined to become part of the front line in yet another Balkans war, from 1992 to 1995 -- were the footprints roughly where the skinny Bosnian Serb teen stood on June 28, 1914, to fire the shots "heard 'round the world."

I tried out the footprints, then took a picture of Parker, his hands held out as if he were holding the gun.

It was from this spot that the 19-year-old Princip fired the fateful two shots into Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand's car, killing both the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne and, by mistake, his wife Sophie, after the archduke's vehicle went the wrong way and stopped nearby to turn around.

The killings set in motion the events that led to the outbreak of World War I -- or maybe, more accurately, provided the pretext Austria had been seeking to suppress an independent Serbia that had been sparking independence sentiments in Bosnia and other lands controlled from Vienna and Budapest. 

When Serbia refused Austria's ultimatum, the Austro-Hungarian empire declared war on July 28 and bombed Belgrade. And quickly thereafter, the dominoes of recent alliances, war planning and nationalist impulses fell, bringing other nations into the conflict -- greased as always by the self-delusion that exists at the outset of war that it will be brief and relatively painless. Germany declared war on Russia on Aug. 1 and shortly thereafter, France and Germany declared war on one another, and Britain, on Germany.

In her brilliant 1962 book, "The Guns of August," on the early stages of the war and the vanity and myopia of the elites from Britain to Budapest who led it, author and historian Barbara Tuchman recounted the rolling volley of miscalculations, delusions, occasional deceptions and massive diplomatic and strategic failures that underpinned World War I and its extensive casualties.

Fans of the long-running PBS show Downton Abbey have seen something of the sea change the war and its gruesome human costs had on Britain's social and economic order, with the young men of Eton and other elite schools suffering disproportionate losses as they formed the core of the officer class. 

Recent historiography, on the eve of this 100th anniversary, seeks far more than Tuchman did to ascribe blame -- according to some, it is Princip's fault, or more precisely, "terrorism," in obviating a possible compromise with Austria-Hungary over South Slav independence aims. In others, it really is Germany's fault, as the world believed in extracting so many concessions at the Treaty of Versailles -- signed, ironically, on June 28, 1919 -- as German military alliances and calculations made Austria's attack on Serbia just step one in a drive for territory and power. 

But in some ways, the lessons of this dash to war seem less important today than those of the aftermath of war, when the victorious powers carved up not just Austro-Hungary and Germany, but also what remained of Ottoman lands, including much of the Middle East. Some of the roots of today's ethnic conflicts roiling Iraq and Syria (and to some extent in Africa) can be found in this period, when national boundaries were created or realigned, often arbitrarily, by the Europeans. The war also completely redrew the map of Europe and set the stage for the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.

Ironically, Bosnia remains one of the best examples for how debilitating those ill-resolved ethnic divisions can be long after the appetite for war has dimmed.

Nearly 20 years since the guns again fell silent in Sarajevo, ethnic suspicions linger and Bosnia -- divided into territories with Croatian and Muslim ("Bosniak") identities and a Bosnian Serb "republic" -- still struggles with its future, its economic viability and its territorial integrity.

During the Bosnian war of 1992-1995, Gavrilo Princip's riverfront Sarajevo museum was looted and wrecked and his footprints in the pavement ripped out by Bosnian Muslims who reviled him as a "Serb." A curator, Bajro Gec, managed to save major elements of the collection, and store them in vaults in the city's Jewish Museum.

With this year's anniversary approaching, the city has restored the Princip museum -- although not, apparently, the footprints. 

Elizabeth Sullivan is opinion director of the Northeast Ohio Media Group and heads the editorial board of The Plain Dealer and NEOMG. She was the paper's European Correspondent in the 1990s. 

To reach Elizabeth Sullivan:, (216) 999-4688