1914: The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand

Paul Ham

2014 eka. · Saltzailea: Random House Australia

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The assassination of Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, by a Bosnian-Serb terrorist in Sarajevo on 28th June 1914, precipitated the July crisis that brought war to Europe.

Yet none of the great powers, in the days following the murder, believed it would lead to war. Extraordinarily, the Austro-Hungarian regime's first reaction to the outrage was relief: the incumbent emperor Franz Joseph loathed the archduke, his nephew, and opposed the accession. In fact, as Paul Ham writes, in this extract from his book 1914: The Year the World Ended, Vienna used the murder to manufacture a case for war on Serbia - with the full support of Germany's famous 'blank cheque' and reckless disregard for the consequences for Europe.

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Paul Ham is the author of Hiroshima Nagasaki (2011), Vietnam: The Australian War (2007) and Kokoda (2004). Vietnam won the New South Wales Premier's Prize for Australian History and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Prize for Non-Fiction (2008). Kokoda was shortlisted for the Walkley Award for Non-Fiction and the New South Wales Premier's Prize for Non-Fiction.

Sandakan: The Untold Story of the Sandakan Death Marches, was published in 2012 and was been shortlisted for the 2013 Prime Minister's Literary Award for History.
His most recent book is 1914: The Year The World Ended.

A former Sunday Times correspondent, with a Master's degree in Economic History from the London School of Economics, Paul now devotes most of his time to writing history. He lives in Paris and Sydney with his family.