A Hundred Million Lives Lost

When set into motion, dominoes follow the path of their master without even the suggestion of questioning motives or agendas. They dutifully act in harmony with the preceding trigger and, in turn, force a sort of collective will upon the descendant. The descendant then proceeds in kind. There is no hesitancy, no moral restriction to the inner workings of its mechanisms. No established protocol for a system of checks and balances. No conclusion but the one put into action by the master.

It was mid-morning in the busy capital of Sarajevo when the last domino in a system laid decades before was positioned. The sun had crested the horizon, bathing the city with a glowing brilliance. All one could hear was the noise of celebration as the people memorialized their defeat at the hands of the Turks more than five hundred years prior. The sounds of cheering, of gunfire, of laughter, of sorrow all filled the town and echoed through its streets. The people were in a festive mood, but one of independence rather than subjugation. Their country had recently been annexed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and a visit was being paid by their Inspector General and heir-apparent, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, as he was making changes to the armies in the surrounding mountains.

"You remember your positions?" asked 19-year old Gavrilo Princip as he made a quick visual inspection of each member of his seven-man squad. They were all part of the Black Hand, a Serbian nationalist group, presumably backed by Belgrade, that often engaged in violent protests. "Check your weapons. Try for a clean hit. If it's not there, let it go. Remember to blend into the crowds after your strike."

"I need a grenade," spoke Cabrinovik, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "Do you have an extra one?"

Princip pulled one from his coat pocket and handed it to his comrade, "Easy, Cabrinovik. Just breathe. This tyrant dares enter our city, on this day of all days, to mock our pain and the pain of our fathers before us. Tomorrow we'll be kings to our people, and they'll worship us as gods." A smile came across his face.

His men continued checking their pistols and ammunition, opening the chambers, inspecting magazines. Most of them were breathing hard, their blood pumping through their tensed veins with force, and even more so as the crowds grew louder.

Princip finished his prepping and turned around to face the growing mob as they lined the route to Town Hall. He noticed the motorcade winding down the narrow streets from afar. He could also see an occasional rock being thrown toward the cars, but none hit with any force. The noise of braking glass and racial obscenities was interwoven with the raging chants of the people, beginning to reach a fever pitch.

"Bosnia forever," shouted Princip as he led the men out to the crowds.

They all took up their assigned spots not more than five hundred yards apart, but Princip striving to gain the day's glory walked until he came to a tight turn in the route, almost a v-shape twist. This is where he would make his stand for his country.

The motorcade consisted of two cars; one holding Franz, his wife Sophie, and their driver and two bodyguards riding on the running boards, and the other full of Royal officers and General Potiorek, an Austian commander.

Sophie was the quiet sort and was rather intimidated by the mood of the people. She sat close to her husband and held his arm tightly in hers.

"Do these people hate us?" she asked.

"Not all of them, Darling. Some of them realize they're a captive people," Franz pridefully said, grinning. "But isn't it a gorgeous day nonetheless?"

"I don't think we should be here, Franz!" she insisted.

"Nonsense!" His tone became more serious. "They need to know that I don't fear them. I won't fear them. One day very soon, Darling, I will be their ruler. And you will be their queen. At least try to act like it."

"I will be their queen from Vienna,” she quickly insisted. “I would like that very much. But it's the baby I'm thinking about. Are you sure we're okay?"

He reached down and rubbed his hand to and fro over her slightly swollen belly and gripped her hand in his. "We'll be fine."

Young Cabrinovik saw the two cars approaching and gripped his grenade tightly in his sweaty palm, his fingers fumbling for a better hold. He observed the cars pass two of his comrades who didn't have time to strike, but gave a signal that the time was right. As the procession approached he gulped another breath down like it was water and lunged forward at the first car, throwing with all his might the steel explosive. It ricocheted off the front passenger door and landed in the street.

Suddenly, the grenade exploded between the two cars in a cloud of fire and black smoke, pieces of shrapnel flying into the crowds. An elderly woman was struck in the chest as she dropped and died instantly. Another, a young school-aged boy, lost an eye, as the deadly scrap entered and lodged into his socket. He held it and screamed in agony as blood began filtering though his fingers, puddling at his feet. Most of the crowd was sent into a panic, yelling and screaming for help as they desperately ran for cover. Sophie threw herself in her husband's hold, shouting "God save us!".

"Keep the damn thing moving," one of the guards riding next to the Archduke shouted at the driver. "Don't slow down until you get to the Hall!"

Several officers received minor injuries, as the others jumped from the car and wrestled Cabrinovik to the ground face-first, beating him mercilessly with their swords. One of them grabbed a handful of hair from the back of his head and jerked his neck back, spitting in his face. "You'll die for this, you fool!" Then he slammed his head into the hard brick road, knocking him unconscious.

"Are you okay? Did you get hit?" Franz asked his wife. She didn't answer, but latched on ever tighter to his arm. Her eyes scanning the horrified crowd for more would-be assassins. Now she knew this visit wasn't welcome. Her fears and prejudices had been right on target. And her husband began to realize it too, though maintaining his composure for morale.

The cars pulled up to the Town Hall and unloaded quickly. The leaders gave them a formal reception, nothing too ornate, but quite amiable.

Franz replied, "What is the good of your speeches? I come to Sariavo for a friendly chat and someone throws a bomb at me! This is outrageous!"

A chorus of apologies followed and after a brief bit of business the Archduke and his entourage returned to their rides. General Potiorek hurried over to Franz. "We need to get you out of here, sir."

"And so we shall,” he said, attempting to project a leader’s level-headedness. “Do you suggest a different route?"

"The faster, the better. This town is going to tear itself to shreds if we delay any longer." He gave orders to the driver and returned to his car.

They resumed their route and approached the bridge that spanned the trickling Nilgacka River, where the road made a tight turn, causing the motorcade to slow almost to a halt. The riotous mob, now on an even sharper edge since the grenade incident, quickly fell in behind them.

Princip hurriedly worked through the timing of this maneuver over and over in his head, as he had seen and heard Cabrinovik's failed attempt and was determined not to let his moment slip by. He didn't sweat at all. No deep breaths. No silent prayers. His thoughts were on prominence and riches, to be the lever used to pry his people free from the massive boulder of captivity.

When his moment had arrived, he stepped away from the curb and unholstered his pistol, leveling his sights at Sophie. Their eyes met but for a brief eternal second. The motivation for tipping the system of dominoes was at hand. Moving his finger from a resting hold to the curve of the trigger, he squeezed hard and the bullet slammed into Sophie's abdomen, ripping through her flesh and the fragile body of her unborn child until it exited her back and sunk deep into the seat. She screamed in agony, blood spurting first from her belly and back then from her mouth. A horrified expression plastered across her face and she held herself briefly before crumpling to the floor headfirst lifelessly.

Without even a blink, the assassin raised his pistol and fired a second shot, this time at the Archduke. The nimble chunk of hot lead struck his chest close to his heart, ricocheting off a rib and tearing its way through the left lung. He groaned and spat blood onto the closest officer as he uttered, "It's nothing," repeatedly. But an inflow of blood quickly flooded his damaged lung until his labored breathing became more than he could bear. His vision went white, then faded to black as he collapsed in death next to his wife.

The driver threw the transmission of the Graf & Stift into reverse, attempting to escape. But the damage had been done. The army of officers charged Princip in a bullrush before he could fire any more shots and proceeded to beat him to a bloody pulp until he was almost unrecognizable. One of them took a sword and peeled some skin from the back of his neck. Another slammed the heel of his boot down on Princip's hand repeatedly, crushing more bones with every blow. They would beat him unconscious, wake him by throwing buckets of cold water onto his nude body, slap him to ensure alertness, then resume their tortures. They poked and prodded every orifice of his body with devilish delight for more than a week.

The conspirators all eventually stood trial, only one of them being old enough to receive an execution sentence. The rest got prison time and became revolutionary icons. Gavrilo Princip was able to avoid receiving the death penalty because he was 19 years old, and so was sentenced to wear chains for the rest of his life--which ended up lasting only until 1919 when he died of tuberculosis in an Austrian prison--smirking with an inner pride no one could ever take away. He sat there, most of the bones in his body broken and badly set, knowing that his future in the afterlife was secure. He had done his God's will.

But those two shots of his wound up being the catalyst for the first world-encompassing war, and would result in the mass slaughter of some twenty million souls in a few short years.

Was the life of one man, an Austrian dignitary with an endless stream of mortal enemies, really worth the loss of twenty million?

In reality, Austria's motive for starting a conflict, that would soon embroil every major nation in the world, was nationalistic pride. They had used those fatal shots and the events that followed as an excuse for tripping the system of dominoes, to weave matters into a sufficiently justifiable cause for war. There were also other factors, including the Hapsburg Dynasty itself and all the various ethnic peoples they controlled under their yoke. The tension this created and the long history of hatred that existed with bordering nations all added fuel to an already raging fire beneath the surface of global affairs.

Britain, viewed by most as the "workshop of the world"--so regarded for its intense industrialization--had kicked off an international race to enter this new age of machinery. Then in a direct move to counter, Germany over a forty year period beginning in the 1870's, by its frenzied production of coal, iron, and steel, had replaced Britain as the leading industrial power in Europe. Smaller neighbors hopelessly struggled to keep pace, yet fell farther behind with each passing year, creating a massive imbalance of power.

This imbalance, in turn, forced France, Russia, and Austria-Hungary to draw up alliances in a move to avoid being swallowed up by the monster of modernization. France and Russia bedded down with Britain; Austria-Hungary with Germany. The Great Powers were now established in two key camps. The dominoes, having been patterned over a period of decades, were now in full swing; each action being the result of previous actions, in turn triggering subsequent situations and theaters of conflict themselves.

In addition to this, partly as a result of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the major players developed the ability to raise huge armies via conscription, numbering in the millions instead of the thousands. And because of the increasing power of their nations, the general populace became more and more willing both to foot the bill and to sacrifice the lives of their children in war efforts. Their leaders insured their compliance by constantly bombarding them with propaganda that demonized all who where their neighbors as potential enemies.

Charles Darwin's theories, too, of "survival of the fittest" and man's basest "struggle for existence", published first in 1859, had become widely accepted by the masses. These thoughts and the spirit behind them would eventually work toward increasing the potency of nationalistic pride, feeding a general disdain and prejudicial attitude toward men and their neighbors.

This global culture of hate even in a time of relative peace, would set the world blindly on a path that would culminate in a European bloodbath to last some four miserable years.

In the end, after the last domino fell, there were no winners. The tolls taken both in life and property were devastating. Treaties, formed by the victors, sliced and apportioned once-great territories into smaller ones, in an effort to regain a balance of power in what was once the established "European System", generating yet more hatreds. The victors also forced harsh reparations on the German people, which in turn created the economic nightmare of runaway inflation, unknowingly grooming a society of hate and prejudice bubbling beneath the surface, eventually giving rise to the Nazi regime led by Adolf Hitler. And as history painfully proved, his methods of expansion and domination would rock the world's sense of human dignity, and would prove that man had within him the ability to demonstrate cruelty of massive scope. Unspeakable barbarisms and the documented genocide of innocent millions resulted.

That shot heard round the world back in 1914 in Bosnia set off a chain of events--decades in the making--that would see a hundred million lives lost in less than a century, the aftermath of which we're still dealing with to this day.