Mini College 2014
“All for You, Franz? From the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand to Total War”
Nathan Wood
June 4, 10:30 – 11:45, The Commons
On June 28, 1914, the heir to the Habsburg throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife Sophie were murdered in Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist. However gruesome this event may have been, it was not unique. The king and queen of Serbia and the king of Italy had been murdered about a decade before, and the prime ministers of Bulgaria and Russia had been assassinated even more recently. Why, then, did this assassination trigger war, and how did this war come to merit a new concept, that of “total war”? Drawing upon historical research, newspaper reports and images, and artwork from the Spencer Museum of Art, this lecture will grapple with these difficult questions.
KUCREES
The University of Kansas Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies (CREES) has been a national leader for the study of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe since 1959. The center is an active member of the KU WWI Centennial Commemoration coordinated by the European Studies Program.
