Did a wrong turn in Sarajevo help start World War I?

Yes, the wrong turn is well documented, and it brought the Archduke's car to a halt in front of his assassin. It was not the cause of the war, though. The assassination is traditionally regarded as the immediate catalyst for the conflict, and its importance is generally attributed to having set off the July Crisis. The wrong turn explains how the shooting became possible on that day, not why it led to war. [1] [2]

The Archduke and his wife Sophie were touring Sarajevo by motorcade. On the Appel Quay, Nedeljko Cabrinovic threw a bomb at the convoy. It wounded several members of the party, including Governor Oskar Potiorek's aide, but did not harm the couple. Other conspirators along the route did not act, and Cabrinovic was captured after his cyanide tablet only made him ill. [3] [1]

After a stop at city hall, Franz Ferdinand insisted on visiting the wounded in hospital. For security reasons the route out of the city was changed to follow the Appel Quay rather than go through the narrow streets of the bazaar district. [2] [1]

The drivers were Czech, and the change of plan was discussed in German. According to historian Christopher Clark, speaking to NPR, they did not understand the conversation and nobody translated it. The lead car turned onto Franz Joseph Street, and the Archduke's car followed. Potiorek shouted that the driver had gone the wrong way. The encyclopedia entry names the chauffeur as Leopold Lojka and says the car stalled as he tried to reverse, in front of a delicatessen where Princip happened to be. [2] [1] [4]

Princip fired twice, hitting the Archduke in the throat and Sophie in the abdomen. Both died shortly afterward. One popular myth says Princip had stopped to buy a sandwich. History.com calls this probably untrue, though the encyclopedia entry says he was loitering at the delicatessen. [1] [2]

Austria-Hungary presented an ultimatum to Serbia on 23 July. It judged Serbia's reply unsatisfactory and declared war on 28 July, a month after the shooting. History.com describes this as the start of a chain reaction that ended in four years of conflict. One web article claims Austria declared war on Bosnia, which conflicts with the other sources, all of which name Serbia. [3] [2] [5]

The route error itself is not in doubt, but the origin of the plot is. One camp holds that the conspiracy was conceived in Bosnia by the Young Bosnia movement and merely received help from people in Serbia. Another holds that it was a Serbian creation from the start, linked to the Black Hand and its leader Dragutin Dimitrijevic, known as Apis. Christopher Clark's Sleepwalkers and John Zametica's Folly and Malice reached opposite conclusions on this. A historiography article says the field has not decisively resolved the question, partly because primary sources are often unreliable. It does not say which view most specialists hold. [3]