Stalin |
(And this was much better than Paul Johnson’s Stalin: The Kremlin Mountaineer – which was full of trite passes and biased writing)
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Stalin |
(And this was much better than Paul Johnson’s Stalin: The Kremlin Mountaineer – which was full of trite passes and biased writing)
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The Assassination of the Archduke |
Austria-Hungary Empire in 1910 (source: Wikipedia) |
“For centuries Vienna had provided the Habsburg dynasty with a theatrical stage set from which to dominate Europe. They ruled from the Alps to the warm waters of the Mediterranean, from the sunshine of Trieste to the dark, mysterious forests of Transylvania, Bohemia, and the edges of imperial Russia“. The authors start their book with setting up a historical context of the dynasty and the then existing finer aspects of relationships between uncles, aunts, cousins and children. Franz Josef I was the Emperor of Austria and “Apostolic King of Hungary; King of Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slovenia, Galicia, and Jerusalem; Archduke of Austria; Grand Duke of Tuscany, Krakow and Transylvania; Duke of Lothringia, Salzburg, and Bukovina”! Such glorious and never-ending titles these were. Franz Josef’s son Rudolf, a debauched serial philanderer, had blasted his own brains off with a revolver on 30th January, 1889 after killing her latest mistress, the young Baroness Mary Vetsera. Karl Ludwig, Franz Ferdinand’s father, gave up his right to accession and paved way for Franz Ferdinand to become the archduke, who would head the empire after Franz Josef’s death. The excessive formalities of royal families and their ways with living are no less intriguing. And it is hilarious to read how in the dead of a night Franz Josef scolded his doctor for not appearing in the customary tailcoat to treat him.
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Anthem of Austro-Hungarian Empire
Franz Ferdinand was invited to oversee military maneuvers in Sarajevo and Sophie wanted to accompany him as they had an ominous feeling about being attacked during the trip. Oskar Potiorek, the Governor of Bosnia-Herzegovina, made callous preparations for the archduke and Sophie. The inevitable happened when Gavrilo Princip shot the couple from a distance of less than five feet. His other accomplices were Nedeljko Cabrinovic and Trifko Grabez and all of them had connections with Black Hand. “The two bullets fired that fateful Sunday morning had stripped the nearly thirteen-year-old Sophie, twelve-year-old Max, and ten-year-old Ernst of youthful innocence”, write the authors of the three children. The involvement of Serbian officials is obvious beyond doubt, but many other conspiracy theories remain unproven. The ensuing World War I engulfed Europe and the rest of the World. The ghastly wretched experiences weren’t to end yet. The rise of Hitler and the World War II resulted in Max and Ernst being forced in the concentration camps of Dachau and others; following Hitler’s instructions the “Hohenberg boys” were made to do latrine duty! The authors write, “using spoons, they were forced to clean out the fetid cesspits shared by hundreds of inmates; SS guards taunted them as they worked, hurling rocks into the pools to splash feces onto the brothers’ faces while laughingly calling them “Imperial Highnesses””! The heart wrenching stories of the three children and how they suffered make one’s eyes moist.
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Rare video of Franz Josef from Wikipedia
The complexity of the empire, the ideological fights of Franz Ferdinand with Chief of General Staff Conrad von Hotzendorf, the intricacies of the power struggles involving the Romanovs, Kaiser and the rulers from England can’t possibly be captured in this review, but what lingers on is how the romance of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie Chotek changed their own destinies, and of their children and grandchildren forever. This is one of those rare books, when I was done reading, which made me feel sad that it came to an end. The vivid and exquisite descriptions of their lives by the authors make you feel and re-live the aspirations, the agonies and the pains of the family and their descendants. To mark 100 years of the assassination of the archduke and the beginning of the First World War, nothing could be better.
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