Caught red handed: Russian & Serbian guilt before WWI

I'm not sure how this would even happen as I haven't been able to find information on an Austrian secret service, so they may not have even had one. But does anything change in World War One if Austria has solid proof of Russian and Serbian government involvement in the assassination of Franz Ferdinand?

Maybe German high command is worried it's already too late to go to war with both Russia and France. And they convince the Austrians that they need evidence before a DOW to isolate Russia diplomatically. And whatever spies Austria has gets witnesses and a paper trail smuggled back to Vienna.

What can be gained going to Serbia privately? Russia? What happens if Austria makes it public? And will the course of the actual war change if Franz Joseph just dumps it in the papers, screams "Damn you all!", and throws everything he's got at Russia and Serba (this last is, of course, a humorous simplification of what happened in the OTL).
 
Ehh not really, my understanding is everyone basically knew what was up anyway.
If anything Austria should have pulled the trigger immdiately and used the sympathy they had internationally to move in on Serbia while everyone was still upset about the assassination.
 
Ehh not really, my understanding is everyone basically knew what was up anyway.

In OTL, the Russian government was annoyed at the assassination. In Serbia, the crown was horrified. As for the government bureaucracy, it officially wasn't involved. However many of the Black Hand were formal Serbian intelligence officers, including a former chief of intelligence. The Serbian government had also refused to allow local police to conduct investigations into the Black Hand in its Anti-Hapsburg days before the assassination. So the government itself wasn't directly involved, but probably had contact with the terrorist group that they encouraged.
 
In OTL, the Russian government was annoyed at the assassination. In Serbia, the crown was horrified. As for the government bureaucracy, it officially wasn't involved. However many of the Black Hand were formal Serbian intelligence officers, including a former chief of intelligence. The Serbian government had also refused to allow local police to conduct investigations into the Black Hand in its Anti-Hapsburg days before the assassination. So the government itself wasn't directly involved, but probably had contact with the terrorist group that they encouraged.

I recall reading in a book that I unfortunately cannot find right now, that in a letter written after the war, a Serbian cabinet member stated that the Serbian cabinet had actually discussed the upcoming assassination in the weeks leading up to it. So they DEFINITELY knew about it.
 
I recall reading in a book that I unfortunately cannot find right now, that in a letter written after the war, a Serbian cabinet member stated that the Serbian cabinet had actually discussed the upcoming assassination in the weeks leading up to it. So they DEFINITELY knew about it.

The king didn't. Anyways, I didn't say they didn't know about it. The government was pretending to not know, but everyone knew they probably knew and at worst were directly responsible (last one not true)
 
The Austrians should have accepted the Serbian response to their demands which accepted everything that didn't completely strip them of their independence. That they didn't makes the Austrians the guilty party.
 
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The Austrians should have accepted the Serbian response to their demands which accepted everything that didn't completely strip them of their independence. That they didn't makes the Austrians the guilty party.

Pretty much this. The Serbians were willing to do just about everything to accede to Austria-Hungary short of outright turning themselves into an extension of AH.
 
Ehh not really, my understanding is everyone basically knew what was up anyway.
If anything Austria should have pulled the trigger immdiately and used the sympathy they had internationally to move in on Serbia while everyone was still upset about the assassination.

That is way Germany did the hole blank check thing, they knew Austria had international sympathy so wanted to push Austria to get on whith the war they knew was coming before the international aliance sistem kicked in. Unfortunately internal political disagremints (manly the hugareans ho don't whant a war and don't what Austria to gane any land that would cost Hungarian blood for no gain) combined whith the abismaly slow mobilization time Austria had mint that by the time Austria was even ready to go to war international sympathy had already switched to Serbia, leading to ww1.
 
I recall reading in a book that I unfortunately cannot find right now, that in a letter written after the war, a Serbian cabinet member stated that the Serbian cabinet had actually discussed the upcoming assassination in the weeks leading up to it. So they DEFINITELY knew about it.

No, that definitely did not happen. I assume you're referring to the Jovanovic case, in which case you might have misread it.
 
As to the topic: Austria did have an intelligence service, and it was...better than you'd expect, actually. However, the theory of Serbian and Russian government involvement involves like 4 different contradictions and oxymorons; and would be extremely hard to prove even if that wasn't the case. Any "solid proof" obtained by Franz Joseph would likely have to come from his own ass.
 
No, that definitely did not happen. I assume you're referring to the Jovanovic case, in which case you might have misread it.

From "The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance that Changed the World", page 183:

Ljuba Jovanovic, Serbian minister of education, later said that Prime Minister Nikola Pasic had even discussed the plan during a meeting with several cabinet ministers. "Pasic said to us the certain persons were preparing to go to Sarajevo and murder Franz Ferdinand."

From the WWI Document Archive:

The Serbian Government

Because of its many government and army members, the Black Hand's activities were fairly well known to the Serbian government. When Prime Minister Pasic learned of the assassination plot, he had a difficult problem on his hands. If he did nothing, and the plot succeeded the Black Hand's involvement would surely come to light. The tangled connections between the Black Hand and the Serbian government would put Serbia in a very bad position. It could even bring on war with Austria. Should he warn the Austrians of the plot, he would be seen as a traitor by his countrymen. He would also be admitting to deeper knowledge of anti-Austrian actions in Serbia.

A weak attempt was made to intercept the assassins at the border. When that failed, Pasic decided that he would try to warn the Austrians in carefully vague diplomatic ways that would not expose the Black Hand.

The Warning

The Serbian Minister to Vienna, Jovan Jovanovic, was given the task of warning the Austrians. Because of his extremist, pan-Serb views, Jovanovich was not well received in Austrian Foreign Ministry offices. He did, however, get along better with the Minister of Finance, Dr. Leon von Bilinski.

On June 5, Jovanovic told Bilinski, that it might be good and reasonable if Franz Ferdinand were to not go to Sarajevo. "Some young Serb might put a live rather than a blank cartridge in his gun and fire it." Bilinski, unaccustomed to subtle diplomatic innuendo, completely missed the warning. "Let us hope nothing does happen" he responded good humoredly. Jovanovic strongly suspected that Bilinski did not understand, but made no further effort to convey the warning.
 
From "The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance that Changed the World", page 183:

Ljuba Jovanovic, Serbian minister of education, later said that Prime Minister Nikola Pasic had even discussed the plan during a meeting with several cabinet ministers. "Pasic said to us the certain persons were preparing to go to Sarajevo and murder Franz Ferdinand."

...

Oh, it's that one. That's a "popular history" book slash cheap romance novel. It's sponsored by a random Habsburg descendant (including a foreword that's basically "the Austrian government owes me $$$", and it doesn't use any primary sources whatsoever.

The testimony they reference doesn't know anything about "the plan". Belgrade suspected that Bosnian expats might want to attack Franz Ferdinand, so they ordered a tightening of border controls to try and prevent any unpleasantness. They didn't have a clue about the actual plot, nor about the Black Hand's involvement.
 
which accepted everything that didn't completely strip them of their independence.

Wrong. They refused an Austrian investigation unit into their boarders to root out Black Hand. The Serbians offered to do so internally, which given how many leaks there were between their own intelligence angecy and Black Hand, makes Austrian investigation reasonable
 
Wrong. They refused an Austrian investigation unit into their boarders to root out Black Hand. The Serbians offered to do so internally, which given how many leaks there were between their own intelligence angecy and Black Hand, makes Austrian investigation reasonable
Right. Let's play this game. Every single point was accepted apart from the Austrian Police carrying out an investigation in Serbia. This would have compromised their independence. They did, however accept censorship and suppression of any documents attacking the Austrian Monarchy, agreed to dissolve several Serbian Nationalist Societies, eliminate any documents attacking AH, remove a list of military and civil officers from their post.

They even allowed representatives of the AH government to root out Serbian nationalists. Asking a foreign police to carry out an investigation for a crime carried out on your soil was not something done anywhere in the world at that point. It would be considered dodgy today.

Across Europe, individuals from the Tsar of Russia to the Kaiser of Germany thought the response had averted war. That it hadn't places the war guilt firmly on the hands of the Austrians.

If you cannot see how the Serbian response was reasonable then I don't really know what to add.
 
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Minor sidebar, but why is this in pre-1900? It seems like most of the relevant discussion is of post-1900 events.
 
Right. Let's play this game. Every single point was accepted apart from the Austrian Police carrying out an investigation in Serbia. This would have compromised their independence. They did, however accept censorship and suppression of any documents attacking the Austrian Monarchy, agreed to dissolve several Serbian Nationalist Societies, eliminate any documents attacking AH, remove a list of military and civil officers from their post.

They even allowed representatives of the AH government to root out Serbian nationalists. Asking a foreign police to carry out an investigation for a crime carried out on your soil was not something done anywhere in the world at that point. It would be considered dodgy today.

Across Europe, individuals from the Tsar of Russia to the Kaiser of Germany thought the response had averted war. That it hadn't places the war guilt firmly on the hands of the Austrians.

If you cannot see how the Serbian response was reasonable then I don't really know what to add.
Joint police investigations are common in international crimes.Though what today would be get the police of a neutral country to join in as well.
 
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