Black Hand (Serbia)
gigatos | January 14, 2022
Summary
Unification or Death (in Serbian, Уједињење или смрт, Ujedinjenje ili smrt), also called the Black Hand (in Serbian, Црна рука, Crna ruka) was a secret military organization of nationalist ideology formed by members of the army in the Kingdom of Serbia. It was founded in early 1911 and had connections with some Pan-Slavic elements of the Serbian Government.
The Black Hand and an anarchist group participated in the planning and organization of the Sarajevo bombing, the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie Chotek, an attack that was one of the triggers for World War I.
The organization was founded in May 1911 with the declared aim of achieving the unification in a single state of all members of the Serbian people, which implied confrontation with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which occupied Bosnia-Herzegovina, a territory that, according to the organization, should be integrated into a new Serbian state. Its members were some of the conspirators who had planned and carried out the coup d”état of June 1903. Heir to the conspiracy that had ended the Obrenović dynasty, it perpetuated the power of the conspirators in the political life of the country, It increased the power of the conspirators in the court, Parliament and the various governments of the early 20th century. and only its participants were to know of its existence.
The organization, which demanded total obedience from its members and ordered the execution of those it considered its enemies, was formed around Dragutin Dimitrijević, known as Apis, one of the most prominent plotters of the 1903 coup. Since 1913, he had headed the espionage service of the Serbian General Staff. The original group of conspirators began to form on September 6, 1901, on the occasion of the preparation of a first attempt, finally unsuccessful, against King Alexander I and his wife Draga Mašin, which was planned for September 11, the birthday of the queen, in whose honor a ball was to be held.
Ujedinjenje ili smrt aspired to the unification of all Serbs within and outside the borders of the then existing Kingdom of Serbia. All southern Slavs were to be grouped under Serb leadership and, in fact, they denied any difference with the other populations living in the territory they considered their own, such as the Croats or the Bosnian Muslims. The magazine they published to disseminate their ideology was entitled Pijemont, in reference to the role that the Piedmont of the House of Savoy played during the unification of Italy. In a vision that was largely shared by other less radical nationalists, Serbia was to become the Piedmont of a reunified Greater Serbia. Unlike other nationalist organizations, it advocated terrorism to achieve its ends.
It had several hundred members, military and civilian, and infiltrated other organizations, such as the National Defense (Narodna Odbrana), founded in 1908 to oppose the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia in 1908.
King Peter I of Serbia, some deputies and ministers were aware of the organization”s existence, but did not fight it. The armed forces were reorganized after the 1903 coup according to the wishes of the organization, which also interfered with foreign loan applications. From the organization”s formal establishment in 1911, it functioned as a pressure group in favor of the nationalist ideal, as a scourge of corruption and abuse of power. It also vituperated the parliamentary system, which it considered the greatest evil afflicting the country.
He participated in the Balkan Wars and was partly responsible for the Serbian advance into northern Albania in 1912. His highly competent officers excelled in the fighting, which increased his political power. His main activities in Macedonia were the organization of armed groups and propaganda. He strongly opposed the surrender of part of the conquered territory to Bulgaria, even threatening the government if it approved the measure.
It also acted very effectively in Bosnia, infiltrating other organizations such as the Young Bosnia and the Narodna Odbrana, where it stirred up the population against the Austro-Hungarian authorities. The Black Hand was involved in planning and organizing the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie Chotek in Sarajevo; the attack and its consequences were one of the triggers of World War I. However, the perpetrators of the attack were members of the Young Bosnia organization. However, the perpetrators of the attack were members of the Young Bosnia organization, and relations between the Serbian government and the organization were strained, both because of the cabinet”s fear of an Austro-Hungarian attack resulting from the activities of the Black Hand, and because of the latter”s interference in national politics. In May 1914, Dimitrijević, who had been head of the military espionage department since the previous year, unsuccessfully encouraged the officers stationed in Skopje to revolt, march on the capital and depose the government of the radical Nikola Pašić, opposed to the maintenance of military rule in the territories newly conquered in the Balkan Wars. Pašić maintained the presidency of the Government thanks to the strong support of the Russian ambassador and with the collaboration of Prince Alexander, but the crisis prompted the withdrawal of King Peter, who had refused to act against the conspirators. Peter ceded his powers to Alexander in June. The outbreak of the world war established an unstable truce between the Black Hand and the Government, which continued to be presided over by Pašić, but did not end the rivalry between the civil authority and the military.
In 1916 Dimitrijević and other officers were arrested and tried in June 1917 in Salonika.In the highly controversial trial, the detainees were accused of having formed the secret society, theoretically opposed to the state and the dynasty, planning the assassination of the regent and heir to the throne Prince Alexander and having negotiated with Germany. Interpretations vary, but it is assumed that the prince wished to end the influence of the organization that was no longer useful to him before the liberation of Serbia. On June 14, 1917, the main defendants were sentenced to death and executed. Others were sentenced to prison terms and some 180 officers were interned in Africa, thus dissolving the society by the Serbian government and the regent.
In 1953, Dimitrijević and his co-defendants were tried posthumously by the Supreme Court of Serbia and he was found not guilty, because there was no evidence of his alleged involvement in the assassination plot.
Alexander instead created another organization with his supporters that exerted influence on interwar Yugoslav politics, the White Hand.
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