Europe's Last Summer (17 page)

There have been three
trials in which magistrates have sat in judgment on the Sarajevo affair: Austrian (1914), Serbian (1917), and Yugoslav (1953). All three were politically motivated, and of their findings, none compels credence. Even the exhaustive research and interviews undertaken by and for the great Italian historian
Luigi Albertini in the interwar years resolved nothing. Witnesses saw a chance to settle a score or to advance a cause. Some forgot or confused things. Serbian nationalists have remained proud of the murders; many have wanted to take credit for them, or others perhaps wanted to make themselves seem important by knowing how they really happened. Apis, in asserting that he was personally responsible for the killing, may have believed that he was absolving his country from blame. Or he may have believed that, for one reason or another, he would not be condemned by the Serbian tribunal that tried him in 1917 if the judges realized that he was the patriot who killed Franz Ferdinand. Or the tribunal may have ordered Apis's execution in order to keep him from telling . . . we do not know what.

In the end, all that we know with certainty is that Princip fired the gun.

The sinister group that aided Princip was called
Ujedinjenje ili Smrt
("Union or Death"). Later it became known as "the Black Hand." It was founded March 3, 1911, by seven nationalists who continued to protest the results of the Bosnian crisis of 1908–09. When the Serbian government accepted, albeit reluctantly, the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, so did the existing government-sponsored nationalist organization, the Narodna Odbrana (National Defense). From being a military-oriented anti-Austrian grouping it converted itself into a largely cultural society.

Dissenters from the decision to accept the annexation later formed the ultra-secret Black Hand in order to carry on the struggle. One of its founding members was a student of the history of European secret societies in France, Italy, Germany, and elsewhere. A self-conscious traditionalism (some might call it imitation) is evident in the constitution (in thirty-seven articles) and bylaws (in twenty-eight articles) of the elite secret society that formally came into existence in May 1911. It modeled itself largely on the Freemason lodges and on Mazzini's Young Italy movement in the nineteenth century.

The Black Hand infiltrated Narodna Odbrana and perhaps other organizations, but it was not widely known itself outside of government circles. Its existence, however, was known to a number of foreign countries. It constituted a leading faction within the military and was represented within the government. The organization consisted of extremist army officers and extreme nationalist politicians. Its dominating figure (though perhaps never its formal leader) was an army officer, now the powerful chief of military intelligence, named
Dragutin Dimitrijevic, a bull-like man code-named "Apis." In 1903, Apis had led a murder party that slaughtered the King and Queen of Serbia in their palace, then threw their mutilated corpses out of the window. During the reign of the murdered king, Serbia had been a satellite of Austria. Under the dynasty that Apis and his colleagues restored to the throne, successive administrations pursued anti-Austrian policies, but not sufficiently so for Apis. Consenting to the Bosnian annexation in 1908–09 was, in his view, "treason."

The Black Hand pursued ultimate goals that were different from Princip's. Apis and his colleagues wanted Serbia to rule all the lands in which Serbs lived. Princip dreamed of creating a federation in which Croatia, Slovenia, and other southern Slavic peoples were united. These differences were not necessarily relevant in the spring of 1914; they were long-range goals.

Whether he knew it or not, however, in the short term, Princip was walking into a
political crossfire. The Serbian government and even the Serbian army were split in two. Apis was in the grip of a fierce conflict with the sixty-eight-year-old Prime Minister, Nicola Pasic, a veteran politician who, like Apis, was a Serb nationalist but, unlike Apis, was cautious. Each led a faction in a fight that was climaxing as Princip initiated his project. In May 1914, Apis persuaded the reigning monarch,
King Peter, that Pasic ought to be dismissed. Then Russia intervened. As Serbia's sponsor among the Great Powers, Russia could, to some extent, lay down the law. Nicolai Hartwig, the Russian minister in Belgrade, intervened to retain Pasic as Prime Minister. Hartwig recognized that Serbia needed years of rest in which to recover from the Balkan wars and to consolidate its gains. It was no time for reckless adventurism.

On May 26, Gavrilo Princip set out from Belgrade, and headed toward a prearranged rendezvous with his fellow conspirators in Sarajevo. He traveled for nearly ten days through wild, forbidding country, difficult to traverse. His greatest challenge would be to cross the unfriendly frontier between independent Serbia and Hapsburg-ruled Bosnia. But it all was made easy for him. Agents were waiting to help him at every point along the way. It was a "tunnel" route developed and controlled by Narodna Odbrana and borrowed for the occasion by the Black Hand. On June 4, Princip arrived in Sarajevo to meet fellow conspirators, to prepare, and to rehearse.

The historian Albertini believed that Ciganovic, who had put Princip in touch with Tankosic of the Black Hand, was a police informer. If so, the Prime Minister from afar followed Princip's progress step-by-step. According to one version, the Prime Minister gave orders to border guards to stop Princip at the Serbian frontier— orders that were disobeyed by Serbian officials loyal to Apis. Instead, they let the conspirators pass, and then told Pasic that they had not received his orders until it was too late. In a variation of that version, those same officials then confessed to Pasic what they had done. One way or another, the Prime Minister (it is widely believed) learned that terrorists—Princip and a companion—carrying pistols and bombs had crossed the Drina River into Bosnia, and he either knew or guessed that the Archduke must be the target. But Pasic always denied that he had specific knowledge of what was about to occur.

For Pasic, a wily survivor of some of the world's most treacherous politics, the choices—to the extent that he did know of the plot— were not easy. His country was exhausted after the Balkan wars, and in no position to defy a Great Power. An attack on
Franz Ferdinand was bound to trigger some kind of nasty international situation with which Serbia would find it difficult to deal. Of course he could do nothing, in the hope that the inexperienced schoolboys would flunk their test, but whatever they did might at least supply hard-liners in Vienna with a pretext for taking action. If, on the other hand, Pasic warned the Austrians, news of what he had done leaked out, the Black Hand might order him assassinated too, or else might use news of what the Prime Minister had done to label him a traitor. Whatever warning he sent also might be used by Vienna to prove that his government was involved in the plot against the Archduke; was he not admitting it by his very warning that Serbian officials were planning an attack?

In the end, despite his later denials, Pasic may have sent a cable to his legation in Vienna sometime in the first half of June instructing his minister there to inform the
Austrian government that "owing to a leakage of information," Serbia "had grounds to suspect that a plot was being hatched against the life of the Archduke on the occasion of his journey to Bosnia. Since this visit might give rise to regrettable incidents on the part of some fanatic, it would be useful to suggest to the Austro-Hungarian government the advisability of postponing the Archduke's visit."

Whether or not Pasic sent such a cable, his envoy did seek such an interview. Minister
Ljuba Jovanovic, who may have received the cable, had at least two reasons for not following his Prime Minister's instructions. He was on bad terms with the Hapsburg foreign minister,
Count Leopold von Berchtold, the official whom he was supposed to alert, and preferred not to have to meet with him. He chose instead to seek an interview with Finance Minister
Leon von Bilinski, under whose administration (at least temporarily) fell the newly annexed provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which the Archduke was scheduled to visit. Security issues, however, were the responsibility of
General Oskar Potiorek, governor of the provinces, nominally subordinate to Bilinski but actually feuding with him. Potiorek had deliberately ignored Bilinski in making arrangements for the Archduke's mission to Bosnia.

Jovanovic met with Bilinski on June 21 at noon. He apparently decided to cut out the very heart of the message he supposedly had been told to deliver—that Belgrade had actual information of a plot to kill the Archduke. Instead, he spoke in general terms of the dangers inherent in the visit to Sarajevo and of the possibility that some disaffected Serb might attack Franz Ferdinand. Jovanovic had reason not to tell of the plot to kill Franz Ferdinand; he had been Apis's nominee for foreign minister in the May coup d'état that Hartwig had prevented. Now there were rumors that Apis was scheduling a new coup, perhaps for August, and once again proposed to promote Jovanovic. This was no time for Jovanovic to side with Pasic against Apis.

In turn, Bilinski had reason to dismiss the vague warning he received. He had been ignored in security planning. Responsibility had been assumed by his subordinate, General Potiorek, on the express orders of Franz Ferdinand. If things went wrong on the trip to Bosnia, Potiorek, not Bilinski, would be blamed. Besides, it was difficult to worry much about what might happen to the Archduke: Bilinski had no cause to love him.

In the Serbian capital the Prime Minister tried to find out exactly what was going on, in order to stop it. Apis stonewalled; and Pasic loyalists in the army, the war department, and the interior ministry were unable to shadow Princip's conspirators, who by now were in Bosnia, beyond Serbia's official reach.

Leaders of Narodna Odbrana, the Serb nationalist society, held positions in Pasic's government, and therefore also learned of the assassination plot. They instructed their contact man in Bosnia to stop it from going forward. He failed.

On June 2 the Central Executive Committee of the Black Hand convened. Or maybe it was just an informal meeting of all members who could be brought together on short notice. At the meeting, the members heard of the assistance that Major Tankosic had extended to the Princip group on behalf of their organization. For whatever reasons, they ordered the mission aborted immediately. Apparently the decision was unanimous—except, it seems, for Apis and Tankosic.

Apis dispatched Tankosic's go-between with the Princip group to Bosnia, where he met with
Danilo Ilic, who served as technical coordinator for the assassination team. Ilic relayed the order to Princip: call it off! Princip refused.

As of June 20 or 21, Apis may have believed the assassination plan had been cancelled, while Pasic may still have felt otherwise. Ilic repeatedly tried to persuade Princip to obey orders to cancel the attack. But a clash of views in middle June between Apis and Pasic—whether about the death plot or something else—drove a Black Hand agent to send a new message to Princip revoking Apis's order to cancel and reinstating the operation. The man who brought the message later was accused by Serbia of being an Austrian spy, but the accusation was never proved; in fact, he served as Apis's chief spymaster within Austria-Hungary.

In any event, the conspiracy no longer may have been much of a secret; we are told that the cafes of the Balkans were abuzz with speculations about a plot to kill Franz Ferdinand, and that the cafes were alive with Austrian spies. A century later, we still do not know with certainty who knew what, and when they knew it.

CHAPTER 20: THE RUSSIAN
CONNECTION

Was Russia somehow involved in the plot against Austria's future leader? In government circles, people asked that question at the time, and in scholarly circles, academics have asked that question ever since.

Russian involvement would have made little sense.
Franz Ferdinand was the leading pro-Russian in his government; therefore removing him from the scene would have run counter to Russia's interests. Of course his political views were misunderstood elsewhere, so perhaps they were in St. Petersburg as well. Perhaps the extent of his friendship was not fully understood. But as a champion of monarchism throughout Europe, surely, on fiercely held principle, the Czar would have opposed such a murder.

Russia's Balkan policy, run in the field by Nicolai Hartwig as minister to Serbia (1909–14), was, as noted earlier, susceptible to being viewed as in the nature of a rogue operation. A militant pan-Slav, with long service in and knowledge of the Balkans and the Middle East, Hartwig "used the Serb cause as a weapon in his struggle against his own government," according to the well-informed French minister in Belgrade. "With the support of conservative and orthodox circles at St. Petersburg" he battled Sazonov, the foreign minister, and "he dragged Russian diplomacy toward the Balkan evolution of the last two years which he had the merit of conceiving and carrying out."

It was Hartwig who had brought the Balkan states together for a time against both Turkey and Austria, and it was generally believed that he dictated policy in Belgrade. But he was unlikely to have approved the Black Hand plot; he had just rescued the Pasic government from Apis, approving the more cautious nonprovocative faction against the hotheads.

It apparently is true that the Russian military attaché in Belgrade,
Colonel Viktor Artamanov, worked closely with Apis. The two may have run spy networks together. According to some allegations, at one time Artamanov provided Apis with funds for operations. It is not inconceivable that in some fashion Artamanov became aware that Apis was helping the Bosnian schoolboys. There is a story that Artamanov may also have assured Apis that he had it on good authority that if Austria attacked, Russia would come to Serbia's aid. There is no evidence, however, that anyone in a position to give such a guarantee on behalf of the Czar's government did so.