A voilent death franz ferdinand band9/14/2023 These men were intrinsically linked to the assassinations in Sarajevo by their chosen agent, the founder and dominating figure in the Serbian Black Hand, and the most influential military officer in Serbia, Colonel Dragutin Dimitrjievic or Apis. Nicolai Hartwig the Russian Ambassador worked in close contact with his Military Attaché, Artamanov, who had been posted to Belgrade to advise and liaise with the Serbian Army. Hartwig in turn supported and encouraged men whose prime cause he willingly shared and whose actions he could personally approve, but not at every stage, control. Sazonov in St Petersburg considered that Hartwig in Belgrade was ‘carried away occasionally by his Slavophile sympathies’ but did nothing to curtail him. As each level in the web of culpability extended away from the main Secret Elite chain of command, precise control became less immediate. And deeper yet, into the young Bosnian political activists who were willing to pull the trigger in Sarajevo – students whose ideas on socialism and reform were influenced by revolutionaries like Trotsky. The links in the chain of command from London went further, deeper and more sinister when extended from Hartwig into the Serbian military, their intelligence service, and the quasi-independent nationalist society, Black Hand. Their work had to be undertaken in great secrecy. They influenced the Russian foreign minister in St Petersburg, but kept a very low profile in such matters. The Secret Elite in London funded and supported both the Russian Ambassador in Paris and the French prime minister himself. They knew of his links back to the Russian foreign minister Sazonov in St Petersburg, and to the Paris-based warmongers, Isvolsky and Poincare, but like everyone else, they were not aware of the real power centred in London. They knew that Hartwig was in control of the internal politics of Serbia. They knew that the Russian Ambassador in Belgrade, Nicolai Hartwig, was manipulating the Serbian Government to destabilise the region. Its military intelligence had intercepted and deciphered a large number of diplomatic telegrams that detailed Russian involvement with several activist groups. Austria-Hungary was aware of the external dangers that lay across the Serbian border. In fact the process of bringing about the assassination had been exceptionally well constructed. The Serbian minister in Vienna denounced the assassination as ‘a mad act of fanatical and political agitators’ as if to suggest that it had been a dastardly and ill-timed mischance. Immediate blame was pointed at the pan-Serb movement, though the implication of revolutionary elements from Bosnia-Herzegovina was not ruled out. The world was shocked, stunned and in many parts saddened by the Archduke’s death, but no one talked of war in June 1914. But the assassination itself failed to do so. The war-makers required an incident so violent, threatening or dangerous that Austria would be pushed over the brink. She could only absorb so much pressure from antagonistic Serbia before the integrity of the Austria- Hungarian state was destroyed. Yet it was clear that Austria was the weak link in Germany’s protective armour. Indeed, the Dual Monarchy was concerned that the German Ambassador in Belgrade in 1914 was decidedly pro-Serb, and had influenced the Kaiser to take a comparatively benign attitude towards the Serbian cause. The men who comprised the Secret Elite had previously failed to find their spark for the international conflagration through the Balkan wars of 1912-13 because Germany, in the person of the Kaiser, restrained Austria-Hungary from over-reacting to Serbia’s repeated and deliberate provocation. What made the death of Archduke Ferdinand different from any other was that the event was assisted by the secret cabal in London, well removed from the heat of the Balkans. Assassinations and politically motivated slayings were not uncommon in that troubled time, with Kings and Queens, aristocracy, political opponents and religious leaders falling victims to usurpers, murderers and zealots with astonishing regularity. Of itself, the fateful slaying of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian crown was a great crime that did indeed cry out for vengeance, but the hand that pulled the trigger had no knowledge of what lay behind the assistance his band of brothers had been given, or how the act would be misrepresented and manipulated into a universal disaster. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 did not start the First World War. Let one historic myth be put immediately to the sword.
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