This section needs expansion with: events occurring in the long time span between the described regicide and the events of the next subsection. You can help by adding to it. (April 2017)
On 8 October 1908, just two days after Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbian ministers, officials, and generals held a meeting at the City Hall in Belgrade. They founded a semi-secret society, the Narodna Odbrana ("National Defense") which gave Pan-Serbism a focus and an organization. The purpose of the group was to liberate Serbs under the Austro-Hungarian occupation. They also shared anti-Austrian propaganda and organized spies and saboteurs to operate within the occupied provinces. Satellite groups were formed in Slovenia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Istria. The Bosnian group became deeply associated with local groups of pan-Serb activists such as Mlada Bosna ("Young Bosnia").[9]
Establishment
Ritual cross of the Black HandSignatures
Unification or Death was established at the beginning of May 1911,[10] and the original constitution of the organization was signed on 9 May.[11]Ljuba Čupa, Bogdan Radenković, and Vojislav Tankosić wrote the constitution of the organization,[12] modeled after similar German secret nationalist associations and the Italian Carbonari.[12][13] The organization was mentioned in the Serbian parliament as the "Black Hand" in late 1911.[14]
By 1911–12, Narodna Odbrana had established ties with the Black Hand, and the two became "parallel in action and overlapping in membership".[15]
1911–13
The organization used the magazine Pijemont (the Serbian name for Piedmont, the kingdom that led the unification of Italy under the House of Savoy) for the dissemination of their ideas.[16] The magazine was founded by Ljuba Čupa in August 1911.[17]
1914
By 1914, the group had hundreds of members, many of them Serbian Army officers. The goal of uniting Serb-inhabited territories was implemented by training guerilla fighters and saboteurs. The Black Hand was organized at the grassroots level in cells of three to five members, supervised by district committees and by a Central Committee in Belgrade, whose ten-member executive committee was primarily led by Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević "Apis". To ensure secrecy, members rarely knew much more than the other members of their own cell and one superior above them. New members swore the oath:
I (...), by entering into the society, do hereby swear by the Sun which shineth upon me, by the Earth which feedeth me, by God, by the blood of my forefathers, by my honour and by my life, that from this moment onward and until my death, I shall faithfully serve the task of this organisation and that I shall at all times be prepared to bear for it any sacrifice. I further swear by God, by my honour and by my life, that I shall unconditionally carry into effect all its orders and commands. I further swear by my God, by my honour and by my life, that I shall keep within myself all the secrets of this organisation and carry them with me into my grave. May God and my brothers in this organisation be my judges if at any time I should wittingly fail or break this oath.[18]
The Black Hand took over the terrorist actions[which?] of Narodna Odbrana and deliberately worked
to obscure any distinctions between the two groups, trading on the prestige and network of the older organization. Black Hand members held important army and government positions. Crown Prince Alexander was an enthusiastic financial supporter.[19] The group held influence over government appointments and policies. The Serbian government was fairly well-informed of Black Hand activities.
Friendly relations had fairly well cooled by 1914. The Black Hand was displeased with Prime Minister Nikola Pašić and thought that he did not act aggressively enough for the Pan-Serb cause. The Black Hand engaged in a bitter power struggle over several issues, such as who would control territories that Serbia had annexed during the Balkan Wars. By then, disagreeing with the Black Hand was dangerous, as political murder was one of its tools.
In 1914, Apis allegedly decided that Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir-apparent of Austria, should be assassinated, as he was trying to pacify the Serbians, which would prevent a revolution if he was successful. Towards that end, three young Bosnian Serbs were allegedly recruited to kill the Archduke. They were certainly trained in bomb throwing and marksmanship by current and former members of the Serbian military. Gavrilo Princip, Nedeljko Čabrinović, and Trifko Grabež were smuggled across the border back into Bosnia by a chain of contacts similar to the Underground Railroad.
The decision to kill the Archduke was initiated by Apis and not sanctioned by the full Executive Committee (if Apis was involved at all, a question that remains in dispute[20]).
Those involved probably realised that their plot would result in war between Austria and Serbia and had every reason to expect that Russia would side with Serbia. They likely did not, however, anticipate that the assassination would start the chain of events leading to World War I.[citation needed]
Others in the government and some of the Black Hand Executive Council were not as confident of Russian aid since Russia had recently let them down.[citation needed]
When word of the plot allegedly percolated through Black Hand leadership and the Serbian government (Prime Minister Pašić was informed of two armed men being smuggled across the border, but it is not clear if Pašić knew of the planned assassination),[citation needed] Apis was supposedly told not to proceed.[by whom?] He may have made a half-hearted attempt to intercept the young assassins at the border, but they had already crossed.[citation needed] Other sources[which?] say the attempted 'recall' began only after the assassins had reached Sarajevo.[citation needed] The 'recall' appears to have made Apis look like a loose cannon and the young assassins like independent zealots. The 'recall' took place fully two weeks before the Archduke's visit.[citation needed] The assassins idled in Sarajevo for a month.[citation needed] Nothing more was done to stop them.[citation needed]
In 1938, Konspiracija, a conspiracy group to overthrow the Yugoslav regency was founded by, among others, members of the Serbian Cultural Club (SKK).[21] The organization was modeled after the Black Hand, including the recruitment process.[22] Two members of the Black Hand, Antonije Antić and Velimir Vemić, were the organization's military advisors.[23]
^
David Stevenson (2012). 1914–1918: The History of the First World War. Penguin. p. 12. ISBN978-0-141-90434-4.
^Borislav Ratković; Mitar Đurišić; Savo Skoko (1972). Srbija i Crna Gora u balkanskim ratovima 1912–1913. Beogradski izdavačko-grafički zavod. Y августу 1901. нижи официри су, под руководством капетана Драгутина Димитр^евиhа – Аписа, створили заверенички покрет против ди- насти е ("Црна рука").
^Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti (1955). Posebna izdanja. Vol. 243. p. 199. Оригинални Устав истого, друштва од 9/22 ма]а 1911 год. са своеручним потписила опт.
^ abStanoje Stanojević (1929). Narodna enciklopedija srpsko-hrvatsko-slovenačka, knjiga 2 (in Serbo-Croatian). Zagreb. p. 181.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Jelavich, Barbara (1991). "What the Habsburg Government Knew about the Black Hand". Austrian History Yearbook. 22: 131–50. doi:10.1017/S0067237800019913. S2CID146532495.