by Ann Williams
When the Black Hand heard that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was due to visit Sarajevo in June of 1914, they made plans to assassinate him. To add fuel to the fire, Ferdinand had supported a strong stance against Serbia during the Balkan Wars. The Black Hand appointed three of their members, who were trained and equipped for their forthcoming assignment. They were the three young Bosnians Gavrilo Princip, Nedjelko Cabrinovic and Trifko Grabez.
The movements of the Black Hand were well known to the Serbian government as they had members among their midst, but when Prime Minister Pasic heard of the plot to kill the Archduke he realized that he had a major dilemma. If he did nothing and they succeeded in their mission, the implications of the secret society and the Serbian government would be obvious, and it could even lead to war with Austria. However, if he were to warn the Austrians of the plot he would be seen as a traitor by his own people. Pasic made a weak attempt at having the assassins intercepted at the border, but when that failed he decided to try and warn Austria in a diplomatic way that would not expose the Black Hand.
The Serbian Minister to Vienna, Jovan Jovanovic, was given the job of warning the Austrians, and he told the Austrian Minister of Finance, Dr Leon von Bilinski, that it would be a good idea to convince the Archduke not to visit Sarajevo. However, Bilinski either did not understand or decided to take no action on the matter, and the visit was to go ahead.
Meanwhile the three trainees had made their way back to Sarajevo accompanied by a fourth man, Danilo Ilic. He had joined the group of his own choice and had brought three other recruits along with him. Between them they had four Serbian army pistols and six bombs, which had been supplied from Serbian army arsenals.
THE VISIT TO SARAJEVO
Franz Ferdinand decided to accept the invitation to inspect the troops in Sarajevo, as it had been a long time since a prominent official from Hapsburg had made such a visit. As the trip coincided with this 14th wedding anniversary, he decided to take his wife Sophie along with him. Although at home she was not allowed to ride in the same carriage as her husband, the same rule did not apply in cities such as Sarajevo, and so she was able to share her husband’s car. Franz Ferdinand certainly knew that the visit could be a little dangerous, but his security was quite minimal as he felt restricted with the presence of security men round him all the time. Another reason was that he didn’t want a cordon between himself and the crowd as he wanted to be able to greet them properly and, for the most part, Ferdinand was received warmly by the Bosnian people.
Sunday, June 28, 1914, was a bright and sunny morning, and at around 10.00 a.m. the party left Philipovic military camp, following Ferdinand’s inspection of the troops. The motorcade itself consisted of six cars, and they were heading towards the City Hall for a reception being hosted by the Major of Sarajevo. The Archduke, his wife and General Potiorek travelled in an open Viennese sports car along the chosen route, a wide avenue called Appel Quay. The Archduke requested that the car be driven slowly so that he could look at his surroundings and greet the crowds waiting to see him. Crowds had lined the avenue and were cheering the royal couple, but little did they know that among the crowd were seven young assassins who had all taken up their appointed positions along the route.
As the procession reached the central police station, a tall young man, Cabrinovic, hurled a hand grenade directly at the open-top car. The grenade bounced off the folded roof of the Archduke’s car and landed in the street, exploding underneath the car that was following them. It wounded several officers and about 20 people in the crowd. The driver of the Archduke’s car started to accelerate away to reach the relative safety of the town hall. However, Franz Ferdinand ordered his driver to stop as he wanted to see who had been injured in the attack. The imperial car was now a sitting target, and it was then that they noticed Sophie’s neck had been grazed – apart from that she appeared unhurt.
The Archduke was now in an outraged mood, and on arriving at the town hall confronted the Mayor, claiming that the whole situation was outrageous. The Mayor was perplexed as he was completely unaware of what had taken place. After he had calmed down Franz Ferdinand asked to be taken to see one of the officers who had been wounded by the grenade, and who had been taken to the local military hospital. The prearranged visit to a local museum would then proceed as planned. Sophie, who had not originally intended to visit the museum, insisted that she now accompany her husband on the remainder of his tour.
Once again the cars set out along Appel Quay, but this time at speed. However, neither the driver of Franz Ferdinand’s car nor the Mayor’s had been informed of the change of plan. When the first car turned right at the corner of Appel Quay and Franz Josef Street and the second car followed, General Potiorek shouted angrily to the driver of the third car that he was making a mistake. The driver braked sharply and came to a halt, at which point a young Bosnian man, Gavrilo Princip, seized the opportunity and took out a revolver. A policeman desperately tried to grab the gun out of the young man’s hand, but he was struck by someone nearby in the crowd. Princip stepped out from the crowd and only a few paces away from the stationary car, fired twice at the occupants. The first bullet struck the Archduke in the jugular vein, and the second entered his wife’s abdomen. Sophie sank to the floor with her face between her husband’s knees. The Archduke’s last words were, ‘Sophie, Sophie, don’t die. Stay alive for the children’, before he passed into unconsciousness. The car shot off at speed towards Governor Potiorek’s official residence, but they were too badly injured and were dead before arrival.
Although Franz Ferdinand was not popular in Vienna, little did anyone know that his death would raise issues of such far-reaching significance – four years of bloodshed and the death of millions. The murders of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie brought Austro-Serbian tensions to a head. Trouble had been brewing between Serbia and Austria for many years, and this was the final straw.
Investigations into the assassinations at Sarajevo, turned to the Serbian secret society headed by ‘Apis’, a somewhat shadowy figure who was head of the Serbian military intelligence.
The reasons behind the double assassinations will never really be known, but extreme Serbian nationalists regarded Franz Ferdinand with fear because he favoured concessions to the South Slav minority on Austro-Hungary. The Black Hand thought that these concessions might not be advantageous to Serbia’s position and therefore decided the Archduke should be eliminated. Vienna knew that it would be a long time before there would be any conclusive proof of the assassins and decided to act based on the mass of circumstantial evidence available to them.
As Vienna took a hard line against Serbia, the other powers in Europe started to take sides. The original squabble between Vienna and Serbia grew out of all proportion and within 30 days of the death of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie there was a World War!
What has been said is that Princip and the Black Hand secret society assassinated the one person in the Hapsburg family who was concerned with the future of Austria-Hungary. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, using the Dual Monarchy, made every effort during his reign to create a more peaceful affiliation between the different nationalities of the world.
Wall Street Bombing
Remember we will not tolerate any longer. Free the political prisoners or it will be sure death for all of you.
American anarchist fighters
Although there had been previous terror attacks in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Wall Street attack was different because it was aimed at the public and it was intended to kill a large number of people. In the early part of 1920 the American economy was in a bad way due to high unemployment and the sharp rise in inflation. The solid walls of the New York Stock Exchange, the Sub-Treasury, the Assay office and J.P. Morgan’s bank stood for stability, and the workers were completely unaware of what was about to hit them on September 16, 1920.
It was not uncommon to see a horse and cart on New York streets in 1920, although most were not as r
amshackle as the one that pulled up outside the Assay office at 23 Wall Street at around noon. The driver, knowing that he had little time to spare, stepped down from the carriage and walked briskly away.
The Trinity Church bells could he heard indicating that it was midday. Everything in Wall Street was bustling as usual and then the dilapidated old wagon with its tired old horse delivered its lethal cargo – an extremely large quantity of explosives, in total 45 kg (100 lb) of dynamite. There was an ear-shattering explosion, followed by flames and smoke, which plumed high into the sky. Windows shattered in buildings throughout a 1 km (H mile) radius and pieces of glass and iron tore their way through anything that got in their path. Building awnings were burnt to ashes within seconds and hundreds of people and cars were literally blown away by the force of the blast. There was carnage everywhere. The people who had survived the blast looked on in horror as Wall Street literally ran red with the blood of the victims. A single horse leg lay on the steps of a building nearby, and a woman’s head, still wearing a hat, was stuck to the wall of another. Mutilated bodies lay everywhere and hundreds of office workers were running in panic away from the site of devastation. A bell could be heard ringing from the Stock Exchange building, signifying that they had ceased trading – the first time trading had ever been stopped by violence.
Within minutes of the explosion, policemen, firemen and ambulances raced to the scene of the blast by any method of transport available. Even troops from the 22nd Infantry, who were garrisoned on Governor’s Island, marched their way through Lower Manhattan. People began to help the injured, ferrying them to the nearby Broad Street Hospital. Order was very quickly resumed as the emergency services laid out the bodies on the pavement and covered them with white sheets. By nightfall the death toll stood at 31, with hundreds more injured.
SEARCH FOR THE CULPRIT
William J. Flynn, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was asked to lead the enquiry, and he arrived in New York that night. At first the officials felt that it might just have been an accident, with a car colliding with a wagon that was carrying dynamite, and the explosives were indeed the type used for demolition work. But the dynamite had been wired to a timer and wrapped with many small pieces of iron. Added to that there had been several eyewitnesses who reported seeing an Italian-looking man jumping down from a horse and cart and running away from the scene, and they soon realized that something far more sinister had taken place. A chocolate peddler, Lawrence Servin, who had been knocked unconscious by the blast, was able to give a good description of the man once he had regained consciousness. He told them that the man he had seen on the horse and cart was:
. . . dark-complexioned, unshaven, wiry man, probably 35 or 40 years old, and dressed in working clothes and a dark cap. He seemed to be about five feet six inches tall. He had dark hair.
Suspicion immediately fell on anarchists, who had recently been behind an unsuccessful campaign of letter bombs aimed at Jack Morgan, of J.P. Morgan & Co., which was at the time the world’s most powerful financial institution. Then the police had their next clue when a message was found in a post box just one block away from Wall Street, which read:
Free the political prisoners. Or it will be sure death for all of you.
The note was signed ‘American Anarchist Fighters’. The previous day two of their members, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, had been arrested for bank robbery and murder. The police felt that perhaps there was a connection between this and the explosion.
The Wall Street Stock Exchange opened for business as usual the following morning at 10.00 a.m. prompt. All the debris had been cleared away and any broken windows covered with tarpaulins. This made the job of searching for clues difficult for the investigating officers, who had to track down where the debris had been taken as it might contain vital clues. Outside the damaged Wall Street building thousands of patriotic New Yorkers gathered and sang America the Beautiful, everyone was defiant and wanted to show the world that business was as usual.
During the next few weeks the police investigations spread further and further afield. William Flynn asked for the help of blacksmiths, harness makers and livery stable owners to assist in the reconstruction of the wagon used in the bombing. They also attempted to track down the blacksmith who had made the horse’s shoes, but their determination did not lead to any vital clues.
Meanwhile prominent New York businessmen hired security men to guard their homes and J.P. Morgan, who was away in Europe at the time of the attack, hired his own private detective in an effort to find the anarchist. No group or person ever came forward and claimed responsibility for bombing Wall Street and the FBI’s leads simply fizzled out. No charges were ever filed in the bombing, and even though the authorities were pretty sure it was the work of anarchists, they could never gather enough evidence. In the year 1940 the FBI rendered the case inactive. The final toll of the attack was 33 dead, 400 wounded and $2 million of damage to property.
At a time when New York was considered to be the financial capital of the world, the attack could have been far worse with the loss of a large percentage of paper wealth and gold. As it was, it did nothing to halt the economic rise of the capital. Although J.P. Morgan & Co. is no longer in existence, 23 Wall Street still bears the scars of the bomb.
The Hebron Massacre
The racial strife was begun by the Arabs, and rapidly developed into a conflict of great violence between Arabs and Jews, in which the Arab majority, who were generally the aggressors, inflicted most of the casualties.
Haycraft commission summary report
Throughout the 1920s tension had been brewing between the Palestinian Jews and Arabs. The mandate government took no action to alleviate the situation, and the resulting riots did an enormous amount of damage to the Zionist cause. The Arabs of Palestine were dominated by two clans – the Husseinis and the Nashashibis. The Husseinis controlled the Palestine Arab Executive and Supreme Muslim Council and the Nashashibis became the mu’aridan, or the opposition.
HAJ AMIN AL-HUSSEINI
Haj Amin al-Husseini was appointed Mufti of Jerusalem by the British in 1921, and he was the most prominent figure in Palestine during the Mandatory period. Al-Husseini was born in 1893 in Jerusalem and served in the Ottoman Army during World War I. His appointment as mufti was, in itself, controversial as he had been sentenced to ten years imprisonment by the British for inciting riots in 1920. However, al-Husseini served none of the ten years, and he fled to Transjordan, where he was later given amnesty by Herbert Samuel, first high commissioner of Palestine. Samuel was a British Jew, and it was his decision to appoint al-Husseini as mufti, with the promise that he would use his influence as a high official to quell any further disturbances. In the following year he expanded his already significant powers by being appointed Supreme Muslim Council and he soon established himself as the pre-eminent Arab power in Palestine. Al-Husseini did not keep his promise to the high commissioner when he helped to incite the series of pogroms, which lasted from 1936 to 1939, in which hundreds of Jews were killed.
TENSION MOUNTS
There had been a long-running dispute between Muslims and Jews over access to the Muslim Wall in Jerusalem, and in the summer of 1929 the situation grew steadily more and more volatile. The riots began when al-Husseini falsely accused Jews of defiling and endangering local mosques, including Al Aqsa. The call went out to the Arab masses: ‘Izbah Al-Yahud!’ – ‘Slaughter the Jews!’ The prime reason for the discontent was the proximity of the Al Aqsa mosque to the wailing wall. Islamic law states that only Muslims may pray in the proximity of a mosque while prayers are being held in the mosque itself. The Muslims claimed that the prayers at the wailing wall were disturbing the prayers of the Muslims and that action must be taken to stop the Jewish sector.
Propaganda literature started to appear stating that the Jews were getting ready to take control of the holy places, and it told the Muslim people to come to Jerusalem to defend their rights. A demonstrat
ion organized by the Supreme Muslim Council took place on August 16, 1929. They marched to the wailing wall, where they proceeded to burn prayer books and the humble notes that had been left in the cracks of the walls by the worshippers.
Haj Amin al-Husseini helped to foment the Arab hatred by accusing the Jews of endangering the mosques and the other holy sites of Islam. On August 22, 1919, leaders of the Yishuv (the Jewish settlement in Palestine) had a meeting with the British Deputy High Commissioner to warn him that they feared widespread riots. However, the British officials placated them by saying they were completely on top of the situation. However, the following day the worst riots seen in the area erupted and lasted for a full seven days.
On Friday, August 23, inflamed by false rumours that two Arabs had been killed by Jews, Arabs started to attack the Old City of Hebron. The violence quickly spread to other parts of Palestine, but Hebron definitely caught the worst of the action with at least 68 people killed. The carnage was horrendous, with the gangs actually slicing off their victim’s body parts. Some of the victims caught up in the violence were American students who had come over to study at the famous yeshiva.
On the following day, as early as 8 o’clock in the morning, Arabs started to gather in mobs. They were armed with knives, axes and clubs. They ransacked the homes of the Jews and destroyed their property, and with only one single police officer in Hebron, they met with no opposition. He called for reinforcements, but to his disgust he did not get any backup for a further five hours.
