Astounding death car

SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE
April 22, 2013

Astounding death car

(Mike Dash)

In closing, though, I want to draw attention to an even more astounding coincidence concerning Franz Ferdinand's death limo - one that is considerably better evidenced than the cursed-car nonsense. This tiny piece of history went completely unremarked on for the best part of a century, until a British visitor named Brian Presland called at Vienna's Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, where the vehicle is now on display. It was Presland who seems to have first drawn the staff's attention to the remarkable detail contained in the Gräf & Stift's license plate, which reads AIII 118.

That number, Presland pointed out, is capable of a quite astonishing interpretation. It can be taken to read A (for Armistice) 11-11-18 - which means that the death car has always carried with it a prediction not of the dreadful day of Sarajevo that in a real sense marked the beginning of the First World War, but of November 11, 1918: Armistice Day, the day that the war ended.

This coincidence is so incredible that I initially suspected that it might be a hoax - that perhaps the Gräf & Stift had been fitted with the plate retrospectively. A couple of things suggest that this is not the case, however. First, the pregnant meaning of the intitial 'A' applies only in English - the German for "armistice" is Waffenstillstand, a satisfyingly Teutonic-sounding mouthful that literally translates as "arms standstill." And Austria-Hungary did not surrender on the same day as its German allies - it had been knocked out of the war a week earlier, on November 4, 1918. So the number plate is a little bit less spooky in its native country, and so far as I can make it out it also contains not five number 1's, but three capital 'I's and two numbers. Perhaps, then, it's not quite so perplexing that the museum director buttonholed by Brian Presland said he had worked in the place for 20 years without spotting the plate's significance.

More important, however, a contemporary photo of the fateful limousine, taken just as it turned into the road where Gavrilo Princip was waiting for it, some 30 seconds before Franz Ferdinand's death, shows the car bearing what looks very much like the same number plate as it does today. You're going to have to take my word for this - the plate is visible, just, in the best-quality copy of the image that I have access to, and I have been able to read it with a magnifying glass. But my attempts to scan this tiny detail in high definition have been unsuccessful. I'm satisfied, though, and while I don't pretend that this is anything but a quite incredible coincidence, it certainly is incredible, one of the most jaw-dropping I've ever come across.

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Fonte:
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/2013/04/archduke-franz-ferdinand-and-his-astounding-death-car

Mais:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/world-war-i-special-report-180952176

Infamous

Franz Ferdinand, episódio 24 da série Infamous Assassinations. Exibido em 2007 pela BBC.

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Mais:

http://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9h0WC-XrYv2MF9GelRrMk1kRUU

A maldição dos Átridas

Trechos do posfácio de O Livro Negro Do Comunismo (1997), de Stéphane Courtois.

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Paradoxalmente, foi exatamente no momento em que a reforma parecia poder impor-se à violência, ao obscurantismo e ao arcaísmo que a guerra veio mudar tudo e que, no dia 1º de agosto de 1914, a mais intensa violência de massas irrompeu bruscamente na cena europeia.

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Martin Malia escreveu: "O que o Orestes de Ésquilo demonstra é que o crime engendra o crime, a violência a violência, até que o primeiro crime da corrente, o pecado original da humanidade, seja expiado pela acumulação do sofrimento. De igual modo, o sangue vertido em agosto de 1914 é uma espécie de maldição dos Átridas na casa Europa, que engendrou essa concatenação de violências internacionais e sociais que dominaram todo um século: a violência e as matanças dessa Primeira Guerra Mundial foram desproporcionadas relativamente aos ganhos que qualquer das partes poderia esperar. Foi a guerra que gerou a Revolução Russa e a tomada do poder pelos bolcheviques." Essa análise não teria sido desmentida por Lenin, que, desde 1914, apelava à transformação da "guerra imperialista em guerra civil", e profetizava que da guerra capitalista sairia a revolução socialista.

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Essa violência intensa, contínua ao longo de quatro anos, sob a forma de uma matança ininterrupta e sem saída, levou à morte de 8,5 milhões de combatentes. Correspondia a um novo tipo de guerra, definida pelo general alemão Ludendorff como uma "guerra total", implicando a morte tanto de militares como de civis. E, no entanto, essa violência, que atingiu um nível jamais visto na história mundial*, foi limitada por todo um conjunto de leis e costumes internacionais.

[* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion]

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Entretanto, a prática de hecatombes cotidianas, muitas vezes em condições horríveis - os gases, os homens enterrados vivos pela explosão das granadas, as longas agonias entre as linhas -, pesou consideravelmente nas consciências, enfraqueceu as resistências psicológicas dos homens em face da morte - a sua e a dos outros. Desenvolveu-se uma certa insensibilização, até mesmo uma certa dessensibilização. Karl Kautsky, o principal dirigente e teórico do socialismo alemão, voltou ao assunto em 1920: "É à guerra que devemos atribuir a principal causa dessa transformação de tendências humanitárias numa tendência de brutalidade. [...] Durante quatro anos, a guerra mundial absorveu a quase-totalidade da população masculina saudável, as tendências brutais do militarismo atingiram o auge da insensibilidade e da bestialidade, e o próprio proletariado não conseguiu escapar à sua influência. Foi contaminado ao mais alto grau e saiu embrutecido sob todos os pontos de vista. Os que regressaram, habituados à guerra, estavam mais do que dispostos a defenderem, em tempo de paz, as suas reivindicações e os seus interesses, através de atos sangrentos e violências exercidas sobre os seus concidadãos. Esse fato forneceu à guerra civil um dos seus elementos."

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Nenhum dos chefes bolcheviques participou da guerra, quer por estarem no exílio - Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev -, quer por terem sido relegados para os confins da Sibéria - Stalin, Kamenev. Na sua maioria, eram homens de gabinete ou oradores de comício, sem experiência militar, nunca tinham participado de qualquer combate real, com mortos verdadeiros. Até a tomada do poder, as suas guerras tinham sido sobretudo verbais, ideológicas e políticas. Tinham uma visão abstrata da morte, do massacre, da catástrofe humana. Essa ignorância pessoal dos horrores da guerra jogou a favor da brutalidade. Os bolcheviques faziam uma análise de classe bastante teórica que ignorava a profunda dimensão nacional, senão mesmo nacionalista, do conflito. Responsabilizavam o capitalismo pela matança, justificando a priori a violência revolucionária: pondo termo ao reinado do capitalismo, a revolução acabava com os massacres, mesmo que isso significasse a destruição do "punhado" de capitalistas responsáveis. Macabra especulação, fundamentada na hipótese errônea de que se devia combater o mal com o mal. Durante os anos 20, um certo pacifismo, alimentado pela revolta contra a guerra, revelou-se muitas vezes como um vetor ativo de adesão ao comunismo.

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Como sublinhou François Furet em Le Passé d'une Illusion: "A guerra é feita por massas de civis arregimentados, que passam da autonomia do cidadão para uma obediência militar por um período de tempo cuja duração desconhecem e são mergulhados num inferno de fogo, onde se trata mais de 'aguentar' do que de calcular, de ousar ou de vencer. Nunca a servidão militar apareceu tão despida de adornos de nobreza como aos olhos desses milhões de homens transplantados, acabados de sair do mundo moral da cidadania. [...] A guerra é o estado político mais estranho ao cidadão. [...] O que a tornou necessária situa-se ao nível das paixões, sem relação com o dos interesses, que transige, e menos ainda com a razão, que reprova. [...] O exército em guerra constitui uma ordem social na qual o indivíduo deixa de existir e cuja própria inumanidade explica uma força de inércia quase impossível de quebrar." A guerra deu nova legitimidade à violência e ao desprezo pelo indivíduo, ao mesmo tempo que enfraqueceu uma cultura democrática ainda adolescente e revitalizava uma cultura de servidão.

Mão invisível da História

The Black Hand - The secret Serbian terrorist society

(Micheal Shackelford)

On October 8, 1908, just two days after Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, many men, some of them ranking Serbian ministers, officials and generals, held a meeting at City Hall in Belgrade. They founded a semi-secret society - Narodna Odbrana (National Defense) which gave Pan-Slavism a focus and an organization. The purpose of the group was to recruit and train partisans for a possible war between Serbia and Austria. They also undertook anti-Austrian propaganda and organized spies and saboteurs to operate within the empire's provinces. Satellite groups were formed in Slovinia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and Istria. The Bosnian group went under the name Mlada Bosna - Young Bosnia. Narodna Odbrana's work had been so effective that in 1909 a furious Austria pressured the Serbian government to put a stop to their anti-Austrian insurrection. Russia was not ready to stand fully behind Serbia should things come to a showdown, so Belgrade was grudgingly forced to comply. From then on, Narodna Odbrana concentrated on education and propaganda within Serbia, trying to fashion itself as a cultural organization.

THE BIRTH OF THE BLACK HAND

Many members formed a new, and again secret, organization to continue the terrorist actions. Ten men met on May 9, 1911 to form Ujedinjenje ili Smrt (Union or Death), also known as The Black Hand. By 1914, there were several hundred members, perhaps as many as 2500. Many members were Serbian army officers. The professed goal of the group was the creation of a Greater Serbia, by use of violence, if necessary. The Black Hand trained guerillas and saboteurs and arranged political murders. The Black Hand was organized at the grassroots level in 3 to 5-member cells. Above them were district committees. Above them, was the Central committee in Belgrade. At the top was the ten-member Executive Committee led, more or less, by Colonial Dragutin Dimitrijevic, (also known as Apis). Members rarely knew much more than the members of their own cell and one superior above them, to ensure that the group's leaders would remain secret. New members swore "... before God, on my honor and my life, that I will execute all missions and commands without question. I swear before God, on my honor and on my life, that I will take all the secrets of this organization into my grave with me."

The Black Hand took over the terrorist actions of Narodna Odbrana, and worked deliberately at obscuring 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 and financial supporter. The group held influence over government appointment and policy. 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 Pasic. They thought he did not act aggressively enough towards the Pan-Serb cause. They engaged in a bitter power struggle over several issues, such as who would control territories Serbia annexed in the Balkan Wars. By this point, standing up and saying 'no' to the Black Hand was a dangerous act. Political murder was one of their well known tools.

It was also in 1914 that Apis decided that Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir-apparent of Austria, should be assassinated. Towards that end, three young Bosnian-Serbs were recruited and trained in bomb throwing and marksmanship. Princip, Cabrinovic and Grabez were smuggled across the border back into Bosnia via a chain of underground-railroad style contacts.

The decision to kill the Archduke was apparently initiated by Apis, and not sanctioned by the full Executive Committee. Those involved probably realized that their plot would invite war between Austria and Serbia. They had every reason to expect that Russia would side with Serbia. In all likelihood, they did not anticipate that their little war would mushroom into world war.

Others in the government and some on the Black Hand Executive Council were not as confident of Russian aid. Russia had let them down recently. When word of the plot percolated through Black Hand leadership and the Serbian government, Apis was told not to proceed. He made a half-hearted attempt to intercept the young assassins at the border, but they had already crossed. This 'recall' appears to make Apis look like a loose cannon, and the young assassins as independent zealots. In fact, the 'recall' took place a full two weeks before the Archduke's visit. The assassins idled around in Sarajevo for a month. Nothing more was done to stop them. The extensive network of contacts that smuggled them into Sarajevo, fed and housed them, was not utilized to stop them. This calls into question the Black Hand's and the Serbian government's desire that the plot truly be cancelled.

THE ASSASSINATION

Of the seven young men involved, Princip succeeded in killing the Archduke. The careful secrecy of the Black Hand delayed its being found out as the instigator of the crime until many weeks later. By that time, the guilt for the crime had settled loosely on Serbia in general. Tensions between Serbia and Austria eventually drew in the other European powers and escalated into world war. Towards the end of 1916, Prime Minister Pasic decided to destroy the leaders of the Black Hand and break up the organization. By the spring of 1917, many Black Hand leaders, including Apis, had been arrested. A sham trial before a military tribunal was held in May 1917 for Apis and others. Among the charges was that the Black Hand had attempted to murder Prince Regent Alexander. Though the number of witnesses against them were numerous, the evidence cited was nearly all hearsay or outright fabrications. Apis and six others were sentenced to death. Three obtained commutations to long prison terms, but Apis and three comrades were executed by firing squad on June 26, 1917.

In June 1917, the Black Hand was outlawed. Intriguing and insurrection, by their very nature, however, are not bothered by legalities. A new organization - The White Hand - was formed from trustworthy men of Narodna Odbrana. It continued the imperialistic work of the Black Hand, using the same techniques. The death of Vojislav Petrovic, an ex-attache to the Yugoslav Legation in London, was said to be the work of Narodna Odbrana. Petrovic was preparing a book on the history of the Sarajevo assassinations and the Black Hand. In what became Yugoslavia after the war, the White Hand grew into an essential piece of the state's machinery.

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Fonte:
http://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/comment/blk-hand.html

Gavrilo

Gavrilo Princip was born in June or July 1894, the son of a postman. One of nine children, six of whom died in infancy, Princip's health was poor from an early age: his eventual death was caused by tuberculosis.

After attending schools in Sarajevo and Tuzla, Princip left for Belgrade in May 1912. While in Serbia Princip joined the secret Black Hand society, a nationalist movement favouring a union between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia.

Princip was one of three men sent by Dragutin Dimitrijevic, the chief of the Intelligence Department in the Serbian Army and head of the Black Hand, to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, during his visit to Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. Ferdinand had accepted the invitation of General Oskar Potiorek to inspect army manoeuvres in his capacity of Inspector General of the army. The other men sent to assassinate Ferdinand were Nedjelko Cabrinovic, and Trifko Grabez.

The three men were instructed to commit suicide after killing the Archduke. To this end they were each given a phial of cyanide, along with a revolver and grenades. Each of the men suffered from tuberculosis and consequently knew that they did not have long to live; meanwhile, Dimitrijevic did not wish any of the men to live to tell who was behind the assassination.

The prime minister of Serbia was given advance warning of the assassination plot, and whilst a sympathiser of the Black Hand's objectives - Bosnia-Herzegovina achieving independence from Austro-Hungary - he feared war with Austria-Hungary should an assassination attempt be successful. He therefore gave orders for the arrest of the three men as they left the country; his orders were not acted upon however.

Once in Bosnia-Herzegovina the three men met up with six fellow conspirators and travelled onwards to Sarajevo.

Franz Ferdinand arrived in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, a Sunday, and was met at the railway station by General Potiorek, to be taken on to the city hall for the reception and speeches.

Seven members of the Black Hand lined the route due to be taken by the Archduke's cavalcade along Appel Quay. One of the men, Nedjelko Cabrinovic, threw a grenade at the Archduke's car. The driver took evasive action and quickly sped from the scene. The grenade bounced off the back of the Archduke's car and rolled underneath the next car, exploding seconds later; two of its occupants were severely wounded.

Cabrinovic swallowed his cyanide capsule as instructed, and jumped into the River Miljacka. He did not die however, but was captured and arrested. It is speculated that the capsule contained nothing other than a harmless water-based solution.

Ferdinand attended the reception at the city hall and complained vociferously about his reception at the city.

"What is the good of your speeches? I come to Sarajevo on a visit, and I get bombs thrown at me. It is outrageous!" (Archduke Franz Ferdinand interrupting the Mayor's welcome speech at Sarajevo's city hall, 28 June 1914.)

Following the reception the Archduke determined to visit those injured in the grenade explosion at the city hospital. General Potiorek decided that the motorcade should take an alternate route to the hospital, avoiding the city centre altogether. However the driver of Ferdinand's car, Franz Urban, was not informed of the change of plan and so took the original route.

Turning into Franz Joseph Street, General Potiorek, who was a passenger in Ferdinand's car, noticed that the altered route had not been taken. He remonstrated with the driver who in turn slowed the car and then began to reverse out of the street.

Gavrilo Princip, who happened to be in Franz Joseph Street at a cafe, seized his opportunity, and took aim at Ferdinand from a distance of five feet. His bullets struck the Archduke in the neck and his wife, Sophie, who was travelling with him, in the abdomen.

Urban drove the car to the governor's residence at Konak; the couple died soon afterwards.

After the shooting Princip made to turn his gun upon himself but was seized and restrained by a man nearby, aided by several policemen. He was arrested and taken to a police station.

In total eight men were charged with treason and Franz Ferdinand's murder. However under Austro-Hungarian law capital punishment could not be applied to anyone under the age of 20 when the crime was committed. Gavrilo Princip, whose precise date of birth could not be firmly established at his trial, was therefore imprisoned for the maximum duration, twenty years. He died however of tuberculosis on 28 April 1918.

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Fonte:
http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/princip.htm