Dragutin Dimitrijević

Dragutin Dimitrijević (Serbian Cyrillic: Драгутин Димитријевић; 17 August 1876 – 24 June 1917), known as Apis (Апис), was a Serbian colonel. He was a leading member of the military group that organized the 1903 overthrow of the Serbian government, which included the assassination of Alexander I of Serbia [1]

Dragutin Dimitrijević
Dimitrijević, circa 1900
Born(1876-08-17)17 August 1876
Belgrade, Serbia
Died24 June 1917(1917-06-24) (aged 40)
Thessaloniki, Greece
Cause of deathExecution by firing squad
NationalitySerbian

Dimitrijević later led the Black Hand, a society responsible for the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914, which led to the July Crisis and the outbreak of World War I. In 1916, Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić, who considered Dimitrijević as a potential threat, accused Dimitrijević and the Black Hand group of treason. Dimitrijević was executed by firing squad in June 1917.

Early life

Dragutin Dimitrijević was born in Belgrade, Principality of Serbia, in the summer of 1876 to an Aromanian family.[2] His father and two brothers were often away working as tinsmiths and he grew up with his two older sisters in Niš.[2] At the age of nine, his father died.[2]

When Dimitrijević's oldest sister married, the family moved back to Belgrade where, at the age of 16, he entered the Belgrade Military Academy as a cadet in 1892.[2] His fellow cadets called him Apis, which means Bull, because of his strong physique and energy.[2] Dimitrijević finished the Academy's lower school as sixth in his class in 1896. Two years later, he enrolled in the higher school, where he was assigned to the General Staff of the Serbian Army upon his graduation.[2][3]

May Coup
Main article: May Coup (Serbia)

Captain Dimitrijević and a group of junior officers planned the assassination of the King of Serbia. On 11 June 1903, the group stormed the royal palace and killed both King Alexander and his wife, Queen Draga. During the attack, Dimitrijević was shot three times, and the bullets were never removed from his body.[3]

The Serbian Parliament described Dimitrijević as "the saviour of the fatherland", and he was appointed Professor of Tactics at the Military Academy. He visited Germany and Russia, where he studied the latest military ideas. During the Balkan Wars in 1912 and 1913, Dimitrijević's military planning helped the Serbian Army achieve several important victories.

Dragutin Dimitrijević Apis (right) and his associates.

Dimitrijević's main concern was what he viewed as the liberation of all South Slavs, especially Serbs, from Austria-Hungary. Although Serbia was already an independent country, many Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Vojvodina were still under Austro-Hungarian rule. Dimitrijević, who used the code name Apis, became the leader of the secret Black Hand. Dimitrijević had his men disguise as Albanians and commit political murders.[4]

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

In 1911, Dimitrijević organised an attempt to assassinate the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef. When that failed, Dimitrijević turned his attention to the heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Dimitrijević was concerned about Ferdinand's plans to grant concessions to the South Slavs and feared that it would prevent a unified South Slavic state under Serbian leadership from being achieved.

Unknown to Dimitrijević, Major Vojislav Tankosić had been informing Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić about the plot. Although Pašić supported the main objectives of the Black Hand group, he did not want the assassination to take place, as he feared it would lead to a war with Austria-Hungary. He decided to give instructions for the arrest of the three young would-be assassins when they attempted to leave the country. However, his orders were not implemented, and the three men arrived in what was then known as the Condominium of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where they joined forces with fellow conspirators, Veljko and Vaso Čubrilović, Muhamed Mehmedbašić, Danilo Ilić, Cvjetko Popović and Miško Jovanović.

After the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife on 28 June 1914, several Black Hand members, under interrogation by the Austrian police and investigative magistrates, admitted that three men in Serbia (Dimitrijević, Milan Ciganović and Major Voja Tankosić) had organised the assassination.

On 23 July 1914, the Austro-Hungarian government sent its July Ultimatum to the Serbian government with a lengthy list of ten different demands. In his response on 25 July 1914, Pašić, accepted all the points of the ultimatum except the sixth, which demanded for Serbia to allow an Austrian delegation to participate in a criminal investigation against those participants in the conspiracy that were in Serbia. Three days later, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.

In 1916, Dimitrijević was promoted to colonel.[5]

Execution

Pašić decided to get rid of the most prominent members of the Black Hand, which had officially disbanded. Dimitrijević and several of his military colleagues were arrested in December 1916 and tried on charges blaming them with attempted assassination of Regent Aleksandar I Karađorđević in September 1916. On 23 May 1917, following the Salonika Trial, Dimitrijević was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. A month later, on 24 June 1917, he was executed by firing squad.

In 1953, Dimitrijević and his codefendants were all posthumously retried by the Supreme Court of Serbia and found not guilty because there was no proof of their alleged participation in the assassination plot.[6]

References
  1. MacKenzie 1989.
  2. MacKenzie 1997.
  3. Duffy, Michael (22 August 2009). "First World War.com - Who's Who - Dragutin Dimitrijevic". www.firstworldwar.com. Retrieved 2019-11-28.
  4. Pearson 2005, pp. 27-28 and 585.
  5. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Dragutin Dimitrijević | Serbian army officer". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2019-11-28.
  6. MacKenzie 1998, p. 290.

Bibliography
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