Dragutin Dimitrijević

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, Dimitrijević entered the Belgrade Military Academy as a cadet in 1892.[2] His fellow cadets called him Apis, which means The Bull, due to his strong physique and energy.[2] Dimitrijević finished the Academy's lower school sixth in his class in 1896 and two years later enrolled in the higher school, where he was assigned to the General Staff of the Serbian Army upon graduation.[2][3]

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 that took place 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 leader of the secret Black Hand group. Dimitrijević had his men disguised as Albanians while committing political murders.[4]

In 1911, Dimitrijević organised an attempt to assassinate the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef. When this 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, fearing that, if this happened, a unified South Slavic state under Serbian leadership would be more difficult to achieve.

Unknown to Dimitrijević, Major Vojislav Tankosić was informing Nikola Pašić, the prime minister of Serbia 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 therefore gave 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, Serbian prime minister Nikola Pašić, accepted all the points of the ultimatum except point #6, demanding 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 the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia.

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

Nikola Pašić decided to get rid of the most prominent members of the Black Hand movement, by then 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 co-defendants were all posthumously retried by the Supreme Court of Serbia and found not guilty, because there was no proof for their alleged participation in the assassination plot.[6]

• Clark, Christopher (2012). The Sleepwalkers, How Europe Went to War in 1914. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 9780061146657.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• MacKenzie, David (1989). Apis: The Congenial Conspirator. The Life of Colonel Dragutin T. Dimitrijevic. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-88033-162-3.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• MacKenzie, David (1998). The Exoneration of the "Black Hand". Boulder, CA: East European Monographs. ISBN 0-88033-414-2.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• MacKenzie, David (1997). "Dragutin Dimitrijević-Apis". In Radan, Peter; Pavković, Aleksandar (eds.). The Serbs and Their Leaders in the Twentieth Century. Ashgate. ISBN 978-1-85521-891-8.
• Pearson, Owen (2005). Albania in the Twentieth Century, A History: Volume I: Albania and King Zog, 1908-39. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 9781845110130.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Živanović, Milan (1955). Pukovnik Apis: Solunski proces 1917. Beograd: Savremena administracija. ASIN B00DGM87SG.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

• Dragutin Dimitrijević Apis - Dokumentarni film on YouTube (in Serbian)