The mortal remains of Sophie and Ferdinand were interred at Artstetten castle on 4 July. Nine days later Dr Friedrich von Wiesner, the Chief Austrian investigator, forwarded an interim report to Vienna containing three major points. Firstly, the Greater Serbia movement aimed to sever the Southern Slav region from Austria by revolutionary violence. He pointed an accusatory finger at the Serbian nationalist group Narodna Odbrana, stating that the Belgrade government had made no attempt to curb its activities. Secondly, von Wiesner unmasked Major Tankosić and ‘the Serbian official Ciganovic’ as the men responsible for training and supplying the assassins with weapons, and both the frontier authorities and the customs officers for smuggling them into Bosnia. These facts he deemed ‘demonstrable and virtually unassailable’. [1] He concluded by stating cautiously, that there was no conclusive proof at that time, that the Serbian Government had any knowledge of the assassination or had co-operated in preparing it. [2]
Dr von Wiesner’s oral report, delivered some two days later, was more comprehensive and came to a momentous conclusion. The Serbian government had known everything about the assassination. He had unearthed more evidence of Serbian complicity, but his telegrammed report of 13 July was destined to be hijacked and later grossly misrepresented by the American delegation at the War Guilt Commission in 1919. Their two most senior delegates, Secretary of State Robert Lansing and Counsellor James Scott Brown, deliberately chose a 31-word extract from Von Wiesner’s brief report which they claimed ‘proved’ that Austria had no evidence of Serbian involvement [3] Such deliberate falsification suited their cause. It was used as part of the post-war onslaught against Germany and Austria to lay the blame for the world war entirely on their shoulders. Lansing and Brown stand accused of deliberately falsifying history in order to malign the Austrian and German governments.
By October, when the Young Bosnians were brought to trial the Austrian authorities had overwhelming evidence of Serbian complicity. Despite this, the conspirators insisted in deflecting blame from Serbia. Under cross-examination, Princip was defiant: ‘I believe in unification of all South Slavs in whatever form of state and that it be free of Austria.’ Asked how he intended to realize his goal he responded: ‘By means of terror.’ [4] Although they had been trained in Serbia, the Young Bosnians had no knowledge of the influences that dictated policy further up the chain of command. Indeed, few if any within that chain knew who was empowering the next link. Princip and his group genuinely believed that they were striking a blow for freedom and emancipation 
and could not bring themselves to accept that they had been duped into literally firing someone else’s bullets.
The Austrian court did not accept their attempts to hold Serbia blameless. [5] The verdict was decisive, with the court correctly finding that the military commanders in charge of the Serbian espionage service collaborated in the outrage. Four of the assassination team were executed by hanging in February 1915, but the younger members, like Princip, were given prison sentences. He died in prison in 1918 from tuberculosis exacerbated by a botched amputation. Crucially, the trail of culpability had not been covered over.
Above all else, the Secret Elites had to ensure that no links could be traced from Serbia to Russia. Russian complicity in the Archduke’s death would have altered the balance of credibility for the Entente cause. All links to Sazonov in particular had to be airbrushed. That in turn meant that the web of intrigue between Serbia and Russia be cleansed. The outbreak of war in August slowed down this process, but only delayed the outcome.
Nicholai Hartwig, Russian ambassador to Serbia, died in Belgrade in very strange circumstances. On a visit to the Austrian ambassador, Baron von Giesel, on 10 July1914, Hartwig collapsed, allegedly from a massive ‘heart attack’. The Serbian press immediately published inflammatory articles accusing the Austrians of poisoning Hartwig while he was a guest at their legation. The Austrians, of course, knew from decoded diplomatic telegrams, that Hartwig was at the centre of intrigues against Austria-Hungary. [6] Was this an old-fashioned Roman-style act of retribution or, were the Secret Elite simply very fortunate that a fifty-seven year old diplomat dropped dead in the Austrian legation barely two weeks after the assassination in which he was complicit?
Denials echoed around Europe, no-where more vehemently than in Britain, where the Secret Elite had to vilify any suggestion that Russia was involved with internal Bosnian or Austro-Hungarian politics. The Times led the outcry;
‘The latest suggestion made in one of the Serbian newspapers is that M de Hartwig’s sudden death in the Austro-Hungarian Legation at Belgrade the other day was due to poison. Ravings of that kind move the contempt as well as the disgust of cultivated people, whatever their political sympathies may be.’ [7]
Ravings indeed. The Times, and those it represented, clearly wanted to squash such speculation. It was far too close to the truth. If the idea that Hartwig had been murdered because he was involved in the Archduke’s assassination gained credence, British public opinion would turn even sourer against Russia. At the request of the Serbian Government, Hartwig was buried in Belgrade in what was virtually a State funeral. Every notable Serbian, including the Prime Minister, attended. Officially Hartwig suffered death by natural causes. Unofficially, a very important link in the chain of culpability was buried along with his corpse.
Some three years later, with the tide of war turned violently against Serbia, Colonel Apis and the officers loyal to him were arrested. At a Serbian Court Martial 
held on the frontier at Salonika on 23 May 1917, Apis and eight of his associates were indicted on various trumped up charges, unrelated to Sarajevo, and sentenced to death, Two others were sentenced to 15 years in prison. The Serbian High Court reduced the number of death sentences to seven and King Alexander commuted another four, leaving Apis and two others to face the firing squad. [8]
Colonel Apis effectively signed his own death warrant when he confessed to the Salonika court that he had enlisted men to carry out the assassination. ‘In agreement with Artamanov, the Russian military attaché, I hired Malobabic to organise Ferdinand’s murder upon his arrival in Sarajevo.’ [9] The explosive part of that statement was the opening phrase ‘in agreement with Artamanov’. His revelation of Russian involvement had to be silenced. Much to his own surprise, for Colonel Apis truly believed, right up to the moment of death that his contacts in England, France and Russia would intervene on his behalf, he was executed on 26 June 1917 by firing squad. [10] In reality, Apis was silenced; put to death by order of those who desperately needed to permanently bury the complicity of Russia in the Sarajevo assassination. [11] It was judicial murder.
By one means or another, the lower levels of the web of culpability were blown away. The Young Bosnians had in their naivety been willing sacrifices to a cause they never knew existed. Hartwig was dead. Murdered? Probably, but all that really mattered was that his voice would never be heard again. Our understanding of his role in managing the Russian intrigues has to remain, at best, incomplete. There was plenty to hide, and no doubt at all about Russian complicity. [12] The Soviet collection of diplomatic papers from the year 1914 revealed an astonishing gap.During the first days of the October Revolution in 1917, Hartwig’s dispatches from Belgrade for the crucial period between May and July, 1914 were removed by an unknown person from the archives of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Three years dead and his was a voice they still had to gag. [13] Finally, Apis and his Black Hand associates were removed from any future enquiry or the temptation of a lucrative memoir. Blown away; all of them, in the expectation that the truth about their direct involvement would disappear in the confusion of war.
And yet the world has been asked to believe that the murder of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand was carried out by a bunch of lucky amateurs who inadvertently set the world ablaze. What nonsense. Having failed to entice the Austrians and their German allies into an angry indiscretion over the Balkan wars, the Secret Elite laid a most devious trap, which also might well have come to nothing unless deceit had not been taken to an unprecedented level. Court historians have deliberately misrepresented the complex events of July 1914 and perpetuated the myth that after Sarajevo, world war was inevitable. Their stance is based on claims that the opposing Alliance systems, 
secret treaties and acceleration of armaments production in Europe were destined to end in war. The Kaiser, in their view, lusted for world domination, misled his people and deliberately used the Archduke’s assassination as an excuse to drag Europe into ‘Armageddon’.
These incredible concoctions gained credence over the twentieth century through deliberately falsified histories and received learning. Whoever challenged them was deemed to be a ‘revisionist’ or a ‘conspiracy-theorist’ and sometimes even a traitor. An official cloak of confusion was woven through the manipulations and misrepresentations presented as ‘evidence’ at Versailles in 1919, to deliberately and unfairly lay blame on the Kaiser and Germany. When that cloak is stripped away it is patently clear that it was not Germany that wanted war, or forced war on Europe in 1914. That particular infamy belongs to the Secret Elite in London.
[1] Friedrich von Wiesner, ‘Austria’s Life and Death Struggle Against Irredentism’, New York Times Current History of the European War, vol. 28 (1928), issue 4, p.632.
[2] Austrian Red Book No 17 quoted in Sidney B Fay, The Origins of the World War, vol.1., pp.6-7.
[3] von Wiesner, ‘Austria’s Life and Death Struggle Against Irredentism’, p.632.
[4] Harry Elmer Barnes, ‘Germany Not Responsible for Austria’s Actions’, New York Times Current History of the European War, vol. 28 (1928), issue 4, p.622.
[5] W.A. Dolph Owings, The Sarajevo Trial, Part 1, pp.527–30.
[6] Barnes, ‘Germany Not Responsible for Austria’s Actions’, p.620.
[7] The Times, 16 July 1914.
[8] David MacKenzie, Apis, The Congenial Conspirator, pp.329 and 344–7.
[9] Ibid., pp.129-130.
[10] Vladimir Dedijer, Road to Sarajevo, pp.398–400.
[11] Harry Elmer Barnes, Genesis of the World War, p.731.
[12] Victor Serge, ‘La Verité sur l’Attentat de Sarajevo’, in Clarte, no. 74, 1 May 1924.
[13] Dedijer, Road to Sarajevo, p.513.
First World War Hidden History 
Vexman said:
Hi Jim & Gerry,
my greatest compliments on your monumental work done here. I found your blog while looking into Col. Apis / Dimitrijević – your site was very well “hidden” on a search page showing your link after i scrolled trough hundreds of entries…
With my respect for all you have shown here I’d like to suggest an idea about the connection of Russians to Serbians as rather shocking one.
As Sutton & Solzhenitsyn have shown us in their research (along with many others), Russian revolutions of 1900’s were financed, controlled, orchestrated and perpetrated by (in your term) Secret Elite. I’d go a step further and would like to call them crypto-Jews without any nationalistic, religious or minority disrespect towards the Jews as such. I’d like to refer you to the monumental work done by Miles Mathis here (http://mileswmathis.com/lenin.pdf ), where he clearly and undoubtedly shows that Lenin alias Vladimir Ulyanov is yet another western agent, hiding his real name as descendant of powerful Jewish ancestors, hence the term crypto-Jew as such. What is yet another important find of Mathis is his research on many other European royalty and revolutions (where it’s clearly shown that not only Russian revolutions, but as well French revolution) were manufactured events, presented to impose a change in society under impression of revolutionary acts to gain majority of people supporting it. I’d suggest taking a link to http://www.mileswmathis.com (see Updates section) and reading through his Napoleon & French Revolution papers as well as on Lenin, Marx and many other agents of Secret Elite, who turn to be mostly all hiding their real family connections.
Anyway, my suggestion is that Hartwig (note the last name) is a key figure, along with Dimitrijević and probably many more of his Black Hand members, who could be just helping hands in preparation of successful plot, that would help them turn on people to support the idea of war. They surely needed a story to make it look as the road to war was unfolding as naturally and coherently as unsuspecting mind could imagine. They might have fooled majority of them, however I believe that Gavrilo Princip, Apis and Hartwig (and probably many others) did not die of violent deaths, moreover, neither did Franz Ferdinand nor Sofia. As much as there exists common belief that they have been all eliminated, I plan to conclude my already commenced research, where I’ll hopefully show beyond reasonable doubt, that Princip and Dimitrijević were agents of crypto-jewish ancestry. Which would suggest this whole event was an manufactured event, that was executed to push towards the beginning of WW I.
I’m therefore suggesting, that Franz Ferdinand’s assassination was a fake one like many other executions/deaths of famous people, along with Apis’ and Princip’s, etc…. It is a long lasting theatre play of Secret Elite, which is effectively imposed on the commoners, going on already for centuries before WWI, with last few centuries as a change of leadership -> with bankers&industrialists removing royalty & Church as authorities and Rulers. i do believe though that many millions of innocent people, fooled & dragged into the WWI, actually died. Ironically, they all died fighting for profit of the selected few instead fighting for better future.
I’m not suggesting that you are wrong in any aspect of your research. I would only like to modestly suggest, considering all you’ve learned and showed about Secret Elite’s gameplay, to as well consider another level of orchestrating and hoaxing -> by controlling all needed resources, one can as well fool people into believing Franz Ferdinand died, which is exactly what was done in this case.
Cheers,
Vex
David Luck said:
nyet. I do not think the Russians, while certainly involved with the Black Hand, would have been party to a regicide this grand…given all the bloody, Lefty-wing terrorism that had gone on in Russia over the previous decades. The French Republic, on the other hand, was born via Regicide
Peter Hof said:
HIDDEN HISTORY
Please accept my congratulations on a great new website/blog.
I agree completely with your summation of the Sarajevo assassination. The Apis confession and other evidence implicates Serbia and Russia in the murder conspiracy. The German leaders of 1914 – Kaiser Wilhelm, Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, Foreign Minister Gottlieb von Jagow, were correct in their assessment of war guilt. In a September, 1914, speech to the Reichstag, Bethmann-Hollweg expressed it as well as any:
“Where the responsibility in this greatest of all wars lies is quite evident to us.
Outwardly responsible are the men in Russia who planned and carried into effect the general mobilization of the Russian army.
But in reality and truth the British Government is responsible.
The London Cabinet could have made war impossible if they had unequivocally told Petersburg that England was not willing to let a continental war of the Great Powers result from the Austro-Hungarian conflict with Serbia.
Such words would have compelled France to use all her energy to keep Russia away from every warlike measure.
Then our good offices and mediation between Vienna and Petersburg would have been successful, and there would have been no war!
But England has chosen to act otherwise. She knew that the clique of powerful and partly irresponsible men surrounding the Czar were spoiling for war and intriguing to bring it about.
England saw that the wheel was set a-rolling, but she did not think of stopping it. While openly professing sentiments of peace, London secretly gave St. Petersburg to understand that England stood by France and therefore by Russia too . . . “
Kaiser Wilhelm put it more emotionally:
The ease with which Sir Edward Grey could have prevented the war is startling. It is stated in an eloquent editorial in the London Daily News by its editor, A. G. Gardiner:
And at St. Petersburg, there sits the man who has everyone of these lives and millions more at his mercy, and who can at one word let hell loose upon the face of Europe. Is he a man we can trust with this momentous power? Is he the man for whom we are going to shed our blood and our treasure?
The question is for us! For though the Czar has his hand on the avalanche, it is we who have our hand on him. It is we who in the last analysis must say whether Europe is to be deluged with blood. We see the Czar with his hand on the avalanche looking toward England for the one assurance that he needs. Let England say: ‘No, you touch it at your own risk and peril,’ and his hand will drop. Let England falter, temporize, equivocate, and he will plunge us into ruin with the rest.
We are told that we must be quiet. that we may encourage Germany by making her believe that she has not to reckon with us. But the move is not with Germany. The move is with Russia. It is she whom we encourage or discourage by every word that is said and every other action that is taken. It is she who has the issues of peace and war in her hand.
It is our neutrality which is the only protection that Europe has against the hideous ruin and combustion on the brink of which trembles. Let us announce that neutrality to the world! It is the one hope. There is no other. We can save Europe from war even at the last moment. But we can only save it by telling the Czar that he must fight his own battles and take the consequences of his own action.
If the British government does this, it will do the greatest service to humanity in history. If it does not do it, it will have brought the greatest curse to humanity in history. The youngest of us will not live to see the end of its crime.”
History records that Great Britain did not do it even though Sir Edward knew all too well the policy that would have preserved the peace. In a revealing telegram to Sir Edward Goschen, the British ambassador in Berlin, he wrote on July 29th, 1914:
Instead of this, Sir Edward flashed the green light for war. In The Origins of the World War, Vol 2, p 379, S.B. Fay wrote:
From Buchanan in St. Petersburg came a long telegram:
“. . . For ourselves position is a most perilous one, and we shall have to choose between giving Russia our active support or renouncing her friendship. If we fail her now we cannot hope to maintain that friendly cooperation with her in Asia that is of such vital importance to us.”
This telegram, indicating that ‘Russia, secure of support from France, will face all risks of war,’ might well have prompted Sir Edward Grey to the conclusion that it was high time to attempt to exercise a moderating influence at St. Petersburg, if he preferred to place the preservation of peace above the maintenance of the Triple Entente. But he did not. (My emphasis) Although Buchanan at St. Petersburg in the early part of the crisis attempted to exercise restraint upon Russia, no such effort was made from London. (my emphasis) The British Foreign Office took the stand expressed in a minute by Sir E. Crowe on July 25th:
“The moment has passed when it might have been possible to enlist French support in an effort to hold back Russia.
It is clear that France and Russia are decided to accept the challenge thrown out to them. What ever we may think of the merits of the Austrian charges against Servia, France and Russia consider that these are the pretexts, and that the bigger cause of Triple Alliance versus Triple Entente is definitely engaged.
I think it would be impolitic, not to say dangerous, for England to attempt to controvert this opinion, or to endeavor to obscure the plain issue, by any representation at St. Petersburg and Paris . . .
Our interests are tied up with those of France and Russia in this struggle, which is not for the possession of Servia, but one between Germany aiming at a political dictatorship in Europe and the Powers who desire to retain individual freedom.” (B.D., 10)
Fay notes: “Buchanan evidently made no effort to deter Sasonov from his purpose of converting partial into general mobilization [On July 30th]. His failure to do so must have been an encouragement to the Russian Minister.” (The Origins of the World War, Vol 2, P. 471)
As for the “Secret Elite,” every empire in history has had its coterie of powerful men who aimed to implement policies and measures to preserve and perpetuate their position for future generations. After the Pax Romana, there was the Pax Brittanica, the Pax Americana, with other Pax’s certain to follow. Today we have the Bilderbergers. The notion that Britain’s exalted position obliged her to guide and instruct the “lesser races” was common in Elizabethan and Victorian England and was shared by men like Rhodes. The power of the Rothschild banking family is beyond dispute, and the annexation of two hitherto independent nations – Transvaal and the Orange Free State – was an impressive demonstration of the power and influence of Alfred Milner. Men like theses did indeed wield the power to make such fundamental policy decisions but I must disagree with your position that these men were motivated by greed or other such motives. In making the decisions which signed the death warrant of the British Empire, the “Secret Elite” were almost certainly motivated by altruism as Quigley has suggested. But when the catastrophic results became apparent, Milner’s “Kindergarten” and their minions moved heaven and earth to hide their complicity. The intensity and scope of their efforts was commensurate with the horrific consequences which haunt the world to this day.
Again, congratulations on your great new website. It is a fitting complement to the impending millennial commemoration of the First World War.
Cordially,
Peter Hof (949-340-0295)