The car with Franz Ferdinand stopped right at the corner of the Latin Bridge. The governor had just realized the driver had taken the wrong route, and he ordered the chauffeur to turn around. An assassin named Gavrilo Princip was standing on that corner. He fired two shots.
The first bullet hit the Duchess Sophie in the lower abdomen. The second hit the Archduke in the neck. Both were dead within the hour. On the morning of June 28, 1914, the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne and his wife had arrived in Sarajevo to a carefully planned welcome.
A motorcade was meant to carry them along the Miljacka River toward City Hall, where a festive reception waited. Everything appeared under control. At 10:25, about half a mile from the destination, a man in the cheering crowd hurled a bomb at the convoy. It bounced off the car and exploded in front of the vehicle behind it.
An escort officer was wounded. Franz Ferdinand and his wife were spared. Police quickly arrested the 19-year-old Bosnian Serb attacker, Nedeljko Cabrinovic, and both he and the evidence landed in the hands of investigating judge Leo Pfeffer. The judge did not believe Cabrinovic had acted alone.
The political climate made that hard to accept. In 1908, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, a move that Serbia saw as a provocation. Many Bosnian Serbs aspired to a Greater Serbia, a nation uniting the Southern Slavs. And the date chosen for the Archduke’s visit was itself an insult to many Serbs, since June 28 was their national and religious holiday of St.
Titus. Despite the failed attempt, Franz Ferdinand decided to continue his visit. To reduce the risk of another attack, the route was changed to the garrison hospital so the couple could see the injured officer. But not everyone had been informed of the change.
At 10:45, the motorcade reached the Latin Bridge. The cars kept straight on according to the original plan instead of turning. The driver’s mistake placed the Archduke, his wife, and the entire course of modern history right in front of Gavrilo Princip. Princip was also 19, a Bosnian Serb student.
He was arrested on the spot. The assassination shocked Europe and sent a nervous tremor through the entire continent. Investigators were under enormous pressure. The attackers were cautious with their statements, with each detained man claiming he had acted alone.
The authorities suspected a conspiracy and quickly arrested dozens of suspected Serbs. They learned that Princip and Cabrinovic had been in contact with Danilo Ilic, a member of a Serbian terror organization known to history as the Black Hand. Its official name was Unification or Death. Led by Serbian military intelligence chief Dragutin Dimitrijevic, the group pursued a pan-Serbian nationalist program and had networks on both sides of the border.
Belgrade’s involvement was unclear. Serbian Prime Minister Pašić may have had knowledge of the plot. No evidence proved the government was behind the assassination, but Austria-Hungary decided the inference was enough. Berlin handed Vienna a blank check, guaranteeing military support if it attacked Serbia.
Russia, in turn, stood beside Serbia through its powerful alliance with France and the United Kingdom. Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum with intentionally intolerable demands, expecting Serbia to reject it. When the deadline passed, the Dual Monarchy declared war on July 28, 1914. The great powers’ defensive alliances clicked into place on both sides.
Within weeks, Europe was at war. The First World War would cost nearly 17 million lives. Historian Nicolas Moll, who has studied Sarajevo for over 15 years, notes that the war might have broken out anyway. But the assassination gave it a pretext, an opening, and it certainly affected the timing.
The Sarajevo assassination influenced the course of history like no other event. Princip was too young to face the death penalty. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Three other conspirators were sentenced to death.
It later emerged that the Black Hand had supported the attackers with weapons and logistics, and that the Serbian government knew of their plans. —
On February 14, 1929, in a Chicago garage, seven men were lined up against a wall by attackers who posed as police officers. They took the victims’ guns, then opened fire with a Thompson submachine gun, riddling the men with bullets. “They were known as the Chicago typewriter because of how fast they would shoot,” says author John Binder, who has researched Chicago’s organized crime history.
Five of the seven men belonged to the North Side Gang, and a sixth was a mechanic who worked with them. Police quickly concluded it was another episode in Chicago’s long-running gang war. Organized crime in America was not new. In the mid-19th century, millions of European immigrants had fled poverty, war, and hunger for the United States.
Among them were Germans, Poles, Irish, and Italians. Many faced unemployment and discrimination, and they formed criminal factions in this new environment. Their influence was at first confined to neighborhoods. That changed in 1920, when the government banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol.
“Passing a law in Washington isn’t going to make them stop drinking,” Binder explains. By making the entire liquor industry illegal during Prohibition, the government handed it over to organized crime. Gangs stopped being local and became citywide, statewide, and even interstate. Local police could not keep up.
Their jurisdiction stopped at city borders, and there was no federal money or manpower to pursue investigations. The gangs ran multi-million-dollar operations freely. Two crews were direct competitors: the North Side Gang and the Chicago Outfit in the south. In the brutal gang war, murders were everyday occurrences.
Al Capone took control of the Chicago Outfit in 1925. The charismatic son of Italian immigrants surrounded himself with a large protective network. He never wanted to commit a crime himself, knowing it was nearly impossible to trace anything back to him. “Capone had a large network of people that surrounded him and protected him,” Binder says.
“And he knew well enough that he would never want to commit a crime on his own. ”
Capone earned millions and bribed local politicians and policemen. He courted publicity and gave money to poor communities to buy loyalty. Behind that benevolent facade was an unscrupulous businessman who ran narcotics, gambling, prostitution, and labor racketeering.
Though police blamed Capone for numerous assassinations, they could never prove one. But the Valentine’s Day massacre went down in American criminal history. The public outcry was so loud that President Herbert Hoover got involved. He instructed the tax authorities to go after Capone’s money.
If nobody could prove he ordered the murders, they could still prove he lived far beyond what he declared in his tax returns. Tax investigator Frank Wilson headed the inquiry. Day and night, his team worked through millions of documents searching for evidence. “You have to follow the money,” Binder says.
“Capone was very careful not to leave a paper trail. No accounting books, no letters. ”
Wilson’s investigators used what would now be called forensic accounting, tracing links between Capone, his known associates, and their businesses. It was a tedious process with slow progress.
Then, in 1931, police made an unexpected arrest. Fred Killer Burke was caught on a farm, and investigators found an arsenal in his bungalow, including two Thompson submachine guns that could have been used in the massacre. Specialist Helvin Goddard proved with his comparison microscope that these guns had killed the victims. It established the science of forensic ballistics.
But Burke refused to implicate Capone, and the background of the massacre remained unclear. Frank Wilson’s team had better luck. A nondescript cash account book revealed that $17,500 had been transferred to Capone from a casino. That became a starting point.
The investigators identified business partners and obtained testimony that implicated the mob boss. On November 24, 1931, a federal court sentenced Al Capone to 11 years in prison for tax evasion. He would spend much of his time on Alcatraz. In 1939, he was released early due to advanced syphilis, which had damaged his brain.
“He was already suffering from an advanced case of syphilis,” Binder notes, “and the authorities decided this so messed up his brain that he was not the same man he was before. ”
Al Capone spent the last years of his life as a recluse in Florida and died after a stroke in 1947. The massacre on Valentine’s Day had marked the beginning of the end. Though there was no proof he ordered the murders, the massacre crumbled his image and ignited the battle against organized crime.
The FBI was strategically expanded into a national crime-fighting agency, capable of crossing the many local, county, and state boundaries that had once held back justice. —
On the evening of March 1, 1932, in New Jersey, nursemaid Betty Gow went to check on Charlie. The 20-month-old had a cold, and three hours had passed since she put him to bed. Colonel, colonel, she cried out.
The child had vanished. The baby belonged to Anne Morrow and Charles Lindbergh, the aviator famous for the first solo, non-stop flight across the Atlantic in 1927. In the public eye, he embodied American achievement. When his firstborn son disappeared, it became the most expensive and widespread search the country had ever experienced.
Lindbergh immediately called the authorities. New Jersey State Police secured the residence that same night. Norman Schwarzkopf headed the investigation and followed the most important tip: a ransom demand for $50,000 left in the baby’s room. The note was written in broken English and contained an unusual mark.
The author referred not to himself alone but to “us,” which made Lindbergh and the police believe a gang was behind it. Hundreds of officers combed the property under immense media pressure. Investigators discovered a ladder left near the child’s room, a vital piece of evidence, but the crowd of reporters trampled footprints and tire tracks and ruined much of it. Schwarzkopf involved Lindbergh in the investigation and allowed him to make decisions.
Then things got stranger. John Condon, a retired teacher from the Bronx, approached the case on his own. “All of a sudden, here comes Condon who said, ‘I just placed an ad on my own in this local paper and the next day I got a response, which I’m sure is genuine, from the kidnap gang,’” historian Walter S. Frank notes.
The written response carried the same mark as the ransom note. Lindbergh invited Condon to the farmhouse immediately. The police did not trust him, but Lindbergh accepted the unknown mediator. On March 12, 1932, Condon met the presumed kidnapper in a cemetery in the Bronx.
The man said the child was in his care and handed over a piece of clothing as proof. The Lindberghs confirmed its authenticity. The kidnapper arranged another handoff. The ransom money consisted of gold certificates, dollar bills tied to the value of gold.
Police recorded every serial number. Lindbergh told police not to conduct surveillance. “He didn’t want the New Jersey police there or the New York police there,” Frank explains. “He would just be sitting in a car 200 feet away as this transpired.
”
Condon met the supposed kidnapper again, handed over the money, and received a handwritten note with an address where the child could presumably be found. The next day, police searched feverishly in Massachusetts. There was no sign of Charles Jr. anywhere.
On May 12, 1932, a truck driver discovered the body of a child in the woods a few miles from the Lindbergh property. The baby had been murdered. The news shattered America, and the kidnapping became a national trauma. Long articles in major papers criticized the police for bungling the case.
Then, two and a half years later, a new clue emerged. A man paid at a New York gas station with a gold certificate that the government had already pulled out of circulation. The employee noted the customer’s license plate. The police traced the bill to the ransom money and identified German immigrant Richard Hauptmann.
A search of his home found most of the ransom money. They believed they had the killer. Hauptmann insisted he was innocent. He claimed to have received the money from Isidor Fisch, a man who had since died.
Police did not believe him. His trial began on January 3, 1935, in Flemington, New Jersey. Seven hundred journalists packed the small town. The atmosphere was compared to a circus, and ninety percent of the press was convinced from day one that Hauptmann was guilty.
Charles Lindbergh appeared as a witness. The judge allowed him to sit at the prosecutor’s table. Lindbergh told the court that without a doubt, he recognized Hauptmann’s voice as the voice of the man from the cemetery. But Lindbergh had been 200 feet away during the handoff.
“No one could ID a voice from that distance two years later,” historian Walter S. Frank notes. “You probably couldn’t even do it a month later. ”
Condon also testified that he recognized Hauptmann, despite failing to do so during a pre-trial police interrogation.
The state’s evidence piled up. Wood expert Erastus Hudson had found over 500 fingerprints on the ladder. Many were the result of mishandling by police and reporters. But when the ladder was taken apart, there was a set of prints on an inside joint that could only have been made by the person who constructed it.
When Hauptmann was arrested, Hudson called police and asked, “Have you checked his fingerprints against the ones on that inside joint? ” Police checked them. The prints did not match. “He said you’ve got the wrong guy,” Frank recalls.
The prosecution offered to waive the death penalty if Hauptmann confessed. He refused. The trial lasted a month before the jury found him guilty. He was executed on April 3, 1936.
The case left many unanswered questions about police procedure, public pressure, and the credibility of the evidence. The judicial system showed no interest in reopening it, but politicians saw a need for action. Congress passed the Lindbergh Law, making child abduction a federal crime. It enabled the FBI to investigate kidnappings across state lines.
Still, doubt remained over who had truly taken the Lindbergh baby. Wood DNA tests on the two surviving pieces of evidence have never been performed. Many legal experts today are critical of the trial and the death sentence, and Eric Linklater has called for Hauptmann’s posthumous exoneration. —
July 20, 1944, East Prussia.
General Staff Officer Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg arrived at Adolf Hitler’s headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair. He was part of a group of conspirators who wanted to kill Hitler and bring the Second World War to an end as quickly as possible. At 12:42 p. m.
, a bomb exploded. Four people were killed. Hitler survived. Stauffenberg returned to Berlin immediately, and the conspirators put their long-planned coup into motion.
Operation Valkyrie had been prepared well in advance. On Hitler’s death, the military was to take power in Berlin. One man was key: Otto Ernst Remer, head of the guard battalion. He knew nothing about the conspiracy.
His commanding officer, Lieutenant General Paul von Hase, who was himself a conspirator, ordered him to seal off the government quarters and arrest leading representatives of the National Socialist state. Remer set out on the mission. But when he visited Joseph Goebbels to secure the government district, Goebbels told him Hitler was alive. Goebbels arranged a telephone call between Remer and Hitler at the Wolf’s Lair.
“I recognize your voice,” Hitler said. “Mein Führer, jawohl,” Remer answered. Hitler ordered Remer to crush the coup. The plan failed.
Stauffenberg and three conspirators were summarily executed. The Nazi propaganda machine praised Remer, and he was promoted to major general. Less than nine months later, Germany lay in ruins. The war was lost.
Yet public opinion did not change right away. In 1945, though everyone knew of the regime’s crimes, most people saw the July 20 conspirators as criminals. A 1951 survey showed that only one-third of Germans viewed the assassination attempt positively. In 1949, Otto Ernst Remer helped found the Socialist Reich Party, one of the most extreme right-wing nationalist factions in post-war Germany.
He unashamedly subscribed to National Socialism and became its poster boy. On May 3, 1951, at a campaign event in Lower Saxony, Remer again described the July 20 conspirators as traitors. Interior Minister Robert Lehr filed a complaint for malicious defamation. The case went to the district court in Braunschweig.
Attorney General Fritz Bauer saw immediately what was at stake. Bauer was a legal expert who had fled Germany in 1936 because he was a Jew and a social democrat. He returned in 1949 with a mission. He believed a democracy needs democrats, and that it would be impossible to repress and forget what had happened.
He wanted to rehabilitate the attempted assassins of July 20 and to legitimize the right to resist in general. The trial began on March 7, 1952. Remer’s far-right supporters hoped for acquittal. The resistance fighters’ families wanted justice.
Historians and experts spoke over four days. One central question was whether the oath of loyalty to the Führer was legally binding. Starting in 1934, every soldier swore loyalty to Hitler. Had the conspirators committed high treason?
Bauer argued in his closing statement that one cannot commit high treason when the state itself is criminal. “You cannot betray a state that is criminal,” he said. “It has betrayed its own people. And those who support such a state are themselves criminal.
”
On March 15, 1952, the court sentenced Remer to three months in prison. He fled the country before serving time, but the trial’s importance was immense. It legally rehabilitated the July 20 resistance fighters. Their wives retrospectively received widows’ pensions.
It enshrined in German law the right to resist, establishing that under certain circumstances, plotting against an existing regime was valid and legal. Fritz Bauer considered this only a partial victory. He continued to fight for a democratic society and pursued Nazi crimes before the law for years afterward. As historian Michael N.
Dobkowski put it, “Post-war Germany without Fritz Bauer would probably have looked grim. The Federal Republic owes him a great deal. ”
The Remer trial marked an important step in Germany’s examination of its National Socialist past, and a landmark decision for German democracy.
