The creation of this (artificial, so the Serbs felt)
Albanian state deprived Serbia - alone among the victors - from
access to the sea. It had another cause for paranoid delusions and
deepening sense of victimization at the hands of vast conspiracies.
Relegated to the geopolitical sidelines, denuded of their conquests,
coerced by a Big Power, the Serbs felt humiliated, stabbed in the
back, discriminated against, inferior and wrathful. Frustration
breeds aggression we are taught and this true lesson was never more
oft-repeated than in the Balkans.
The raging rivalry between an eastward-bound Austria and a defiant
Serbia was bound to boil over. The Black Hand was there to provoke
the parties into a final test of strengths and willpower. Dame
Rebecca West voices her doubts regarding the true intent of the
Black Handers in their involvement (which she does not dispute) in
the events that followed. Based on all manner of circumstantial
evidence and the testimonies of mysterious friends of furtive
conspirators she reaches the conclusion that they did not believe in
the conspiracy to which they lent their support. The Black Hand went
along with the planning and execution of the assassination of
Archduke, heir to the throne Franz (Francis) Ferdinand in 1914,
disbelieving all the way both the skills and the commitment of the
youthful would be assassins.
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