Black Hand

Unification or Death (, ), popularly known as the Black Hand (, ), was a secret military society formed in 1901 by officers in the Army of the Kingdom of Serbia. It gained a reputation for its alleged involvement in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 and for the earlier assassination of the Serbian royal couple in 1903, under the aegis of Captain Dragutin Dimitrijević ( "Apis"). The society formed to unite all of the territories with a South Slavic majority that was not then ruled by either Serbia or Montenegro. It took inspiration primarily from the unification of Italy in 1859–1870 but also from the unification of Germany in 1871. Through its connections to the June 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, carried out by the members of the youth movement Young Bosnia, the Black Hand is often viewed as instrumental in starting World War I (1914–1918) by precipitating the July Crisis of 1914, which eventually led to Austria-Hungary's invasion of the Kingdom of Serbia in August 1914. Background Apis' conspiracy group and the May Coup