Assassinations That Shook the World (Part III)

By Elizabeth H. Elys

Ever since Moabite King Eglon was stabbed to death on his throne in 1200BC, a long ago before that – political leaders have been killed for any number of reasons. Usually they are murdered because they are deemed a treat by other authority, or because of some controversial political stand they have taken, but sometimes the rationale can be as simple as quest for revenge or the desire by the assassin to be famous.

 

To the list of assassinations we can add very horrific event of Great War, an assassination of Archduke of Austria Franz Ferdinand.

Franz Ferdinand

The heir to the Austrian throne is considered to be the catalyst for the beginning of Great War 1914. On June 28^th 1914 he was on a visit to Sarajevo, which at the time a territory of Austria. While riding in an open-top car, he and his wife Sophie were shot by members of the Black Hand which was a Serbian group attempting to gain independence for all the states annexed by Austria-Hungary. The assassination was carried out by Gavrilo Princip, a 19 years old boy, who was a member of young Bosnia. 

 

WWI began two months after the assassination with Austria-Hungary declaring war to Serbia. This declaration of war started a domino effect across Europe in which all the allies of Serbia declared war on Austria-Hungary and all of its allies.

In the time when Europe was fighting Great War, in other part of globe, Mexican revolutionary leader Pancho Villa was fighting against the Mexican government.

Pancho Villa

He was known as a best Guerrilla fighter, the main protagonist of the Mexican Revolution.

Pancho Villa made an impact on Mexican community and he helped overthrow the corrupt Mexican government. His action made a positive impact, because like Robin Hood, he stole from the rich and gave to the poor.   

Pancho Villa started fighting and taking over town to help the out. He then decided to unite with Francisco I. Madero, who was murdered in 1913, also with Emiliano Zapata and Orosco to fight for rights of poor out and overthrow the Mexican government and its president Porfirio Diaz. On July 20, 1923 assassins shot him over forty times in his car together with his bodyguards.

During the 1930 and 1940s, Joseph Stalin, a Soviet leader carried out numerous assassinations outside of the Soviet Union, such as killing of organization of Ukrainian Nationalist leader Y. Konovalets, I. Poretsky, Rudolf Klement, and Leon Trotsky.

Leon Trotsky

Russian Revolutionary who opposed the endless opportunism of Stalin. Leon Trotsky was the revolutionary personality, a writer of power, an advocate of permanent revolution and, in contrast to Stalin’s socialism in one country world revolution. He joined the Bolshevik party and took a part in the seizure of power 1917 and raising the Red Army that fought the Civil War 1918-20. In the struggle for power that followed Lenin’s death 1924, Stalin defeated Trotsky and this and other differences with the Communist Party led to his exile 1929. He settled in Mexico, where he was assassinated in 1940, with ice pick by Ramon del Rio, at Stalin’s instigation.

In 1989, as a part of the policy of glasnost under Mikhail Gorbachev, it was revealed that Trotsky was murdered by the Soviet Secrete Police. Trotsky’s son, Sergei Sedov, who was shot death in Moscow in 1937, was rehabilitated by the Soviet Supreme Court in 1988.

During the WWII in Europe, one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and important figure in the rise of Adolf Hitler, Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated.

Reinhard Heydrich  

As a Nazi potentate, he was given overall charge of the so-called Final Solution, (Holocaust) of the Jews in Europe; he was called “Butcher of Europe.”

R. Heydrick was acting Reichprotektor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The operation “Anthropoid” was carried out in Prague on 27 May 1942 after having been prepared by the British Special Operations Executive with the approval of the Czechoslovak government in exile. Wounded in the attack by the grenade sitting in the car, he died of his injury on 4 of June, His death led to wave of merciless reprisals by German SS troops, including the destruction of village Lidice and killing of civilians. (CZECH GUERNICA).

Antropoid was the only successful assassination of a senior Nazi leader during WWII. The Polish underground killed two seniors SS officers in the general government (Operation Kutshera and Operation Burkl).

After the WWI India began war for Independence. The leader of the Indian revolution was Mahatma Gandhi.

Mahatma Gandhi

On January 30, 1948 Gandhi was shot and killed while having his nightly public walk in New Delhi. The assassin, Nathuram Godse, was a Hindu radical with links to the extremist Hindu Mahasabha, who held Gandhi responsible for weaking India by insisting upon a payment to Pakistan. Gandhi was a sophisticated leader of intellectual ideology, who became the symbol and icon who spread his revolutionary’s ideas over the world.

Assassinations on the American continent have been motivated by politics, religion, and even racism. The history of Latin America is a long and bloody one, riddled with conflicts, wars, and massacres. So many Latin American leaders were murdered. Going to the history we can mention, the assassination of Moctezuma, Atahualpa, Simon Bolivar, Antonio Jose de Sucre, Eloy Alfaro, Emiliano Zapata, Oscar Romero, etc.

   

Salvador Allende

A Chilean politician

He took an early interest in politics and was arrested several times, while a medical student for his radical activities. He helped found the Chilean Socialist Party (1933), a Marxist organization which stayed clear of the Soviet – orientated Communist Party. He was elected to the chamber of deputies, served as Minister of Health and was a senator. He won the presidency in 1970. Allende tried to build a socialist society within the framework of a parliamentary democracy but met an opposition from business interests, supported by the US CIA. The Marxist leader was overthrown, in September 1973, by a military junta, led by the General Pinochet. 

Allende was found on a blood stain sofa with a bullet through his mouth in presidential palace in Santiago. Rene Riveros Balderrama, a lieutenant stated that he shot the president and he exhibited “as a trophy Allende own watch.”

On January 2014, the Supreme Court of Chile closed the investigation to Allende’s death and confirmed the head of state took his own life in the Palacio de la Moneda.