Spear of Longinus from the Belgian Congo. Vigneron submachine gun
The Vigneron M2 submachine gun, which was in service with the Belgian army and the Force Publique units of the Belgian Congo, and then the Congolese National Army (author's photo)
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Weapons have always played an extremely important role in the evolution of mankind. And no matter how beautiful, graceful, charismatic or constructively interesting this or that sample was, it necessarily had one main function - the ability to kill. His influence on history cannot be overestimated - weapons have always been a full participant in the most important events, remaining in the shadow of people. And some of its “representatives”, sometimes not distinguished by particularly outstanding technical characteristics, nevertheless left their noticeable and bloody mark on it, which became a turning point in the development of the most important events that affected the fate of individuals, countries and all of humanity.
Spear of Destiny
The Gospel of John
Perhaps the most famous weapon in the history of mankind was the usual spear of a Roman legionnaire. It was, in modern terms, a piece of standard equipment for an infantryman of the Roman Empire. But the blood of the crucified Christ, which fell on its blade, gave it unique properties. The most common weapon became the Spear of Destiny. And, probably, the only one that has preserved for centuries the name of the person who owned it. And therefore, having another name - the Spear of Longinus. Those who possessed it received the gift to control the fate of not only their own, but also entire states, and even the whole world.
But the role of the Spear of Destiny often fell to a weapon that had nothing to do with the spear that was in the hands of the Roman Longinus when he pierced the body of Christ with it.
1. It was at this point that the normal weapon became the Spear of Destiny. Fragment of the icon "Crucifixion", Lower Rhine master, XV century.
On August 30, 1918, the Social Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan at the Michelson plant in Moscow attempted to assassinate Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. On the morning of the same day, the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, Moses Uritsky, was killed in Petrograd. These were not the first terrorist attacks against well-known Bolsheviks, but they played a key role in changing the internal policy of the Soviet government.
Kaplan's shots from a Browning M1900 (FN Browning M1900) resulted in the premature death of the leader of the young Soviet Republic, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Which, of course, influenced the choice of the path for the further development of the state. Who knows how it would have developed in the future if Lenin had remained alive and he had managed to put his ideas into practice the way they were intended. But history does not tolerate the subjunctive mood. The Red Terror and repressions that followed this assassination continued the chain of bloody traces in the history of the world's first socialist state. And at the beginning of this chain stands the Browning M1900 with serial number 150489, which, by the will of fate, ended up in the hands of 28-year-old terrorist Fanny Kaplan, nee Feiga Khaimovna Roytblat.
I must say, this browning model has become just some kind of fate for the Russian state. The gun strongly "inherited" in the history of Russia. Small, flat and rather compact, the 1900 made a splash in the handgun market with its appearance. He immediately became a favorite with revolutionaries and terrorists of all stripes. To a large extent, this was facilitated by the relatively low price of weapons.
It was from it that the Socialist-Revolutionary Dmitry Bogrov on September 1, 1911, during the intermission of the play “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” at the Kiev Opera House, shot the Chairman of the Council of Ministers Pyotr Stolypin, the author and initiator of new reforms carried out in the Russian Empire since 1906. Stolypin's government then developed a very wide range of legislative and administrative measures and reforms not only in the field of agriculture, but also in the field of local government and education.
Petr Arkadyevich Stolypin
3. Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Empire Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin (wikimedia.org)
It is very difficult to evaluate Stolypin's reforms, because they were never fully implemented. Stolypin himself assumed that all the transformations he planned would be carried out in a comprehensive manner and would give the maximum effect in the long term. The premature death of the reformer significantly slowed down their implementation. And the war and revolution put an end to the implementation of these grandiose plans.
Model "Browning" 1900 - a pistol chambered for a relatively weak cartridge. But his shots influenced the history of Russia very powerfully. Two bullets ended the life of a man whose activities could play a crucial role in the development of the economic power of the Russian Empire. A number of historians argue: had Stolypin brought the reform of the economy to the end, then the history of the country could have gone in a different direction ...
But even more fateful was another creation of John Moses Browning - the 1910 model. On June 28, 1914, the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip shot the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife Sofia Chotek with this pistol. Two bullets from a 9mm Browning 1910, number 19074, caused an unprecedented outcry. The terrorist was stunted, small in stature and suffered from tuberculosis. But his shots set in motion a powerful system of military alliances that had developed by that time in Europe. As a result, 38 states out of 59 that existed at that time got involved in an unprecedented massacre, during which about 10 million people died, and more than 20 million were injured and maimed.
The Second World War brought even more victims to humanity. But weapons continued to kill even in seemingly peaceful times, forcing history to take sharp and unpredictable turns...
Colonial murder
Sixty-one years ago, on January 17, 1961, the anti-government forces of the Congo, with the active assistance of the CIA, killed the leader of the country's democratic movement, one of the main organizers of the declaration of independence of this former Belgian colony, Patrice Emery Lumumba (Patrice Émery Lumumba). After several days of torture, he and his associates Joseph Okito and Maurice Mpolo were shot by the Belgian military.
By all accounts, Lumumba was a brilliant orator, distinguished by remarkable organizational talent and irresistible charm. Thanks to this, in the first elections in the country in May 1960, the National Movement of the Congo party headed by him won 44 out of 137 seats in parliament. The young politician became the first prime minister of the independent Congo. As a result of the current political situation, Brussels was forced to recognize the independence of its colony, hoping to create a puppet state and continue to freely use the country's richest natural resources at its discretion. But in this they miscalculated.
5. Patrice Lumumba (left) and Belgian Prime Minister Gaston Eyskens sign the Congo Independence Act. 1960 (bc.com)
On June 30, 1960, at the solemn ceremony of declaring the independence of the Belgian Congo, in the presence of King Baudouin I of Belgium, Lumumba declared that the Congo would never again be a raw material appendage of the West. This fiery speech actually sealed the fate of the first legally elected head of the Congolese government.
6. Leopoldville June 30, 1960 Force Publique patrol: Belgian officer and Congolese soldier armed with a Vigneron M2 submachine gun (wwiiafterwwii.wordpress.com)
The main mineral deposits and the entire mining industry of the country were concentrated in Katanga. There was a real danger of the nationalization of all its enterprises and, in particular, the fall of uranium mines into Moscow's zone of influence. And interruptions in the supply of cobalt could have an extremely negative impact on the global economy. In addition, the majority of the white population lived there. In this critical situation, the political forces of Belgium, associated with the king, with the tacit support of the CIA, initiated the secession of the province, and its leader, Moise Tshombe, proclaimed himself president of Katanga.
Belgian officers from all over the country began to arrive in Elisabethville, the provincial capital. It must be said that the plans of the new prime minister to "Africanize" the Congolese armed forces caused them a sharp rejection. Prior to that, not a single native inhabitant had a single chance to rise to the rank of officer. But African soldiers subordinate to the Belgians, who did not agree with the actions of the self-proclaimed president, rebelled. In response, the government of the former metropolis sent army units and paratroopers to Elisabethville. And already in July, Moise Tshombe, with the unspoken blessing of Brussels, announced the separation of Katanga from the Congo.
7. Belgian paratroopers armed with Vigneron M2 submachine guns (pinterest)
The idea of the Americans to use the United Nations to prevent Lumumba from getting out of the control of the West failed miserably. The UN actually supported Belgium in secession of the province of Katanga, which naturally caused a sharp negative reaction from the young prime minister. Since without Katanga the country was doomed to poverty.
8. Patrol of the UN peacekeeping contingent in the Congo. The soldiers are armed with submachine guns: on the left - Vigneron M2, on the right - M / 45 Carl Gustav (greydynamics.com)
When the Belgian troops began to brutally suppress the uprising of the Congolese, Lumumba turned to a number of countries (including the USSR) for help to repel the Belgian "imperialist aggression". For Allen Dulles, director of the CIA, this was enough to declare Lumumba a sort of "new Castro, if not worse."
Laurence Devlin, CIA Resident in Leopoldville
9. CIA Director Allen Dulles (histrf.ru)
The US National Security Council in the summer of 1960 devoted several of its meetings to Lumumba. As a result, Dwight Eisenhower, the President of the United States, approved the recommendations of the CIA to eliminate the obstinate prime minister. CIA specialists developed several options for killing Lumumba using firearms and poison. As a result, the plan for Operation Blue Arrow was approved.
The physical elimination of Patrice Lumumba was also planned in London. An employee of the British Foreign Office, Howard Smith, drafted a memo on this matter, which proposed various options for the liquidation of the Congolese prime minister objectionable to the West. But MI6 was not officially mentioned in it. Nevertheless, the version of the involvement of British foreign intelligence in this high-profile murder was confirmed shortly before her death in 2010 by Baroness Daphne Park. Between 1959 and 1961 she was consul and first secretary in Léopoldville, while heading the MI6 office in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
10. US President Dwight Eisenhower (history-doc.ru)
The Belgian intelligence services did not stand aside either. A plan was prepared to kidnap Lumumba, codenamed "Operation Barracuda". The operation was entrusted to a detachment of Belgian commandos under the command of Colonel Louis Marliere. On October 6, the Minister for African Affairs, Count d'Asprimon Linden, sent a telegram to his subordinates in the Congo demanding that Lumumba be put to rest once and for all.
11. Joseph Mobutu (right) and his adviser (center) Colonel Louis Marlier (ikimedia.org)
However, the situation got out of control, and events began to develop according to an unforeseen scenario. On October 10, Colonel Mobutu's soldiers took Patrice Lumumba, who had been retired a month ago, under house arrest. And yet he soon managed to escape. The disgraced prime minister, with a small group of associates, headed for Stanleyville, the capital of the Eastern Province, where former Deputy Prime Minister Antoine Gizenga was gathering armed groups of his associates.
But on December 1, halfway through, the fugitives were arrested by a military patrol and then sent to Leopoldville. The successful military operations of Lumumba's supporters, who by mid-January took control of almost half of the country, caused panic in the ranks of the rebels who overthrew the legitimately elected prime minister. There was a high probability of his release. Panic reigned in the government of the metropolis. African Affairs Minister d'Asprimont Linden demanded that Colonel Marlier "obstruct the release of Lumumba at any cost." But none of the putschists wanted to stain their hands with blood. After much hesitation, it was decided to get rid of the dangerous prisoner by deporting him by plane to Moise Tshombe in Katanga.
12. Joseph Desiree Mobutu. A former senior sergeant who overnight became a colonel. He was appointed by Lumumba as Chief of the Army General Staff. But he took the side of his coup enemies. Subsequently, he established his dictatorship in the Congo for more than 30 years (foreignpolicy.com)
On January 17, a Trans Air Congo DC-4 took off for Elisabethville. On board, in addition to the convoy, there were three captives: Patrice Lumumba, former Minister of Youth and Sports Maurice Mpolo and former Vice President of the Senate Joseph Okito.
Upon arrival on the way from Luano airport to Elisabethville, the guards stopped the car in a field. The doomed were taken out and offered to pray. Lumumba refused. At 23:00 GMT, the captives were shot. The execution team consisted of four African soldiers and two Belgian commanders. Lumumba was the last to die. The entire execution took no more than 15 minutes. It was precisely the execution, and not an attempt to escape. The bodies of the executed were buried in a common grave. But in order to avoid any investigation, the next day the corpses were exhumed, cut into pieces, then dissolved in a barrel of sulfuric acid.
On January 17, 2014, on the 53rd anniversary of the death of Patrice Lumumba, the US State Department documented its involvement in the overthrow and assassination of the former Prime Minister of the Congo by releasing a 900-page declassified document titled "The Congo 1960-1968". When studying this treatise, it becomes clear that the possibility of Lumumba's alliance with the "communist enemy" caused the United States serious concerns. It was not the prime minister of the newly independent state who frightened the West, but rather the specter of communism led by the USSR, which was advancing on the Congo and its natural resources. The province of Katanga had the richest deposits of raw materials in the country. Actually, this attracted the attention of the Americans. What is directly indicated by the analytical data given in this confidential document:
I must say that 80% of the uranium with which the atomic bombs dropped by the Americans on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were filled, were obtained from ore of Congolese origin. The diamond-bearing south of the Kasai province was also a "tasty morsel". And the Americans simply could not allow such unique natural resources to leak into the wrong hands.
In fairness, it should be noted that although the CIA itself planned the physical elimination of Patrice Lumumba, they did not manage to take a direct part in his murder. The Americans were simply ahead. Figuratively speaking, the “cloak and dagger agency” did it with the wrong hands, by all means pushing Brussels and the rebels to do the dirty work, putting pressure on the former and supporting the latter in every possible way. In particular, the Americans, under the guise of humanitarian aid through the UN, gave Colonel Mobutu a million dollars to pay salaries and purchase provisions for the army in order to win his sympathy in this way.
This applies equally to MI6. The British were clearly aware of the impending assassination, and they "turned a blind eye" to this fact. The US and UK simply allowed it to happen and even actively contributed to this atrocity. Such behavior can clearly be interpreted as complicity in a crime, and nothing else.
The fact that the United States was aware of those tragic events is confirmed by a CIA telegram dated February 7, 1961, detailing the execution of Lumumba and his associates:
Washington, February 7, 1961.
TDCS–3/464, 615, Field Report
SUBJECT
Reported death of Patrice Lumumba, Joseph Okito and Maurice Mpolo in Katanga
1. Patrice Lumumba, Joseph Okito and Maurice Mpolo were executed shortly after their arrival in Elisabethville the evening of 17 Jan. Katanga soldiers shot and killed Okito and Mpolo. A Belgian officer of Flemish origin executed Lumumba with a burst of submachine gun fire at 2300Z 17 Jan. An ear was severed from Lumumba's head and sent to Albert Kalonji, President of Sud-Kasai. The three bodies were buried in a common grave.
Chapter 68
Washington, February 7, 1961
TDCS–3/464, 615, Field Report
SUBJECT
The deaths of Patrice Lumumba, Joseph Okito and Maurice Mpolo are reported in Katanga.
1. Patrice Lumumba, Joseph Okito and Maurice Mpolo were executed shortly after their arrival in Elisabethville on the evening of 17 January. Soldiers from Katanga shot Okito and Mpolo. A Belgian officer of Flemish origin executed Lumumba with a burst from a submachine gun at 23:00 GMT on 17 January. An ear was cut off Lumumba's head and sent to Albert Kalonji, President of South Kasai. Three bodies were buried in a common grave.
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, Volume XXIII,
Congo, 1960–1968
Collection of documents.
To hide the resonant murder, the Katangese authorities officially announced that Lumumba fled and was killed by local peasants. But as a result of an investigation conducted by the UN under pressure from the progressive public, it turned out that he was killed by the Belgian military on the night of January 17, 1961. Retired Belgian officers themselves shamelessly admit this in the shocking documentary "Murder in Colonial Style" directed by Thomas Gifer. One of them, Gerard Soet, who directly took part in the dismemberment and burning of the corpse of the executed Patrice Lumumba and two of his associates, smiling, hints at the fact that he left Lumumba's two front teeth as a keepsake. Neither he nor his accomplices regretted what they had done and did not suffer any punishment for their crime.
In 2002, a special commission of the Belgian parliament restored the details of the assassination of the first prime minister of the independent Congo. In its conclusions, the commission noted that King Baudouin of Belgium was aware of the plans to liquidate Lumumba. It was also established that the country's government provided financial and military assistance to the enemies of the recalcitrant prime minister, and also provided them with transport.
A Belgian officer executed the first Prime Minister of the independent Congo by shooting him with a Vigneron submachine gun. The vile murder of a patriot and fighter for the freedom of his country provoked a long-term political crisis and actually put an end to the democratic development of the young state, and ultimately to its real independence.
The ensuing numerous military coups, mutinies, long years of the reign of the most cruel dictator, bloody ethnic wars led to numerous human casualties. Only as a result of the second Congolese war, which broke out in 1998-2002 on the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the devastation that followed, more than 5,4 million people died, including from hunger and disease. What made this war one of the bloodiest in world history and the deadliest conflict since World War II.
Today, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, possessing the untold wealth of its subsoil, remains one of the poorest countries in the world. About what this country would be like with a young and charismatic prime minister named Patrice Emery Lumumba, now we can only guess ...
Lumumba, who was in power for only 10 weeks, did not have time to do almost anything. Disputes about his role in the history of the Congo still do not subside. "Political meteor", "idealist", "mad dog", "martyr of freedom" - all this is about him. He fell into the millstones of history and died, but left his bright mark in it.
The day will come when history will have its say."
Patrice Lumumba
The tragic events in the Belgian Congo forced such two superpowers as the USA and the USSR to radically change their international policy towards the countries of the African continent. Prior to that, neither one nor the other did not perceive the states of Africa as independent players in the international arena. If earlier the CIA did not even have an African department (the continent was under the jurisdiction of the departments of Europe and the Middle East), then in subsequent years the American intelligence presence in Africa increased several times.
Moscow has also taken steps to create its sphere of influence in African countries. The USSR began to provide all possible support to the partisans of South Africa. And in the 70s, together with Cuba, he actively intervened in armed conflicts in Angola and the Horn of Africa.
16. Cuban volunteers in Angola (russian7.ru)
What was the Vigneron submachine gun, which, figuratively speaking, became the “Spear of Destiny” in the hands of a Belgian officer, who, unlike Longinus, did not see the light and did not repent of his crime? We will talk about this separately.
17. The Vigneron M2 submachine gun is an active participant in the turbulent historical events that took place on the African continent in the 60s of the XX century (photo by the author)
To be continued ...
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