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In Hubert Butler's "Balkan Essays" we learn that Butler translated the manuscript of Leo Pfeffer, the magistrate that presided over the trial of Gavrilo Princip and his compatriots for the Sarajevo assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
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In Hubert Butler's "Balkan Essays" we learn that Butler translated the manuscript of Leo Pfeffer, the magistrate that presided over the trial of Gavrilo Princip and his compatriots for the Sarajevo assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
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Pfeffer, having investigated the assassination and tried Princip and his allies, and being a primary source, had some interesting observations and conclusions about the assassination
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Pfeffer concluded that Princip and his allies acted on their own behalf with any links to Serbia proper being unofficial. This was diametrically opposed to the position of his Austria-Hungary bosses
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Pfeffer also speculated that the Archduke's visit to Bosnia on the Serb holiday of St Vitus could have been a deliberate provocation staged by Vienna. How else to explain the withdrawal of police & security even after a first assassination attempt had already taken place?
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Why is this important? A multitude of self styled experts on the causes of WW1 insist that the Serb govt masterminded the Sarajevo assassination & that Serbia deserved to be attacked by the Central Powers.
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Pfeffer's manuscript, a highly credible primary source, indicates otherwise. Yet he is almost never used as a source by the "pundits".
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There are also some interesting observations of Princip. It's clear that Pfeffer did not see Princip as a common criminal & understood the deeper political context of the assassination and the inevitable dissolution of Austria-Hungary whose time was up.
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