A Russian Shadow over the Assassination in Sarajevo

Werner Lehfeldt

A Russian Shadow over the Assassination in Sarajevo

Werner Lehfeldt

Abstract

The main purpose of the present note is to draw attention to a document that contains hints of a possible Russian background to the assassination of the successor to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo. This document was written by the main organizer of this disastrous murder, the chief of the Serbian military secret service, Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević-Apis, in 1917, when Dimitrijević-Apis was accused of having organized another such attempt on the Serbian regent Aleksandar. Dimitrijević-Apis writes that he made the final decision to organize the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand only after he had been assured by the Russian military attaché in Belgrade, Colonel Viktor Artamanov, that Russia would not leave Serbia without military support in case of an Austrian attack.

Keywords

beginning of World War I; assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo 1914; Dragutin Dimitrijević-Apis as the main organizer of the assassination plot; possible Russian complicity in the plot

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