Gavrilo Princip, who triggered a war, was also a Serbian hero

The Globe and Mail ^ | July 29, 2014 | Mihailo Papazoglu

[Sam Gamgee]

I guess we will both have to believe what it is we believe. Personally I discount what typical history we are taught in school and University about those events as Allied propaganda.

[Sam Gamgee]

Were the Serbs not more than happy to be dominated by a Communist regime. Communists, Nazis, what’s the difference?

[driftless2]

My own view of WWI was that it was a powderkeg waiting to explode with many people eager to light the match. So could WWI have been avoided? Too many ethnic and social problems i.e. Russia, the Balkans. Too much tension for it not to explode. Too many powers eager to be the brightest star in the European galaxy.

[ozzymandus]

You say you don’t equate Ferdinand with Hitler, but you do. What if some Indian nationalist had assassinated Queen Victoria? How would he be remembered? That seems like a more apt comparison.

[Billthedrill]

With respect, Princip was a young fool and a lousy shot (his friends had mocked him for it) who got very lucky and the world, unlucky. He shot an unarmed man and woman, the one man in the Austro-Hungarian government who might most have benefited Serbian independence, and left that government in the hands of Franz Joseph, the man least likely to have benefited Serbian independence and the most likely to do precisely what he did, start a war over the issue. The woman Princip shot died trying to shield her husband from a murderer. This cold butchery was not the action of a "hero" in any sense.

It is not, I am sure, the general Serbian view that the Serbian blood that flowed over the next four years (and it did, horrifically) had a place on his hands, but it is mine. You are welcome to differ and I respect that.