I learned this today. The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28th June 1914 started World War 1 because of a series of treaties that existed across Europe.
It should be noted that the assassination didn’t cause the war. Because of the rising tensions in Europe, war was probably going to happen at some point anyway. Britain and France both had large empires on several different continents. Germany had become a country in 1871 and had plans for an empire of its own. They had started to develop colonies in Africa, but it was inevitable that the three major European powers would come to a head at some point. All of the countries had started to develop their armies and navies in preparation for a war that they knew would come one day. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand didn’t cause the war but it was the event that sparked it.
First, who exactly was Archduke Franz Ferdinand? He was the heir presumptive to the throne of Austria-Hungary because his cousin, the only son of his uncle Emperor Franz Joseph I, had died. He was 50 years old when he died.
When he was assassinated, the archduke and his wife were visiting Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Austria-Hungary had annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908, a move which most of the major powers in Europe protested against. The visit of the archduke to Sarajevo was to open a new museum and to inspect the army. There had been numerous attacks on Austro-Hungarian officials in previous years and the archduke must have known that there was some danger.
The assassination attempt that actually killed the archduke was the second on that day. The first attempt was a bomb thrown at his car, but it missed its mark. The archduke and his wife continued with their engagements and left in their open topped car. Their driver took a wrong turn and stopped to turn around. At that moment, a Bosnian Serb student called Gavrilo Princip stepped up onto the footboard of the car and shot both the archduke and his wife. Princip wanted independence for Bosnia from Austria-Hungary. He could have had no idea that his action would lead to the deaths of about 20 million people.
So, why did this assassination lead to war? We need to step back a few years first. Europe had divided itself into two blocks of allies. War in Europe has been a pretty constant situation for over a thousand years. The main powers are always allying with each other against each other, and these treaties change over the years. This was another case of the same old same old, except the weapons and the numbers were more than they had ever been before.
In 1879, the new country of Germany allied with Austria-Hungary against Russia. If Russia attacked either of them they were duty bound to fight back. In 1882, Italy joined Germany and Austria-Hungary to make the Triple Alliance. Russia answered this by allying with France in 1894. Great Britain was scared by how quickly Germany was growing and so, in 1907, Great Britain joined France and Russia and made the Triple Entente. This delicate balance meant that any attack on any of these six countries would basically lead to a European war. They were just waiting for a reason to start fighting.
Gavrilo Princip provided this reason. When he assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Austria-Hungary saw it as a direct attack on them. They accused the Serbians of helping the Bosnians and being complicit in the murder. The Serbians denied it. Austria-Hungary sent a long list of demands to Serbia, and Serbia refused almost all of them, instead mobilizing their army. Austria-Hungary double checked that Germany really would back them up, and declared war on Serbia on 28th July 1914.
Russia wanted to control the Balkans, so it began to mobilize its troops to support Serbia. Germany demanded that Russia stand down and that France remained neutral. France refused and started to mobilize. Germany declared war on Russia on August 1st and France on August 3rd. Britain declared war on Germany and its allies a few days later and Germany was now at war with France, Russia, and Britain. From one simple assassination, within a month and a half, a European-wide war had broken out. Because all of the countries involved also had colonies, the war would become the world’s first “world” war.
So, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated because Austria-Hungary had annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, and that action led all of the major powers in Europe to begin fighting. However, if that assassination hadn’t happened, they would probably have found another reason to fight each other. And this is what I learned today.
If you read this far, I would appreciate a like and a follow.
Picture By Walter Tausch – Europeana 1914-1918, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26951169
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand
https://www.history.com/news/did-franz-ferdinands-assassination-cause-world-war-i
https://www.ducksters.com/history/world_war_i/assassination_of_archduke_ferdinand.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_German_colonies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I