One sunny summer morning two royals from Vienna
travelled in a car on the crowded main street
of Sarajevo. The Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz
Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, were on an
official visit in Bosnia.
At 11 a.m. on June 28,1914, the driver
of their car made a wrong turn and entered
a narrow alley. The car came to an abrupt
halt in front of a young man, a Serb student
named Gavrilo Princip.
A member of the Black Hand terrorist group,
Princip could not believe his luck.
Without hesitation he pulled out his pistol and
fired at the royal couple at point blank range.
Within thirty minutes Sophie and Ferdinand
were dead.
Austria-Hungary used the assassination
as a pretext to declare war on Serbia.
Within a short time imperial rivalries
and mutual distrust escalated into
the Great War of 1914-1918.
The Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary
and Turkey fought a dreadful war against
the Allied Forces of France, Britain,
Russia, Italy and Japan. In the spring
of 1917 the USA also joined the Allies
and declared war on Germany.
The calamitous First World War, also known as
“The Great War”, lasted more than four years.
At its end about 37 million people lay dead.
In the aftermath of the senseless bloodshed
The world fell into the heinous abyss
of political turmoil, economic crises
and violent revolutions that paved the road
to the horrendous Second World War,
the most monstrous carnage in history.
World War II broke out only two decades
after the First One ended, and it ended
with even greater misery and destruction.
Over 70 million people lost their lives.
Leave a Reply