![]() On the night of July 10-11, 1903, King Alexander and Queen Draga of Serbia were assassinated by Serb nationalists to install a new regime under King Peter. (Getty)Ī series of violent, bloody events in Serbia led to the assassination of Ferdinand. The above photo shows Sarajevo police arresting Nedeljko Cabrinovic, who was a member of the group Princip was with. Ferdinand Was Heir Presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian Throne When Assassinated Here’s a look at the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.ġ. Therefore, there has been chatter about how this event could lead to World War III.Ĭharles Lester reports that local Turkish media have identified the shooter as Mert Altintas, a member of the Ankara Police Special Operations. Turkey is a member of NATO, and would require the support of other NATO allies – including the U.S. Russia has been backing Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in the Syrian Civil War, while Turkey has condemned Assad. Karlov’s death brings up a similar situation, where if one country declares war on another, it would cause a domino affect of allies coming to help one another. Over 9 million soldiers died in World War I. was involved in the war for less than half of its length, as the war ended on November 11, 1918. did not enter World War I until April 1917, when it declared war on Germany. Russia was also part of the Triple Entente – later the Allied Powers – and that brought in France and the U.K. Russia was Serbia’s ally, so an attack on Serbia brought Russia into the war. After Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia a month after Ferdinand was killed, Germany entered the war on Austria-Hungary’s side. The attack has drawn comparisons to the assassination of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose murder sparked World War I on June 28, 1914.įerdinand’s death sparked a chain reaction that suddenly engulfed all of Europe in war because of an entanglement of alliances. All these big trends would have eventually forced a war.On December 19, Andrey Karlov, Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, was shot and killed during the opening of an art gallery exhibit in Ankara. They argue that better diplomacy would only have delayed the inevitable. But to other historians, this kind of explanation seems insufficient. Some historians argue that this inadequacy, rather than the deep underlying trends or even the assassination itself, was most responsible for the war. They simply couldn't keep up with the pace of events. Throughout the summer of 1914, as diplomats and governments thought long and hard about the impact of an assassination, they missed all kinds of opportunities to slow down the mobilization of troops. With the increased speed of mobilization, there was no time for old-school diplomacy. But technological change had outpaced the way that people thought about international relations. ![]() Communication between diplomats and their governments was slow and limited, and there had been a time when that was just fine. The world at this time didn't have really sophisticated diplomatic systems. This leads us to another theory about why the First World War happened. The stumbling pathway to war creates an image of one state after another seemingly helpless or unwilling to stop a conflict they could see coming. That is when their supportive friend Russia, they hoped, would leap to the defense of Serbia, defeat the Habsburg armies, and help the Bosnian Serbs win their independence. The plotters hoped that by killing Franz Ferdinand, they would provoke the Austro-Hungarian Empire to declare war on Serbia. The successful plot to assassinate Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914 was part of a bigger plan. Russia was generally supportive of these plots. Serbian nationalists, both in Serbia and Bosnia, plotted throughout the early twentieth century to get the Habsburgs out of Bosnia. But many Serbs still lived in the Habsburg province of Bosnia. The Serbs, one of those ethnic groups, had their own country of Serbia having achieved independence from the Ottoman Empire. It didn't help that Russia and the Habsburg's other rivals were cheering them on in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways. First of all, nationalism was pushing many of them to pursue independence. Franz Ferdinand's uncle, the emperor, ruled over its many ethnic communities with difficulty. It was a huge, multi-ethnic empire located in the middle of Europe. But in 1914, the Habsburg family had ruled this empire for almost four centuries. It was one of the victims of the First World War, defeated and torn apart by the end of the conflict. You probably have already learned a bit about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austro- Hungarian Empire.
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