The Ferdinand Family
The straw that broke the camels back that causing WWI was the assasination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, at the hand of Gavrilo Princip. On June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo, Bosnia the couple was gunned down by the Serb in the hopes of increasing the Serbian teritory. The ploy worked and spiraled the majority of the world into a war. A month later Austria-Hungry invaded Serbia. This was followed by the German invasion of Belgium, Luxembourg and France leading to the Russians attacking Germany. Although this tragedy is actually what directly can be seen as what ignited the war, there were also a slew of underlying conflicts and problems including political turmoil, international relations, imperialism, also technical and militarty factors. Considering all of these issues, the war was utterly inevitable, such as a volcano primed for an eruption.
I find it very interesting that whenever the topic of World War I come up, people love to stress how the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was not the cause of the war. I’m by no means trying to dispute the fact that such an event could in itself possibly cause a war anywhere near the extent of WWI, I guess I’m really just stating an observation (mostly for the sake of getting the assignment done – however late it may be!).
Let’s take a look at what’s widely considered as the top 4 other causes for the war (and what I’m sure was the top google hit from our class for this assignment):
1. Defense Alliances between nations
2. Imperialism
3. Militarism
4. Nationalism
But what really intrigues me most is how much all of these reasons all play into each other to really make a single cause for the war, all leading up to that “straw that broke the camel’s back”, like Shannan said. If Europeans during the early 20th Century werent so Patriotic, and the leaders of the world weren’t so obsessed with growing the size of their Empires, and showing everyone else how big they could make their armies there would have been no need to forge these defense alliances and when the Archduke was shot Europe wouldn’t have catapulted the Great War.
-C. Salama