World War One started after the assassination of a specific person in a specific city. Who, and where?
Franz Ferdinand — heir-apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne — was shot dead with his wife Sophie by the Bosnian Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip on a Sarajevo street corner. Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia, issued an ultimatum, and declared war on 28 July; the European alliance system pulled in Russia, Germany, France, and Britain over the following week. The other three rulers all survived 1914 — Nicholas II was murdered in 1918 (after the Russian Revolution), Wilhelm II abdicated in 1918 and died in Dutch exile in 1941, and George V died of natural causes in 1936.
Read the full facts →World War I was a global war fought from 1914 to 1918, primarily between the Allied Powers (France, Britain, Russia, Italy, the United States and others) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria). It killed approximately 20 million people and reshaped the political map of Europe and the Middle East.
Related questions
- On 28 June 1914 a teenage Bosnian Serb shot the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne and his wife on a Sarajevo street. Five weeks later, most of Europe was at war. Who was the heir he killed?
- Whose assassination triggered the start of World War I?
- What treaty formally ended World War I between the Allied Powers and Germany?
- How old was Gavrilo Princip when he shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo on 28 June 1914?