The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the Austrian Archduk

In the dawn of the twentieth century, while political turmoil spurred tension amongst European nations, a single bullet incited one of the bloodiest, most gruesome wars to ever happen in human history. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the Austrian Archduke, by the hands of a Bosnian Serb propelled a conflict of gigantic proportions, pitting country against country and dividing the continent into two rival factions. However, the mayhem that ensued was for nothing. It is evident that the war was unnecessary, for its roots were pointlessly trivial, it could have been avoided, and yet it left a shattered world behind, damaging the world in a way that would take decades to repair.

First, the causes of the conflict were superficial and could have definitely been dealt with in a different way. The murder of an important government figure, regardless of the nationality of the victim or the murderer, is not an acceptable reason for war. Within all of the countries involved, there were entire judicial systems that had as their sole purpose dealing with major felonies. Moreover, after hearing about the incident, Austro-Hungarians openly took advantage of the situation and posed an ultimatum to the enemy with several demands in order to “stamp its authority upon the Serbians, crushing the nationalist movement there and cementing Austria-Hungary’s influence on the Balkans” (“The Cause of World War One”). After both sides went through much discussion and refused to comply, the war finally erupted. Evidently, there were other causes. One example is imperialism, with people waging battles due to European greed; however, most of these complications were between a nation and its colony, not two different countries. In addition, if nationali...

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...ined trail of chaos behind. In the end, the “war to end all wars” led to nothing but violence. European economy crumbled to pieces, empires fell, and nations took decades to fix what had been damaged. Yet, the worst outcome of the conflict was not economic or political, but social. The conflict brought upon a lot more violence in the century that followed. The confrontation aggravated German hatred, especially because of the Treaty of Versailles, and that bitterness would eventually prompt the rise of one of the world’s darkest ideologies: Nazism.

Works Cited

BBC. “International Relations- The Treaty of Versailles.” BBC News. BBC. Web. 19 May 2014.

Duffy, Michael. “The Cause of World War One.” First World War.com. 22 Aug. 2009. Web. 18 May 2014.

Mintz, Steven. “The Global Effect of World War I.” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Web. 20 May 2014.