Unauthorized use is prohibited.Īdvances in technology led to battles taking place almost anywhere on Earth. Chemical warfare, in the form of chlorine, mustard gas, and phosgene, poisoned hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Armored cars and tanks first rolled their way into battle in World War I. Advances in artillery rained down explosives on soldiers in the trenches. Terrorizing the ground, machine guns had a firepower that equaled 80 rifles. On the battlefield, 19th-century tactics soon proved useless against 20th-century weapons. No one could have foreseen the savagery unleashed by the world’s first industrialized war, where the efficiency of modern killing machines surpassed anything imagined in past European conflicts. The British ocean liner Lusitania is torpedoed by the Germans, killing nearly 1,200 people, including 128 Americans.įollowing more hostile actions by the Germans toward the United States, Wilson asks Congress for a declaration of war. He only served a short time, dying a prisoner in 1918.Īrchduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife are assassinated in Sarajevo, drawing European powers into a massive war.Īs war intensifies across Europe, President Wilson declares that the United States will remain officially neutral. For his crimes, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, the maximum for criminals under the age of 20. Hours later, Princip happened to be at a café as the archduke’s car was passing he fired his gun and accomplished his mission. The first attempt on the archduke’s life-a grenade thrown at his car-had failed, and the assassins disbanded. The killer was one of three assassins dispatched to Sarajevo by the Black Hand, a national terrorist group pushing for independence from Austro-Hungary for Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. During an official visit to inspect the Austro-Hungarian army, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, were assassinated by Bosnian peasant 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip. We must be impartial in thought as well as in action, must put a curb upon our sentiments.” Sound and high-minded advice that would be hard for everyone, including Wilson, to follow.Ī couple of gunshots probably never before formed a connection between such a line of complicated causes and such an infinite variety of possibly still more complicated effects.” That was the New York Times’s prescient take on what had happened in faraway Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the day before-June 28, 1914. Japan, allied with Britain, followed suit.Īt first, the United States declared itself officially neutral, and President Woodrow Wilson counseled his fellow countrymen: “The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name during these days that try men’s souls. That inspired Germany to declare war on Russia and France, and Great Britain to respond with a declaration of war on Germany. With nationalist elements threatening to pull its empire apart, Austria-Hungary struck back at Serbia, who then called on its ally Russia for aid. These conflicting alliances from previous wars pulled and tugged at the structure until it came tumbling down on June 28, when a Serbian nationalist killed the visiting Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Britain, France, and Russia were bonded in a “Triple Entente,” while Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy were bound in a Triple Alliance. This story appears in the March/April issue of National Geographic History magazine.Īs simple as it may sound, the European world collapsed on itself like a matchstick castle in summer 1914.
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