Gavrilo Princip Was The Catalyst For World War 1 Essay

In late July of 1914, the world was plunged into its first total war-World War I (WWI), or the Great War. There were many factors leading up to this, many being economic, political, and social. These were bringing tensions higher and higher until it was almost to the breaking point. Then, bang. Archduke Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophia were shot dead in Sarajevo, Bosnia on June 28, 1914. Otto von Bismarck was right when he said, “One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans (goodreads).” Gavrilo Princip was an influential person of the 20th century because of his assassination of Archduke Ferdinand II. This was the catalyst that set off World War I, which indirectly caused the crash of the

When they drove by, Princip pulled out his pistol and shot the Archduke and his wife, Sophia, in their car.

Let’s start with a little back-story. Archduke Franz Ferdinand II of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was on his way to the town hall of Sarajevo to inspect imperial forces in the newly-annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina. Before he reached his location, a bomb was thrown at his car by Nedjelko Cabrinovic, another Serbian nationalist, but it rolled off of the car and into the crowd, injuring an officer and some bystanders.

When the archduke was done inspecting their forces, he started on his way to the hospital to visit those who were injured in the earlier attack. On the way there, they took a wrong turn at the intersection of Appel Quay and Franzjosefstrasse. Gavrilo, who was eating at a local restaurant, saw the archduke passing by. He saw his chance, and the rest is

At the end of WWI, Austro-Hungary was on the losing end, along with all of its allies, Germany included. Thanks to international sanctions, the Hapsburgs were exiled from their own empire, which was also broken up into the several smaller nations that make up what is now Central and Southeastern Europe (Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, parts of Germany, parts of Ukraine, parts of Poland, parts of Italy, Croatia, Slovakia, and Serbia). In addition to that, Germany (the Weimar Republic at the end of the war) was forced to pay all of the debts for everyone for World War I, the last of which being paid not even four years ago (Spiegel). When Hitler came to power, he felt that it was terrible that Germany had to pay for something it did not even start, and declared war on most of the rest of the world, including Poland, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Scandinavia, France, the UK, and many other nations after annexing Austria and allying with Italy and Japan, and later allying with Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Bulgaria as the Axis Powers (Wikipedia), who lost the war to the Allied Forces. This defeat paved the way for Russia to take control of eastern Germany and the rest of Eastern Europe, making the Cold War