World War i and its Concequences

Throughout history, there have been many, many wars. So many, in fact, that its hard to even keep count. There are currently still wars going on, and that will probably never change. For humanities entire existence, there will forever be war. It will never end, and as sad as it may sound, there will most likely never be world peace. Wars have caused several billions of fatalities, but nothing can compare to the lives that were lost during the World Wars. Both wars resulted in the death of many, and all of those lives were lost because of small, minor events that had occurred beforehand, and all of these small, minor events could have easily been avoided. On June 28, 1914, a man by the name of Gavrilo Princip made one very terrible mistake. Gavrilo assassinated a man named Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This was the event that mostly led to World War I. If this man had not been assassinated, the war may not have ever begun in the first place. However, there is no way to know that for sure. Though the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand may have been a major cause of the war's beginning, it was most certainly not the only reason the war began. World War I began on July 28, 1914. Just one month after Archduke's assassination. That led people to believe that the assassination of this man was the ultimate cause of the war. It was not. There were several ultimate or leading causes of the war. Some examples of this are alliances, imperialism, militarism, nationalism, and crises such and the Moroccan Crisis (1904) and the Bosnian Crisis (1908). The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was not the one and only cause of World War I. Archduke Franz Ferdinand was a member of the House of Hapsburg, which was filled with rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Spanish Empire. He had become a major general by the age of 31 and began his military career at age 12. He was then quickly promoted. In June of 1914, he traveled to Sarajevo. He did this because he wanted to inspect the imperial armed forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnia and Herzegovina were both annexed by Austria-Hungaryin 1908. This annexation had infuriated the Serbian nationalists, so a group of these nationalists came up with a plan to kill the Archduke during his visit. One month after Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot, the world broke out into war. This war consisted of Britain, France, Russia, Italy and the United States all fighting against the Central Powers; which was made up of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. About four and a half years later, (five years exactly after the Archdukes death), on July 28, 1918, Germany and the Allied Powers made and signed the Treaty of Versailles that ended the war.

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