The Spark of the Great War

Europe in 1914 was a powder keg, tension bubbling beneath the surface of

grand empires. On June 28, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo sparked

a catastrophic global crisis. A complex web of secret alliances meant one gunshot

could drag the entire world into war. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.

Russia mobilized, then Germany declared war on Russia and France. When Germany invaded

neutral Belgium, Britain was forced to honor its treaty and join the fight.

By August, the Great War had begun, a conflict of unprecedented scale and

technological horror. From a single assassination to a world in flames, the path to