On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary was assassinated in Sarajevo. (a) Describe the events leading to the assassination of Archduke ...

(a) The events leading to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand [4 marks]

Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife Sophie visited Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, on 28 June 1914. The date was significant: it was St Vitus's Day (Vidovdan), a day of great national importance to Serbs commemorating the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. A group of young Bosnian Serb assassins, armed and trained by members of the Serbian nationalist organisation known as the Black Hand (led by Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevic, codenamed "Apis"), were positioned along the motorcade route. An initial attack by Nedeljko Cabrinovic, who threw a bomb at the Archduke's car, failed when the bomb bounced off and exploded under the following vehicle. Later, the Archduke's car took a wrong turning into a side street and stopped to reverse. By chance, one of the other conspirators, 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip, was standing nearby. He stepped forward and shot both Franz Ferdinand and Sophie at close range; both died within the hour.

(b) Why Austria-Hungary's response to the assassination led to a wider war [6 marks]

Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for the assassination and saw it as an opportunity to crush Serbian nationalism, which threatened to destabilise the multi-national empire. Before acting, Austria-Hungary secured the "blank cheque" of unconditional support from Germany on 5 July 1914, which encouraged a hard line. On 23 July, Austria-Hungary issued a deliberately harsh ultimatum to Serbia with a 48-hour deadline, including demands that Austrian officials participate in the Serbian investigation, which was designed to be unacceptable. Serbia accepted most demands but rejected those that would compromise its sovereignty. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on 28 July.

The alliance system then pulled in the other powers in rapid succession. Russia began mobilising its forces on 30 July in support of Serbia, its fellow Slavic state and a key Russian interest in the Balkans. Germany, bound to Austria-Hungary and facing the prospect of a two-front war, declared war on Russia on 1 August. The Schlieffen Plan required Germany to knock out France before turning east against Russia, so Germany declared war on France on 3 August and invaded Belgium to outflank French defences. Britain, bound by the 1839 Treaty of London to guarantee Belgian neutrality, declared war on Germany on 4 August. Within six weeks, a Balkan assassination had become a European war.

(c) How far was the assassination of Franz Ferdinand the most important cause of the First World War? [10 marks]

The assassination was the immediate trigger for the war. Without the killing of Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914, the specific crisis that led to war in August 1914 would not have occurred. The murder of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne gave Austria-Hungary a pretext to confront Serbian nationalism, which it had wanted to do for years. The assassination set in motion the chain of events, including the ultimatum, the declarations of war and the mobilisation of armies, that produced the conflict.

However, the assassination alone cannot explain why a political murder in Sarajevo produced a continent-wide war. The underlying causes were more fundamental and had been building for decades. The alliance system had divided Europe into two hostile camps, ensuring that any conflict between two powers would drag in the rest. The arms race, particularly the naval rivalry between Britain and Germany, had created massive military forces and a climate of mutual suspicion. Nationalist tensions in the Balkans, fuelled by the decline of the Ottoman Empire and rival claims by Austria-Hungary, Russia and Serbia, had already produced two Balkan Wars in 1912-13 and had created a volatile situation. Imperial rivalries between the great powers had generated hostility, even if colonial disputes had largely been settled by 1914. Militarism and the dominance of military planning over diplomatic flexibility, exemplified by the Schlieffen Plan, meant that once mobilisation began, it was almost impossible to stop.

If the assassination had not occurred, another crisis might well have triggered a war. The historian Fritz Fischer argued that Germany's desire for European dominance (Weltpolitik) made a major conflict likely regardless of the specific trigger.

On balance, the assassination was the spark that ignited the war, but the underlying causes, particularly the alliance system, militarism, nationalism and imperial rivalry, had created the conditions in which a single incident could plunge Europe into catastrophe. The assassination was necessary for the war to begin when and how it did, but the deeper causes determined that some crisis would eventually produce a major conflict.