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How a Single Assassination Started WWI — And Why It Almost Didn't
💡 WWI started because of entangling alliances triggered by an assassination that almost failed — the assassin only succeeded because the driver took a wrong turn.
On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary was assassinated in Sarajevo. Within six weeks, nearly all of Europe was at war. But the assassination itself almost didn't happen — and the way it actually succeeded reads like a comedy of errors.
The original plot involved six assassins positioned along the motorcade route. The first let the car pass. The second threw a bomb that bounced off and exploded under the wrong car. The remaining assassins scattered. The plot had failed. But then Franz Ferdinand made a fateful decision: he wanted to visit the officers injured by the bomb at the hospital. His driver took a wrong turn, stalled the car, and ended up stopped directly in front of Gavrilo Princip — one of the failed assassins who was sitting at a café.
What followed was a chain reaction of entangling alliances: Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Russia mobilized to defend Serbia. Germany backed Austria-Hungary. France was allied with Russia. Britain was tied to France. Within weeks, a regional dispute had become a global catastrophe that killed 20 million people.