World War I tumbled onto the world stage when a Serbian nationalist seeking to free Slavs from Austrian rule assassinated Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, at Sarajevo in June 1914. In the two months that followed, this singular event sparked a series of moves and countermoves by nations and empires uncertain about each other's intentions.
Two hostile alliances had formed before Sarajevo. They pitted Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire on the one hand, against France, Britain and Russia, on the other. The strategic choices of the two alliances culminated in the cataclysm that involved all of the most powerful nations in the world in what became the longest European war in a century. By the time it ended, nearly ten million people had died, empires had crumbled, new states were born, and the world's geopolitical map was redrawn.
World War I was supposed to be the war to end all war.
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Excerpted from Charles W. Kegley & Eugene R. Wittkopf. World Politics: Trend and Transformation. 5th edition, 1995
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