Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Following the Balkan Wars, Europe was held at gunpoint by itself. The Great Powers, ready to mobilise their industrial armies at a moment's notice, were just waiting for a reason to kill each other. That moment came the 28th of June, 1914, when a Serbian member of the Black Hand ultranationalist organisation opened fire on the Archduke of Austria, Franz Ferdinand. The reason was that Franz Ferdinand, a progressive and practical statesman, wished to create a third kingdom within the Austro-Hungarian Empire; a kingdom of Slavs, and eventually a Danubian Federation. This was a threat to the complete independence of Serbia and the Southern Slavs. Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg and wife of the Archduke, was also killed in the act. The assassination led to a series of denouncements, mobilisations and declarations of war (dubbed the July Crisis) that would eventually morph into the gruesome Great War, later known as World War I.