Wrong Turn And 100 Million Dead

One sunny summer morning two royals from Vienna travelled in a car on the crowded main street of Sarajevo. The Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, were on an official visit in Bosnia. At 11 a.m. on June 28,1914, the driver of their car made a wrong turn and entered a narrow alley. The car came to an abrupt halt in front of a young man, a Serb student named Gavrilo Princip. A member of the Black Hand terrorist group, Princip could not believe his luck. Without hesitation he pulled out his pistol and fired at the royal couple at point blank range. Within thirty minutes Sophie and Ferdinand were dead. Austria-Hungary used the assassination as a pretext to declare war on Serbia. Within a short time imperial rivalries and mutual distrust escalated into the Great War of 1914-1918. The Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey fought a dreadful war against the Allied Forces of France, Britain, Russia, Italy and Japan. In the spring of 1917 the USA also joined the Allies and declared war on Germany. The calamitous First World War, also known as "The Great War", lasted more than four years. At its end about 37 million people lay dead. In the aftermath of the senseless bloodshed The world fell into the heinous abyss of political turmoil, economic crises and violent revolutions that paved the road to the horrendous Second World War, the most monstrous carnage in history. World War II broke out only two decades after the First One ended, and it ended with even greater misery and destruction. Over 70 million people lost their lives.