The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, 1914. Photo: Achille Beltrame / Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)
When Archduke Franz Ferdinand was killed in Sarajevo, the world did not immediately understand that it was standing on the edge of a war that would become a kind of pestilence. The assassination did not create World War I by itself. It exposed a system already loaded with alliance commitments, imperial insecurity, military timetables, elite arrogance, and leaders who believed escalation could be managed. That is the part of history worth remembering now.
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