Archduke Franz Ferdinand's Assassination: The Catalyst for World War I

A Fateful Day in Sarajevo

On June 28, 1914, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, in the provincial capital of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina (present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina), set in motion a chain of events that would ultimately lead to the outbreak of World War I.

A Teenage Assassin's Motive

The assassin was a 19-year-old Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip, a fervent nationalist who resented Austria-Hungary's annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. Princip and other members of the Black Hand, a Serbian nationalist organization, planned and executed the assassination as a protest against the oppressive rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire on Serbian territory.