Hungarian throne and his wife were visiting Sarajevo, they were both shot and killed by Gavrilo Princip. Princip belonged to the secret society, Black Hand. Black Hand was a group of Serbian nationalists opposed to Austro-Hungarian rule. Even though Princip acted without the authority of the Serbian Government, a few Serbian leaders were aware of his plans and have given him guns and ammo. This assassination began a long struggle between Serbia and Austria-Hungary. The Austro-Hungarian government wanted to punish the Serbs, but before they could act, they wanted to make sure that Germany still supported them in case Russia attempted to help Serbia.
             During the War's early years Britain and her Allies, France and Russia, fought against Germany and Austro-Hungary. At the War's end many more countries were involved, including, the United States, Turkey, Japan, Italy. What had started over the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the decaying Austro-Hungarian Empire, only concluded after the deaths of tens of millions of soldiers and civilians.
             In the past, wars were often of comparatively short duration, with seasonal campaigns, and usually fought between opposing sides each using mercenary or professional army. The Great War was radically different. Fighting, between volunteer or conscripted soldiers in trenches separated by no-man's-land from their enemy in similar trenches, continued all year; and new, improved methods of killing had evolved such that the scale of injury and death was beyond that which any person had believed possible. With industrialization in Europe, invention and greatly enhanced mass-production manufacturing techniques gave rise to plentiful supplies of poison gas, tanks, powerful explosives, flame-throwers, hand-grenades, fighter and bomber aircraft, and, above all, machine-guns, and accurate long-range artillery. Killing was on a gigantic scale, and surprise and inventiveness we...