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First Post
2 days ago
- Politics
- First Post
History Today: When Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Serbia began World War I
World War I began on July 28, 1914, after Austria and Hungary declared war on Serbia. This came just a month after Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife were killed by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo. On this day in 2005, the Irish Republican Army formally announced the end of its decades-long armed campaign read more On July 28, 1914, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary signed the declaration of war, effectively launching the Great War. Wikimedia Commons World War I, one of the most defining events of the 20th century, began on July 28, 1914, with Austria and Hungary declared war on Serbia. This was a direct response to the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife by a Serbian nationalist. If you are a history geek who loves to learn about important events from the past, Firstpost Explainers' ongoing series, History Today, will be your one-stop destination to explore key events. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD On this day in 2005, the Irish Republican Army, popularly known as the IRA, announced a formal end to its armed campaign. This marked a monumental step towards lasting peace in Northern Ireland. In 1932, the first zombie movie, White Zombie, was released. Here is all that happened on this day. World War I began Just a month after the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914. The assassin, Gavrilo Princip, was a Bosnian Serb nationalist with ties to Serbian secret societies, leading Austria-Hungary to hold Serbia directly responsible. This was what led to World War I, also known as the Great War. By the end of 1914, major powers across Europe, Africa, Asia, and beyond were involved. Wikimedia Commons On July 28, 1914, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary signed the declaration of war, effectively launching the Great War. Within days, Europe's major powers were drawn in. Russia, allied with Serbia, began mobilising against Austria-Hungary. Germany then declared war on Russia on August 1 and France on August 3. It also invaded Belgium. That act triggered Britain's entry into the war on August 4, due to its treaty obligations to protect Belgian neutrality. What could have been a localised conflict spiralled into a global war due to a complex web of alliances, rising nationalism, militarism, and imperial competition. By the end of 1914, major powers across Europe, Africa, Asia, and beyond were involved. The war, which introduced new technologies like machine guns, tanks and poison gas, killed over 16 million people. IRA announced the end of its armed campaign The Irish Republican Army (IRA) formally announced the end of its decades-long armed campaign on July 28, 2005, marking a monumental step towards lasting peace in Northern Ireland. The IRA, a paramilitary organisation, had fought since the late 1960s for Northern Ireland to leave the United Kingdom and unite with the Republic of Ireland. Its campaign involved bombings, assassinations, and armed attacks, resulting in thousands of deaths. The British government and unionist forces opposed the IRA's goal, leading to a brutal and deeply divisive conflict. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD In the years leading up to 2005, peace efforts had gained ground. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 was a major step, establishing a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland and calling for the disarmament of paramilitary groups. While some IRA activity continued post-agreement, pressure mounted from political allies like Sinn Féin, the public, and international mediators to shift to peaceful means. In a recorded statement broadcast on July 28, the IRA said it would 'end the armed campaign' and pursue its objectives 'exclusively through peaceful political means.' The group also committed to decommissioning its weapons and cooperating with independent arms inspectors, a critical gesture for trust-building. The first zombie movie was released The first full-length zombie film, White Zombie, was released on this day in 1932. Directed by Victor Halperin, this black-and-white horror classic introduced the concept of the zombie to cinema. Set in Haiti, White Zombie tells the story of a young woman, Madeleine, who is turned into a zombie by a voodoo master named Murder Legendre, played chillingly by Lugosi. Using traditional Haitian folklore rather than modern viral infection tropes, the film portrays zombies as mindless slaves controlled through black magic rather than reanimated corpses. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD A scene from the White Zombie movie which released in 1932. Wikimedia Commons Though it was a low-budget production, White Zombie made a significant impact. Its eerie atmosphere, haunting score, and Lugosi's mesmerising performance helped it stand out in the early days of horror cinema. While critics at the time gave mixed reviews, the film eventually gained a cult following and is now considered a landmark in horror history. This Day, That Year On this day in 1976, an earthquake in China's Tangshan killed more than 240,000 people. In 1821, Peru declared its independence from Spain. King Henry VIII of England privately married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, on this day in 1540.
Indian Express
03-07-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
WWI: The war that changed the world
The WWI was perhaps the world's first truly global event, with far-reaching ramifications across the world. It ended on November 11, 1918, with the declaration of the armistice at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month and led to a change in the world order. One of the most immediate and obvious changes that the First World War brought about was the collapse of longstanding empires most notably the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Russian Romanov Empire. The outbreak of the First World brought an end to the 'Hundred Years' Peace' (1815-1914) that had endured since the Congress of Vienna in 1815. This is not to say that no war happened during this period – wars such as the Crimean War between 1853-56 did occur – but they were limited in scale in comparison to wars such as the First World War. The first shot that precipitated the First World War was fired on June 28, 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary was assassinated by a Serb nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo. In the years preceding these events, particularly between 1912-13, the Balkan Wars had resulted in the territorial expansion of Serbia, which posed a threat to Austria-Hungary. Exactly a month after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Austria-Hungary with the help of Germany declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914. Serbia was in turn backed by Russia. The Balkan region was dominated by the Ottoman Empire, which extended from its Muslim Anatolian heartlands into Christian-dominated areas that abutted the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Balkan region gave rise to the political term 'balkanisation', which implies a breakup of a larger entity into smaller fragments. As mentioned earlier, the end of the First World War signified the 'balkanisation' or break up of larger entities like empires into smaller fragments. This is especially true with reference to the vast territorial swathe of the Ottoman Empire as smaller nation-states emerged from the rubble created by its collapse. Although called a world war, the First World War predominantly involved the continent of Europe and was driven by the shifting balance of power among major European states, such as Great Britain, which was at that time the foremost power in the world, France, with its extensive colonial holdings, Austria-Hungary, the irrepressible power of Germany, and Russia. As a predominantly European war with global ramifications, it ironically led to the beginning of Europe's decline. In the aftermath, two non-European powers emerged – the US on the other side of the Atlantic to the West and the Soviet Union, which had taken over the territories of the collapsed Russian-Romanov Empire, to the East. These two would go on to become the rival super-powers of the Cold War era, which began with the end of the Second World War. This was a mere three decades after the end of the First World War. The theatres of the war were predominantly in Europe. The now-legendary battlefields of Ypres, Somme and Verdun were located on the Western Front that stretched from the Belgian coast in the North, through France, down to the border of Switzerland. The Western Front refers to the western extremity of Germany's advance that constituted part of the Central powers, which included Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Ottoman Turkey. On this front, the German advance was met with and checked by the Allied powers – primarily Great Britain and France. Russia was also an allied power that pressed upon the eastern flank of the Germans and the Central Powers. The battlefields of the Western front were to provide the most important attribute of the First World War – primarily through the fixed and grueling nature of trench warfare. Opposing sides faced each other off in trenches that had been dug into the ground and any military advance was thwarted by the very entrenched nature of the battle. It is important to remember that technologically, the First World War was not characterised by major advances in the methods of warfare. Air power had made a very limited appearance and had not become a major component of modern warfare. Tanks had just about made their appearance to overcome the limitations of trench warfare, with the British using them for the first time in 1916. The limited influence of the battle tank can be seen in the fact that the Western Front largely remained a fixed line, showing how much the First World War was fought in the trenches. While the Allied Powers – Britain and France – were to ultimately prevail in the First World War over the Central powers – Germany, Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey – the Gallipoli campaign (between February 1915 and January 1916) was to end in defeat for the Allies as they attempted to take control of the Dardanelles straits from Ottoman Turkey. The lack of scientific advances during the war meant that a large number of young men died on the battlefields, often because of untreated wounds that turned septic. Penicillin, for instance, was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928 after the First World War. The effects of young men dying or being maimed on these bloody battlefields gave rise to some very famous war poets such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke. Their poetry captures the immense psychological and emotional scars on the minds of young men – what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). India also contributed men in large numbers to the war effort, with over a million Indian soldiers fighting in Europe and other theatres in the Middle East and Africa. The India Gate is a war memorial to the Indian soldiers who lost their lives fighting these predominantly European wars. A year before the end of the First World War in November 1917, two major events within days of each other occurred which would have a huge impact on the emerging world order after the war ended in November 1918. The Bolshevik Revolution of November 7 brought an end to the rule of the Romanov dynasty over the vast territory of the Russian Empire to create the Soviet Union. Some days prior to this on November 2, the Balfour Declaration was issued that committed Britain to the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine that would become the state of Israel in May 1948 after the end of the Second World War. Intriguingly, one of the first countries to recognize the Jewish state of Israel was the Soviet Union. A consequence of the Bolshevik takeover of power in November 1917 was the Russian decision to leave the war in March 1918 through the signing of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The US entered the war at a relatively late stage in 1917, but in keeping with its rising global stature, it was able to influence events that heralded the end of the First World War. One of the most important of these was the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 where President Woodrow Wilson with his idealism and famed 'fourteen points' were to figure very prominently. The 'War Guilt' clause number 231 of the Versailles Treaty put the blame for the war on the Central powers. One of the even more undesirable aspects of the various agreements reached was the war reparations that were put on Germany. Germany was not only defeated but made to bear the costs of the war and this led to a great deal of suffering of German pride. This laid the groundwork for the travails of the Weimar Republic that was established in Germany after the First World War and collapsed with the rise of Hitler in 1933 in the run up to the Second World War which began in 1939. The limitations of the Treaty of Versailles, meant to establish peace after the First World War, were captured by the famous British economist John Maynard Keynes, who was present at Versailles, in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace. The end of the First World War created the League of Nations which established a system of mandates to oversee territories that belonged to Germany and the Ottoman Empire. In the Middle East, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine (territories belonging to the collapsed Ottoman Empire) were placed under the authority of two European mandatory powers. Syria and Lebanon went to France and Iraq and Palestine went to Great Britain. The political solutions devised after the First World War were tenuous and unstable. That explains why the Second World War was to begin just over two decades after the end of the First World War. How far is it correct to say that the First World War was fought essentially for the preservation of balance of power? What long-term impact did the 'balkanisation' of empires following WWI have on regional and global stability? How did the rise of the US and the Soviet Union after World War I set the stage for the Cold War? In what ways did the experiences of war influence the themes and tone of war poetry during WWI? In what way did India contribute to WWI? (Amir Ali is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi) Share your thoughts and ideas on UPSC Special articles with Subscribe to our UPSC newsletter and stay updated with the news cues from the past week. Stay updated with the latest UPSC articles by joining our Telegram channel – IndianExpress UPSC Hub, and follow us on Instagram and X.
9 News
27-06-2025
- 9 News
Stalled car sends the world to war
2 of 11 Attribution: The Picture Desk The royal couple were assassinated by Bosnian Serb student Gavrilo Princip, who was part of a group of nationalists hoping to overthrow Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ferdinand had already survived one bomb attack by one of Princip's co-conspirators earlier that day. Princip was waiting outside a delicatessen when the royal motorcade passed, and the local governor, who was sharing the royal couple's car, called out to the driver he had taken a wrong turn. The driver stalled the car as he tried to reverse, allowing Princip to step up and fatally shoot Franz and Sophie.
Bloomberg
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Serbia's Embattled Leader Looks to Leverage Trump Family Ties
Evidence of a turbulent history is never far away in Belgrade. In a small downtown park, fresh flowers lie at the foot of a statue of Gavrilo Princip, the assassin who triggered World War I. A block away, the remains of a building hit by NATO in 1999 stand preserved in their shattered state. The conspicuously untouched site of the bombed-out former Yugoslav military headquarters is now slated to become a shrine of a very different kind: a commemoration of Serbia's deepening ties to Donald Trump. The American president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has the Serb government's blessing to develop a $500 million Trump hotel there.
Wall Street Journal
12-03-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
‘The Art of Uncertainty' Review: How to Sail Uncharted Waters
History is profoundly shaped by luck and chance. When Archduke Franz Ferdinand's driver made a wrong turn on the streets of Sarajevo in 1914, the car stalled directly in front of Gavrilo Princip, who had earlier missed an opportunity to shoot the Austrian heir but now killed him and his wife. The assassination would spark World War I. Winston Churchill was nearly killed in 1931 when he looked the wrong way while crossing New York's Fifth Avenue and was struck by a car. His death would have deprived the world of the steely leader who would face down Hitler a decade later. 'In this immeasurably complex world, each of us is the result of an unforeseen and unforeseeable sequence of small occurrences,' writes the British statistician David Spiegelhalter in 'The Art of Uncertainty,' which tackles the hazy science of ambiguity and our flailing efforts to come to terms with it. Uncertainty surrounds us 'like the air we breathe,' he writes, but our ability to assign a quantitative probability to future events remains poor. Our struggles are reflected in our language. President John F. Kennedy's approval of the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 was guided by advice that there was a 'fair chance' of success, even though the Joint Chiefs of Staff had put the likelihood of victory at only around 30%. Such 'variants of vague verbiage,' as a NATO report describes phrases like 'fair chance' and 'highly likely,' tend to obfuscate. One global survey reveals that 'likely' can mean anything from 25% to 90%. It's better to quantify uncertainty, Mr. Spiegelhalter suggests, than to hide behind ambiguous terminology. Assigning probabilities is challenging outside of tightly controlled situations like casino games, where the rules are clear. Most of life doesn't lend itself to convenient reduction. Unlike temperature or mass, the author argues, probability is not a property of nature. Rather it is intrinsically personal, reflecting one's relationship with the outside world, and it depends on one's perspective and knowledge. While most of us can agree on the probability that a flipped coin will come up heads, our assessments of other probabilities, like the chances the Red Sox will win the World Series, may differ. Such predictions, he writes, 'are constructed on the basis of personal judgment.'
