Long-term Causes of World War I
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Short-term Causes of World War I
The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
On this day, June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, of Austria were assassinated on a bridge in Sarajevo. The man behind this was Gavrilo Princip, a member of a group which had six other Bosnian assassins. Princips motive includes the all too familiar cause of trouble: Nationalism. He believed that by killing Ferdinand, the Slavs could leave Austria-Hungary and go to Serbia or Yugoslavia. Princip has since been imprisoned and many speculate that this was the spark that lit the fire known as World War I.