America's Great War

Running Head: America’s Great War










America’s Great War
Arber Kokoneshi
Florida Metropolitan University









The events of July and early August 1914 are a classic case of “one thing led to another”- otherwise known as the treaty alliance system.
The explosive that was World War One had been long in the stockpiling; the spark was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. Ferdinand’s death at the hand of the Black Hand, a Serbian secret society, set in train a mindlessly mechanical series of events that culminated in the world’s first global war. Austria-Hungary’s reaction to the death of their heir was three weeks in coming. Arguing that the Serbian government was implicated in the machinations of the Black Hand, the Austria-Hungarians opted to take the opportunity to stamp its authority upon the Serbians, crushing the nationalist movements there and cementing Austr...