Question

Why might the two sides not have wanted to risk a conflict in germany? where did the war breakout instead?

Answer 1

In the space of exactly a month – from the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, to the Austro-Hungarian declaration of war on Serbia on July 28 – Europe went from peaceful prosperity to a conflict that would bring down four empires and cost more than 15 million lives.

It would also, thanks to the harshness of its peace settlement (signed at Versailles in 1919), sow the seeds for a second and even more destructive global conflict which, in turn, gave rise to the Cold War.

The causes of the war in 1914 are therefore immensely significant. Was it inevitable after Sarajevo? Or did Europe’s monarchs and politicians have an element of choice in their decisions?