Answer:
- World War I began after the assassination of Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand by South Slav nationalist Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914.
- Both Russia and France, which had been humiliated in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, feared the rising power of Germany, which had already formed alliances with Austria-Hungary and Italy. So the two nations decided to join forces for mutual protection as well. It was the start of what would become the Allied side, the Triple Entente, in World War I.
- This legislation, advocated by Germany’s newly-appointed Secretary of the Imperial Navy, Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, dramatically expanded the size of Germany’s battle fleet. It was the first of five laws dictating a buildup in which the Germans envisioned building a force that was superior to Britain’s Royal Navy.
- Under an 1878 treaty, Austria-Hungary was governing Bosnia and Herzegovina, even though technically they were still part of the Ottoman Empire. But after Austro-Hungarian government annexed their territory, the move backfired. The two provinces’ mostly Slavic population wanted to have their own country, while Slavs in nearby Serbia had the ambition of appropriating the provinces themselves.
