There was more than just one incident that led to World War I. Americans killed on a sunken ship, the use of restricted submarines, and the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. President Wilson did all he could to avoid a conflict. When things got out of hand for him, he pushed back. The Bible scriptures states that there is a time for war, and I am sure that God’s direction was taken into consideration before war was declared. Archduke Franz Ferdinand was a friend of Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. Ferdinand and Wilhelm met in June 1914 to discuss the tension of the Balkans. Two weeks later, on June 28, Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, were in Sarajevo to review the imperial armed forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina. When 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip and members of the nationalist Young Bosnia movement learned of his visit, they planned his assassination. They obtained weapons from a Serbian terrorist organization called the Black Hand, Princip and his accomplices traveled to Sarajevo for the archduke’s arrival. The royal couple was …show more content…
After Serbia appealed to Russia for help, the czar’s government began moving towards mobilization of its army, believing that Germany was using the crisis as an excuse to launch a preventive war in the Balkans. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28. On August 1, after hearing news of Russia’s general mobilization, Germany declared war on Russia. The German army then launched its attack on Russia’s ally, France, through Belgium, violating Belgian neutrality and bringing Great Britain into the war as well.