The murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne by a Serb in Sarajevo, started a spiral into war which engulfed most of Europe, and then the world. The Austrians invaded Serbia which led to tension between Germany and Russia, the two leaders of the Germanic and Slav empires. When Germany launched a pre-emptive attack on France the conflict escalated to include Britain and Russia. By the end of 1914, the stage was set for almost four years of bloody stalemate and trench warfare on the Western Front, and a sweeping and ultimately decisive war in the east.
—W A Mckibben