Breaking news! Austro-Hungarian Royal Heir assassinated! On this day 100 years ago, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and his wife were assassinated in their car while touring the city of Sarajevo, Bosnia. Police apprehended several Serbian militants, including the gun-wielding assassin. What will happen next? Only time will tell. I am writing this to start off a discussion of the events leading up to the outbreak of the Great War. The goal is to provide a day-by-day account of the political, diplomatic, and military moves as they happened, so we might better understand how a single assassination could spark off a war so large that it was called, even at its beginning, the first true World War. If possible, I would love to see it continued at least through the end of the year. My own obligations will keep me from daily posts, so I would strongly encourage anyone who wants to contribute their own historical events and commentary. The only rules are: 1) no spoilers. Do not post ANYTHING before the actual date it happened 100 years ago. Historical speculation and opinions are OK, as long as it is the speculation and opinions of people from that time. 2) Other historical events are encouraged. Feel free to post about other historical events that took place simultaneously. Topics such as early military aviation, the German East Asia Squadron, the Goeben and Breslau, and the Shackleton Expedition are just a few that come to mind. Just remember rule #1 applies to these, as well.
If anyone has been following that twitter account, there's been some interesting stuff this month. April 1 1915, French aviator Roland Garros shot down a German Albatros B.II two-seater with a machine gun firing through the propeller of his Morane-Saulnier Type L. He scored two more kills on the 15th and 18th before suffering engine trouble (or AA fire) and landing behind German lines on the 18th. On the 22nd, Germany unleashed the first gas attack on the Western Front with 168t of chlorine gas along 6km of front near the town of Langemarck during the Battle of Ypres. April 25th saw the Gallipoli landings following unsuccessful naval bombardments of the Dardanelles. The month of April also saw the beginnings of the Armenian Genocide.
