The assassination of the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 proved to be the spark that ignited World War I (1914-1918). Called "the Great War", it quickly came to involve all the great powers of Europe and eventually most countries of the world, and cost the lives of more than 8 million soldiers. Among the causes of the war were rising nationalist sentiment (manifested both in the chauvinism of the great European powers and in …showed first 75 words of 1099 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1099 total…mobilized 7,800,000, and lost 7 million of them, and astonishing ratio of 90 percent, and though her numbers of prisoners and missing were high, perhaps reflecting the dissolution of the state at the end, they were not inordinately so. There had been a victory of sorts, but what the victors celebrated chiefly was that mass death, after four years had taken a holiday. The illusion was that all of humanity would profit by the great lesson. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Bibliography**