The immediate cause of World War one was the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie the assassin Gavrilo Princip a member of the Black Hand gang shot Ferdinand once in the torso and once in the throat his wife Sophie was also shot in the torso after this Austria Hungary declared war on serbia then Germany declared war on Russia and France and then Britian declared war on Germany and so on until everyone got involved.
The immediate cause was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. But how could one assassination had such far-reaching consequences because the victim was heir presumptive to the thrones of Austria and Hungary. His assassin, Gavrillo Prinzip, a young Serbian student, shot him to death as he rode through Sarajevo. Prinzip's motive, even at this late date, is a question largely undetermined. But from this incident stemmed a train of events that had the whole world embroiled in war within a few short weeks. The Austro-Hungarian government made demands upon the government of Serbia. The Great Powers—Russia, France, Germany, Great Britain—found themselves unable or unwilling to act for prevention of a general European war. Instead, all the latent forces that had been gathering for decades and even centuries seemed to have found an outlet. The result—war! The first World war was a holocaust that scorched and charred most of the nations of the world.
