June 28 marks two related, world-changing events that occurred exactly five years apart. In 1914, while riding in an open carriage in Sarajevo, Bosnia, Austria-Hungary's Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated by a Serbian nationalist, the spark that ignited World War I a few weeks later. After fighting a bloody war that claimed 40 million military and civilian casualties, the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919, ending the war.
The treaty was between the allies and Germany, since Germany's Central Powers allies had concluded separate peace treaties, and created the ultimately doomed League of Nations in an effort to keep the peace. Germany was punished severely by the treaty's terms, a factor helping to fuel the rise of Hitler. Little more than 20 years later, on September 1, 1939, World War II began with the Nazi invasion of Poland.
(photo: l. to r., England's Lloyd George, Italy's Emanuele Orlando, France's Georges Clemenceau, and the U.S.'s Woodrow Wilson at Versailles in 1919)
No comments:
Post a Comment