On July 28th in military history....in 1914

On July 28th in military history….in 1914. Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia and sets off World War I. World War I could be called the "War of Interlocking Treaties" or the "War of Use-It-Or-Loose-It". On June 28th, 1914, a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne in Sarajevo. Austria demanded that Serbia be punished and threatened to invade. However, Russia had signed a treaty with Serbia to protect their independence if attacked. Austria had a treaty with Germany that if Austria was attacked, Germany would come to their aid. Russia was part of the Triple Entente with Britain and France, so when one was attacked, the other two would come to their aid. There were other treaties involved, but these were the main treaties that pushed Europe to war.

Military staffs on the continent also had been working for years on calculations that involved the amount of time it would take to mobilize the military and send them to the front. The calculations were so specific that they could tell the government exactly how many miles of territory they would loose for every day that they delayed mobilizing the military, a "use-it-or-loose-it" scenario.

So, the leaders of Europe, faced with mutual-defense treaties on one hand and the military telling them that every day delayed equals the loss of X numbers of miles of territory on the other hand, it’s no wonder that World War I happened. It was more or less guaranteed.