ON THIS DAY IN 1914, AUSTRIA HUNGARY DECLARED WAR ON SERBIA, WHICH IS CONSIDERED THE STARTING DATE OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

BELGRADE, JULY 28 (ONASA-FoNet) – On this day 110 years ago, on July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, which is also considered the date of the start of the First World War.
The declaration of war followed exactly one month after the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, who was killed on June 28, 1914 by Gavrilo Princip, a member of Young Bosnia.
Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia with a telegram sent to the authorities in Belgrade by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of that empire, Count Leopold Bertold.
“Since the Government of the Kingdom of Serbia did not respond satisfactorily to the note dated July 23, 1914, delivered by the Austro-Hungarian envoy in Belgrade, the Imperial and Royal Government is forced to take care of the preservation of its rights and interests on its own, and that, in goal, resort to armed force. Therefore, Austria-Hungary considers itself to be in a state of war with Serbia,” the telegram said.
The original document of Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war on Serbia is located and kept in the State Archives of Austria, and in 2015 UNESCO entered the document in the International Register “Memory of the World”.
After Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, a series of declarations of war between the great powers followed, and by the end of August 1914, most of Europe was already at war.
The First World War lasted until 1918 and involved most of the world’s great powers, grouped into two conflicting military alliances: the Allies (grouped around the Triple Entente) and the Central Powers.
At the beginning, the Entente powers consisted of Serbia, Montenegro, Russia, France, Great Britain and Japan.
Before the start of the war, the Central Powers consisted of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy, which, due to the Treaty of London of April 26, 1915, which provided Italy with part of Dalmatia, Istria, Gorica, the Kvarner Islands and the Dodokanese, joined the Entente powers.
The Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in October 1914, followed by Bulgaria a year later.
The United States of America entered the war on April 6, 1917, after the publication of Zimmerman’s telegram, which gave them a reason.
Romania joined the Entente in 1916 when the Bucharest Agreement was signed.
Greece was neutral at the beginning of the war, but in 1917 joined the Entente side.
Until the end of the war, among the European countries Holland, Switzerland, Spain and the Scandinavian countries remained officially neutral.
More than 70 million people were under arms, and of that over 60 million people in Europe were mobilized in one of the biggest wars in history.
The consequences of the war were that more than 15 million people were killed, 20 million were wounded, and the direct participants in the war suffered enormous destruction of states and economies.
The First World War is also known as the Great War and the World War (until the outbreak of the Second World War) and was fought on several battlefields that crossed Europe.
The western front was characterized by a system of trenches and fortifications that were separated by no man’s land.
These fortifications were more than 600 km long.
The Western Front stretched from Antwerp in the north to neutral Switzerland in the south.
On the Eastern Front, which was fought over a length of 1,600 km, the large expanses of the Eastern European lowlands and the limited railway network did not allow the situation to develop here as on the Western Front, although the conflicts were equally fierce.
In addition, fierce conflicts were fought on the Balkan, Middle Eastern and Italian fronts, and hostilities took place at sea and, for the first time, in the air.
The war ended with the signing of several peace treaties, the most important of which was the Peace of Versailles on June 28, 1919, although the Entente powers signed an armistice with Germany on November 11, 1918, which is considered the end date of the Great War. (end)