On July 28, 1914, exactly one month after Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife were shot dead, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. The stage was set for World War I, an inevitable result of decades of political maneuvering, militarization, alliances and planning for a conflict that would shatter the great European epoch, laying waste to empires and ascendant nations.
One hundred years ago, millions of young men across Europe mobilized for war. Leaving their homes, they marched across Belgium, Poland and the Balkans as pieces of war plans their nations' leaders had agonized over for decades. All the Great Powers involved in the war sought a decisive result but to no avail. None of the belligerents were quickly defeated, as was anticipated. Instead, the war endured for more than four years in trenches, mountains and the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea. World War I represented the beginning of the end of the European epoch and forever altered the map, marking the demise of empires and the birth of nations.
