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102 years ago, an assassin, a Serbian nationalist, killed the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary as he visited Sarajevo. This act was the catalyst for a massive conflict that lasted four years.

More than 65 million soldiers were mobilized by more than 30 nations, with battles taking place around the world. Industrialization brought modern weapons, machinery, and tactics to warfare, vastly increasing the killing power of armies.

Battlefield conditions were horrific, typified by the chaotic, cratered landscape of the Western Front, where soldiers in muddy trenches faced bullets, bombs, gas, bayonet charges, and more.

In 1914, Austria-Hungary was a powerful and huge country, larger than Germany, with nearly as many citizens.

It had been ruled by Emperor Franz Joseph I since 1848, who had been grooming his nephew, Archduke Franz Ferdinand as the heir to the throne. 

On June 28, 1914, a visiting Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Czech Countess Sophie Chotek, were departing a reception at City Hall in Sarajevo when an assassin walked up and fired two shots, killing both Franz Ferdinand and his wife. 

Assassin Gavrilo Princip (left) and his victim Archduke Franz Ferdinand, both photographed in 1914. Princip, was a 19 year old Bosnian Serb. 

The Bosnian Serb nationalist was captured by police and taken to the police station in Sarajevo, on June 28, 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian-Hungarian throne, and his wife. 

Shortly after the assassination, Austria-Hungary issued a list of demands to Serbia, demanding they halt all anti-Austro-Hungarian activity, dissolve certain political groups, remove certain political officers, and arrest those within its borders who participated in the assassination, among other things -- with 48 hours to comply.

Serbia, with the backing of their ally Russia, politely refused to fully comply, and mobilized their army. Soon after, Austria-Hungary, backed by their ally Germany, declared war on Serbia on July 28 1914.

A network of treaties and alliances then kicked in, and within a month's time, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, France, Britain, and Japan had all mobilized their armies and declared war. 

In this photo, taken in August of 1914, Prussian guard infantry in new field gray uniforms leave Berlin, Germany, heading for the front lines. Girls and women along the way greet and hand flowers to them. 

Belgian soldiers with their bicycles in Boulogne, France, 1914. Belgium asserted neutrality from the start of the conflict, but provided a route into France that the German army coveted, so Germany declared it would "treat her as an enemy", if Belgium did not allow German troops free passage.

The conflict, called the Great War by those involved, was the first large-scale example of modern warfare - technologies still use in battle today were introduced in large scale forms then, some (like chemical attacks) were outlawed and later viewed as war crimes.

The newly-invented aeroplane took its place as an observation platform, a bomber, and an anti-personnel weapon, even as an anti-aircraft defense, shooting down enemy aircraft.

Here, French soldiers gather around a priest as he blesses an aircraft on the Western Front, in 1915. 

Here, on a table set up outside a steel helmet factory in Lubeck, Germany, a display is set up, showing the varying stages of the helmet-making process for Stahlhelms for the Imperial German Army. 

Germany had hoped for a swift victory against France, and invaded Belgium in August of 1914, heading into France. The German army swept through Belgium, but was met with stiffer resistance than it anticipated in France.

The Germans approached to within 70 kilometers of Paris, but were pushed back a ways, to a more stable position, which would become battlefields lined with trenches, fought over for years. In this opening month of World War I, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians were killed or wounded --

France suffered its greatest single-day loss on August 22nd, when more than 27,000 soldiers were killed by rifle and machine-gun, thousands more wounded. 

A Belgian soldier smokes a cigarette during a fight between Dendermonde and Oudegem, Belgium, in 1914.

German soldiers celebrate Christmas in the field, in December of 1914.

An Austrian soldier, dead on a battleground, in 1915.

The Salonica (Macedonian) front, Indian troops at a Gas mask drill. Allied forces joined with Serbs to battle armies of the Central Powers and force a stable front throughout most of the war.

Unloading of a horse in Tschanak Kale, Turkey, equipment for the Austro-Hungarian army. 

The French battleship Bouvet, in the Dardanelles. 

The French battleship Bouvet, in the Dardanelles was assigned to escort troop convoys through the Mediterranean at the start of the war.

In early 1915, part of a larger group of combined British and French ships sent to clear Turkish defenses of the Dardanelles, Bouvet was hit by at least eight Turkish shells, then struck a mine, which caused so much damage, the ship sank within a few minutes.

While a few men survived the sinking and were rescued, nearly 650 went down with the ship. 

1915, British soldiers on motorcycles in the Dardanelles, part of the Ottoman Empire, prior to the Battle of Gallipoli.

"Pill box demolishers" being unloaded on the Western Front. These enormous shells weighed 1,400 lbs. Their explosions made craters over 15 ft. deep and 15 yards across. 

A motorcycle dispatch rider studying the details on a grave marker, while in the background an observation balloon is preparing to ascend. The writing on the marker says in German: "Hier ruhen tapfere franzosische Krieger", or Here rest brave French warriors. 

Highlanders, soldiers from the United Kingdom, carry sandbags up to the front in 1916.

British artillery bombards German positions on the Western Front. 

A British officer leads the way amid the bursting of German shells.

American soldiers, operating a trench mortar. This gun and crew kept up a continuous fire throughout the raid of March 4, 1918 in Badonviller, Muerthe et Modselle, France.

A German soldier throws a hand grenade against enemy positions, at an unknown battlefield during World War I.

French soldiers, some wounded, at the taking of Courcelles, in the department of Oise, France, in June of 1918.

A stretcher bearer patrol painfully makes its way through knee-deep mud near Bol Singhe during the British advance in Flanders, on August 20, 1917. 

German soldiers practice with a flame-thrower on April 4, 1917.

Candor, Oise, France. Soldiers and a dog outside a ruined house in 1917. 

World War I saw the debut of tank warfare, with varying levels of success, mostly poor.

Many of the earlier models broke down frequently, or got bogged down in mud, fell into trenches, or, (slow-moving) were directly targeted by artillery.

British tanks pass dead Germans who were alive before the cavalry advanced a few minutes before the picture was taken. 

German A7V tanks drive through a village near Rheims in 1918.  

Ottoman Turk Machine Gun Corps at Tel esh Sheria Gaza Line, in 1917, part of the Sinai and Palestine Campaign.

A German ammunition column, men and horses equipped with gas masks, pass through woods contaminated by gas in June of 1918. 

Chemical weapons were a part of the arsenal of World War I armies from the beginning, ranging from irritating tear gases to painful mustard gas, to lethal agents like phosgene and chlorine.

German soldiers flee a gas attack in Flanders, Belgium, 1917. 

Members of the German Red Cross, carrying bottle of liquid to revive those who have succumbed to a gas attack.

Soldiers of an Australian 4th Division field artillery brigade walk on a duckboard track laid across a muddy, shattered battlefield in Chateau Wood, near Hooge, Belgium, on October 29, 1917. 

Beginning in the summer of 1918, Allied forces began a series of successful counteroffensives, breaking through German lines and cutting off supply lines to Austro-Hungarian forces.

As Autumn approached, the end of the war seemed inevitable. 

British enter Lille, France, in October of 1918, after four years of German occupation.

A German dog hospital, treating wounded dispatch dogs coming from the front, ca. 1918.

Three soldiers man a machine gun set up in railroad shop in Chateau Thierry, France, on June 7, 1918.