Picture it. A powerful dignitary, heir to the throne, visits a foreign capital, and even though the threats to his life are public and palpable, his advisors reject the recommendation that troops not line the parade route as to not offend the locals.

He arrives at the train station with his wife and entourage. Six assassins are waiting along the route of his six car motorcade.

The motorcade first stops at a military barracks before heading to the Town Hall.

The motorcade actually passes the first assassin – who balks. Same happens with the second assassin. The third assassin is armed with a bomb, which he throws at the dignitary’s car. The bomb bounces off the car and rolls in the street, and as it is on a timed detonator, it only explodes when the next car passes over it.

Bedlam breaks out in the street. There are close to two dozen who are wounded. The motorcade speeds off toward Town Hall, zipping past the remaining three assassins. The reception there transpires as normal, but the dignitary and his wife propose to visit the wounded at the hospital.

It is decided that the motorcade will head directly to the hospital, but this message is not relayed to the dignitary’s driver who makes a wrong turn, and while the cars negotiate their u-turns in this impromptu bottleneck, and the dignitary’s car stalls. One of the assassins emerges from a deli where he had sought refuge from the chaos. Pure coincidence!

The assassin steps up to the footboard of the dignitary’s car, shoots the dignitary and his wife at point-blank range.

Fade to black...

As terrible as this moment is for the dignitary and his wife, it would become even more awful for the millions of Europeans who would soon find themselves dragged into the first modern war. This war would see, for the first time, widespread use of machine guns, field artillery, tanks, flamethrowers, poison gas, depth charges, aircraft carriers, and even drones. This war would also see apocalyptic levels of killing and mayhem never seen before in the annals of warfare.

The Austrio-Hungarian Empire (whose heir was killed) saw the assassination as an opportunity to settle scores with Serbia who allegedly warned the Austro-Hungarians that Serbian assassins were plotting - but the warning went unheeded. Because of treaty obligations, Germany would back the Austro-Hungarians. The same was true of Russia, who had a similar deal with Serbia.

The Germans, assuming Russia would attack first, launched a two prong assault – sweeping through Belgium to attack France in the west while attacking Russia in the east.

Great Britain (and all of her dominions) was also bound by treaty to come in on the side of France, and soon declared war on Germany.

The Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria, also treaty bound, joined in on the side of Germany and Austro-Hungary. When Germany attacked ships in the Atlantic, the Americans joined on the side of the Allied Powers.

Although historians have argued the counterfactual (i.e., if it hadn’t been the assassination, something else would have sparked “the Great War”), the fact is that secret treaties doomed Europe’s leaders to sleepwalk their way into a slaughterhouse.

The war which effectively started in July, 1914 would be over by Christmas, British military and political officials assured a worried public. (Or even earlier, "before the leaves fall"...) They were wrong. The war ground on for years. Germany would eventually sign an armistice agreement in Paris on Monday, November, 11 1918 at 0500 hours. The ceasefire would go into effect at 1100 hours the same morning, that is, on “the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.”

The winners - the Allied Powers - would meet two months later to determine the fate of the losers. US President Woodrow Wilson had been speaking about what the Great War meant in the United States. He called for “peace without victory,” an understanding that the war would end with no losers. (He also called for the end of colonialism and imperialism. Huh.) He called for the creation of the League of Nations, an international body where countries could come together to talk through their differences, rather than striking secret deals in back rooms and then going to war over them.

So when the Peace Conference began on January 18, 1919 in Paris in the office of the French Foreign Ministry, 200 delegates representing 37 nations packed into a big conference room resplendent with gold and mirrors to hammer out a peace treaty that they would eventually send to Germany.
At the front of the room, at the head of the long table sat the main players, Woodrow Wilson, and right next to him, a short bald man with a big white moustache, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau - and in between them, Lloyd George, the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Clemenceau’s position was clear: Germany forced the war on France and for that, they would PAY FOR IT literally and figuratively. France lost the most men. The war traumatized every level of French society and was felt in every province. France didn’t just want victory, Clemenceau stated. France needed revenge.

Wilson disagreed. He wanted “peace without victory.” This led to many arguments, many of which erupted into shouting, yelling and walkouts. Lloyd George said he felt like he was sitting between Jesus Christ and Napoleon.

On April 2, 1919, Wilson had had enough. He packed his bags and readied his departure. But suddenly, the next day, April 3 - he fell ill with INFLUENZA.

Recall that by April, 1919, millions had died from the flu - more than those killed in the Great War itself. The third wave was by far the worst, but no one was talking about it because governments heavily censored the press during wartime.

Wilson recovered. It took about a week, but he didn’t have the same zip in his step afterwards. He went back to the Peace Conference. He continued to fight with Clemenceau, but he was weaker. Clemenceau prevailed. Wilson still got his League of Nations, but Clemenceau got his terms. The Treaty of Versailles would compel Germany to pay reparations which crippled its economy. Germany also had to dissolve its army and relinquish large swaths of territory.

These humiliating terms that the Germans had no choice but to accept set Germany on the path to a catastrophic depression, social upheaval, the rise of fascism and the Nazi party, a second World War and Hitler’s Final Solution.

And so, what began with a wrong turn in Sarajevo ended with a wrong turn in Versailles. The assassin's bullets that killed an Archduke sparked a war that killed millions. But it was the peace that followed - born of revenge rather than wisdom - that would ultimately prove even more deadly. Europe had sleepwalked into war in 1914; in 1919, with eyes wide open, it stumbled toward an even greater catastrophe.

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