[CIB-173RDABN]

His death was an excuse for war, not the cause. If it was not this, it would have been something else.

Those that led the world into WWI had no concept of what was at stake and they (and their nations) paid a great price for their arrogance.

[DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis]

Exactly. The Europe was a powder keg just waiting for a spark to set it off. If it wasn’t Franz’s death, it would have been something else sooner or later

[allendale]

Sadly you are right. Europe at their cultural peak, was primed for a needless destructive war.

[PUGACHEV]

There are many reasons why there could have been a war, no matter whether the assassination occurred or not, but the fact is that, absent the assassination, the specific chain of event that did lead to war would not have taken place. You can have tinder and oily rags everywhere and say in hindsight that a fire was inevitable, but there still has to be a spark, and that's a matter of pure chance. The cold war kept the world on edge of nuclear annihilation for fifty years, and many today say that fate is inevitable, but yet it hasn't happened.

[RayChuang88]

You are completely correct.

Even if the Archduke escaped the assassination attempt, we were headed for war by latest 1916 because all the major powers in Europe were furiously arming up to protect their colonial interests and all it took was another spark to trigger off the war. Remember, the Alsace-Lorraine region of France was a disputed area that the Germans wanted, and that dispute was enough to get France and Germany into a shooting war sooner or later.