The Day That Shook the World The Day That Shook the World The Day That Shook the World (, lit. "The Sarajevo Assassination") is a 1975 Czechoslovak-Yugoslav-German co-production film directed by Veljko Bulajić, starring Christopher Plummer and Florinda Bolkan. The film is about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo in 1914 and the immediate aftermath that led to the outbreak of World War I. When the only surviving heir to Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was killed by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist, on 28 June 1914, his death set in motion a chain of events that
History of Russia (1892–1917) was Serbia's territorial rival in the region, and Germany remained the Ottoman Empire's protector. Russia tied itself more closely to Serbia than it had previously. The complex system of alliances and Great Power support was extremely unstable; among the Balkan parties harboring resentments over past defeats, the Serbs maintained particular animosity toward the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In June 1914, a Serbian terrorist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria–Hungary, which then held the Serbian government responsible. Austria–Hungary delivered an ultimatum to Serbia. Serbia submitted to the first 2 of 3 cases of the ultimatum;