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
Archduke Joseph Ferdinand of Austria with more than 70,000 other Viennese. He was interrogated by the Gestapo and sent to Dachau concentration camp, where he was imprisoned for three months. The conditions in the camp ruined his health permanently. Joseph Ferdinand was released and lived an isolated existence thereafter, under continual observation by the Gestapo. He died on 28 August 1942 in Vienna. Archduke Joseph Ferdinand of Austria Archduke Joseph Ferdinand of Austria (24 May 1872 – 28 August 1942) was an Austro-Hungarian Archduke and the titular Grand Duke of Tuscany from 17 January 1908 to 2 May 1921, military commander, from 1916 Generaloberst, and