The Great War: American Front grim official holiday marking the 1882 surrender and keeping alive the dream of revenge for the two humiliations inflicted by the South. The novel's main plot begins on June 28, 1914, the same day Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg of Austria-Hungary, are assassinated in Sarajevo by Nedeljko Čabrinović with a bomb thrown into their car and explodes (as opposed to Gavrilo Princip with a gun in our timeline), with the incident drawing the European powers into a whirlwind of war. At the eruption of an alternate World War I known as the Great War, the
Archduke Joseph Francis of Austria Archduke Joseph Francis of Austria Josef Franz, Archduke of Austria, Prince of Hungary (Josef Franz Leopold Anton Ignatius Maria; 28 March 1895 – 25 September 1957), was the eldest son of Archduke Joseph August of Austria and Princess Auguste Maria of Bavaria. As his father was the last Palatine of Hungary and was briefly considered a possible King of Hungary in 1919–1920, Josef Franz was a potential crown prince of Hungary. He was born during the reign of his maternal great-grandfather, Francis Joseph I of Austria, who was also his second cousin once removed on his father's side. On 4