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
Muhamed Mehmedbašić the way to Sarajevo, gendarmes searched the train; fearing they were on to him, he threw the knife out the window. Potiorek was planned to be assassinated at the end of March 1914, when the new mufti Čaušević was to be enthroned in Sarajevo. However, upon hearing that Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria would come to Sarajevo on Vidovdan, the Black Hand changed their minds. The Archduke's scheduled visit on Vidovdan (28 June), a Serbian national holiday, was perceived as an insult. Ilić summoned Mehmedbašić and informed him on 26 March that the plan now was to murder Archduke Franz